Our Board
Board members are elected from across 14 NRM Management Units (12 NRM regional body areas).
QWaLC board meetings are held four times a year. If you would like to have your views represented to the board or share a particular experience as a community NRM group or NRM volunteer, contact the board member for your region.
Our board is both representative and skills based and focused on organisational governance and listening to the members. Management tasks to deliver the strategic direction and to provide the services members need (e.g. grants, insurance, information, training) are delegated to the CEO and delivered by our great team of volunteers and contractors. The board have subcommittees and working groups for various projects.
“QWaLC’s board is an integral part of its role as the peak body for natural resource management volunteers. The board consists of a community representative aligned with each of Queensland’s natural resource management regions. This makes QWaLC truly representative of the Voluntary Natural Resource Management groups across Queensland, as our board members highlight the issues in each region.”
Mary-Lou Gittins OAM
Chairperson and Condamine Representative
Mary-Lou has been a member in some form of landcare or catchment group for the last 25 years. MaryLou has entire page that covers some of the groups she has been involved in over this time at a local, regional, state and federal level.
Mary-Lou chaired the advisory group that created the current Queensland Water and Land Carers.
As a past representative of CCMA Marylou has sat around the Darling Downs Regional Landcare group table. Currently Mary-Lou is the secretary of the Condamine Catchment Management Association.
Mary-Lou is a strong believer in this movement and is working with QWaLC to ensure a future for volunteers in the environment. MaryLou was recognised with an OAM in 2019 for service to conservation and the environment.
Michael Bond, CSC and Bar
Vice-Chair and South East Queensland Representative
Elected to the QWaLC board in 2022, Michael is a member of Save Our Waterways Now, a community catchment organisation working to restore the habitats of creeks and waterways in the catchments of Enoggera, Ithaca and Fish Creeks in Brisbane’s north and west.
Michael is a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Queensland with a distinguished public sector career working in senior positions in the Commission for Children and Young People, the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, the Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy and the Department of Children, Youth Justice and Multicultural Affairs.
In a parallel career, Michael has served 38 years as a member of the Australian Army (parttime), with four operational tours of duty. In 2012, Michael was awarded the Conspicuous Service Cross for his leadership of an Infantry Battalion. He was awarded a Bar to the Conspicuous Service Cross in 2017 for outstanding achievement in enhancing the operational outcomes of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. He retired in 2022 as a Brigadier.
Having witnessed first-hand and at length, the ravages on communities of human rights abuses, mass population displacement, starvation, disease, drought and floods, Michael is passionate about practical, community-led actions in combatting climate change. Michael in inspired by the volunteer effort in Queensland towards caring for country, including maintaining species diversity and habitat, improving soil health and reducing emissions.
John Brisbin
Secretary and Northern/Southern Gulf Representative
John is Secretary of the Mitchell River Watershed Management Group, and Secretary of JAMARR, which auspices a local landcare group for the Mount Molloy area.
He likes the “creative tension” between agriculture and conservation, and this led him to Landcare activities in the mid 90’s. He has been cultivating gardens and tending to wild spaces since he was a child exploring his grandmother’s farm and bushland in the temperate foothills of Appalachia. These experiences set a course for a lifetime of making do with what’s at hand, “waste not, want not”, and many hands make light work…. in modern parlance that might be innovation, resource conservation, and community.
John is a strong believer in the value of a grass-roots reality providing the foundation for all organisational and institutional activity. He finds it useful while puzzling over a complicated bit of governance to be busy with his hands. John is also an active member on the Board of Community Gardens Australia.
Craig Magnussen
Treasurer and Queensland Murray Darling Representative
A management and environmental professional with over 25 years of experience in the public sector, Craig is passionate about sustainable natural resource management and delivering effective organisational leadership.
Craig possesses a broad range of management expertise, spanning fields such as: compliance to environmental sustainability, planning and development assessment, contaminated land management to environmental health, invasive pest management, waste and public art. He has a strong track record of delivering excellent customer service in the most challenging, outward facing business areas of government services, often with complex legal and competing stakeholder interests. Craig has achieved this by understanding the community’s needs through effective consultation and an empathetic approach.
He has held technical, managerial and executive roles in State and local government and is currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Darling Downs-Moreton Rabbit Board.
Craig lives on a small farm with his young family near Stanthorpe and is an active member of the Granite Belt community.
Trevor Meldrum
Cape York Representative
Trevor was elected to the Board in November 2024.
He is an Australian with aboriginal heritage born in Cooktown, Cape York Peninsular, with ties to Princess Charlotte Bay, Lakefield and the Palmer River regions. For the last thirty-one years, he has lived and worked in environmental and natural resource management roles and holding an International Agricultural Diploma, and a Certificate in Animal Husbandry. Other qualifications include, Conservation and Land Management, Training and Assessment. Trevor has also undertaken numerous courses such as Conservation and Land Management Training, Environmental Project Management, Aerial and on ground Environmental Scientific Surveys to name a few. He would enjoy a second term as Chair of Queensland Conservation Council.
