State Heritage Convention

Mr Keith Bradby
Policy Officer, Sustainable Rural Development Program
Agriculture Western Australia

Keith Bradby has a long involvement with landcare and biodiversity issues.

During the early 1980's he helped fight government land clearance programs, when an additional 3 million hectares between Ravensthorpe and south Balladonia was proposed for new farms. He was there for the birth of the landcare movement in the same period, and has been actively involved ever since. He helped establish the Fitzgerald River National Park Association in 1979, and for six years ran the study weekends that still operate. In 1985 he helped to bring nature conservation, sustainable development and landcare together into the Fitzgerald Biosphere Project.

In 1989 Keith left the south coast. In 1990 he helped establish, with community, CSIRO and private enterprise, a major feral control and mammal re-introduction project at Shark Bay, and from 1993-1996 worked with Alcoa on parts of its extensive landcare program. He spent four years as co-ordinator of one Western Australia's largest catchment programs and has worked on a number of economic diversification programs in rural areas.

Keith now works as a Policy Officer with the Department of Agriculture. In recent years he has been instrumental in the tightening of controls on land clearing, and work on a range of mechanisms to help landholders with large areas of bushland on their properties. This has included assisting with the establishment of a revolving fund, Bush Bank, which will be operated through the National Trust.

He is also currently President of Gondwana Link, a program to re-connect the forests of the south west with the Stirling Range and the Fitzgerald River National Parks. This is projected to grow into one of the largest restoration projects in Australia, with the group seeking private funding for much of this work.