A riverfront property at Murtho in South Australia's Riverland, Australia's largest wine grape growing region, has turned 40 acres of former vineyard back into native vegetation, creating a refuge for the endangered regent parrot.

Tony and Cherie Townsend decided in 2022 to return the land to native bush rather than replace their vines with another crop. "It was a lot of time and effort [managing vineyards] and it wasn't the reason we bought the property in the first place," Ms Townsend said, adding that the decision had been easier for them than for other local growers.

The couple, in the wine grape industry since the late 1990s, did eight harvests on the property. "After 2022 … pricing was heading south," Mr Townsend said. Across the Riverland growers are ripping out vines as the industry battles an oversupply of grapes and a global fall in wine consumption; industry experts and the South Australian government have encouraged a shift to more profitable crops such as almonds or olives, which can be costly, and the government's recently announced $109 million assistance package came too late for the Townsends.

The restoration was done with the Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board. The property lies on a flight path for regent parrots, whose numbers have been falling for several years, partly for lack of nesting sites; the board's latest census counted only 400 breeding pairs in the Riverland. The birds breed in river red gums along the river corridor but forage in the mallee, threatened fauna ecologist Melissa Burford said, so food between the two matters.

Kevin Smith, chair of the South Australian Regent Parrot Recovery Team, who has surveyed the birds for 35 years, said the Townsends' property was so far the best example of native revegetation helping the species. The couple reused some of their irrigation poly pipe and a small part of their water allocation to get the plantings going, and four generations of the family, along with local school students, have helped plant.

Four years on the site is flowering, and the Townsends hope other growers leaving grapes might consider the same path. The report was written by Jackson Byrne of ABC Riverland.

Photo: Feral Arts / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Source: ABC Rural