Jeffery Baines
Wet Tropics Representative
Jeff was elected to the Board in November 2021.
Jeff is proud to call the Cassowary Coast his home for over twenty years with his family.
He is a chef by trade and became a Councillor in the Cassowary Coast Regional Council to be ‘part of the solution’. A very wise individual once said that you can’t do anything standing outside and yelling in, you need to stand in the middle and be a part of it. He is motivated to get our region recognised as the most beautiful and vibrant place to live in the world, I really do ‘Love the place I Live’.
He is also focused on raising the profile of our region to encourage the sustainable development of our region improving the liveability of our home while respecting its unique natural beauty.
In my free time, I am heavily involved in our community. Some of my involvements include Innisfail Freemasons, RSL, Chamber of Commerce, President of the inaugural Feast of the Senses committee, Johnstone River Catchment Management Association and many other NRM groups.
Robyn Adams
Desert Channels Representative
After twenty five plus years in the creative arts, Robyn returned to her birth country to run a cattle grazing property in central west Queensland in 2002. Through that quarter of a century in Melbourne, Perth and overseas, she acquired extensive and broad experience and unique combination skill set, in design, costumiery, fashion, theatre arts and tertiary education.
For the two decades since returning ‘home’ to this Wadjebangai Country, she has developed her grazing and beef production enterprise at Stratford, a modest breeder block in the southern Desert Uplands. Enjoying the ride of repurposing those skills, and learning and relearning all about rangeland management, Stratford is now a leading example of good ecological stewardship of its natural woodlands alongside grazing best-prac and award-winning bovines. That enjoyment has extended to voluntary positions within the boards of Desert Uplands Committee, Desert Channels NRM and QWALC where Robyn shares her love, understanding and knowledge of country, cattle and community, for a betterment of all (hopefully).
Extending these diverse skills into many community and public arts projects and programming empowered a cultural flourishing of sorts in inland Queensland, favouring costume and sculpture to speak of and for our communities. Robyn has learnt alot from Indigenous Cultural practice enabled on Stratford, its surfeit of Aboriginal assets therein expounded, and continue encouraging shared learning, especially regarding fire and flora in this desert, timbered grasslands.
Lynette Keene
Fitzroy Basin Representative
Lynette was elected in November 2024. Lynette and her family David, Ellen and Breanna live on the lands of the Western Kangoula people. Central to everything Lynette does is the land she and her family walk on. Her motivation is healthy land and healthy water as well as respect for those that have come before her. She has experience with many land types that includes the Desert Uplands in the Jericho area and the Central Highlands around Emerald and Springsure area. Her passion lies in agriculture and educating producers to be better custodians of their land supporting biodiversity and clean healthy waterways. All their properties have showcased this through field days that have introduced producers to the benefits of biodiversity, value of native grasses and grass budgeting. They have also been earlier adopters of technology.
Lynette has experience in teaching which includes from kindergarten to being a TAFE teacher. Many years’ experience in development of environmental projects and working with different environmental groups. These include CHRRUP, FBA and several local Landcare groups in the past. Her family together has developed Northdown Cattle Company enterprise. Being first generation grazers with a strong agricultural background has enabled them to develop an understanding of all aspects of a business. They have worked together on development of land, production, business but most importantly the people who are involved with Northdown Cattle Company. She is also a strong advocate for networking with like minded individuals which has led her to looking to become a director on the QWaLC board.
Craig Alison
South West Representative
Craig joined the Board in June 2023.
Born and raised in the western division of NSW, Craig has called SW QLD home for over 2 decades. Craig has had a professional career in the public , non-profit and private sectors , with a focus on natural resource management and economic development.
Craig is currently engaged with South West Regional Organisation of Councils , undertaking the socio economic impacts of carbon farming throughout the region as well as assisting individual shires with QLD feral pest initiative projects and other NRM related investments.
Craig spends his spare time socialising, reading and native landscape gardening on his small block west of Charleville
Richard Sporne
Statewide Representative
Richard was appointed by the Board in November 2024.
Richard has twenty years’ experience in community development, engagement and project management providing expert advice, support and leadership to Indigenous communities throughout Australia. Trained and experienced in facilitation, mediation and stakeholder engagement with Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and clients. Adept at report writing with skills in cross-cultural communication and project management. Richard believes effective relationships between any clients (especially Indigenous) and service providers start with – ‘Know people, create a connection’ one of the core elements of community engagement skills. With this in mind, it is also important to have consideration for Indigenous ways of working when planning and delivering.
Qualifications include Bachelor of Applied Science – Curtin University (2005) and Advanced Diploma in Natural and Cultural Resources – Deakin University (2012).
His current roles are Manager, First Nations Engagement | Greening Australia, Strategic Advisor | Wadja Indigenous Protected Area Consultation and Working Group Member | Fitzroy Catchment Traditional Owner Alliance.