Charlotte Stahl
Getting Involved
Property: 
Craigenbrae, 1,400 hectares, Canyonleigh, Southern Highlands region.
Charlotte works with the land, not against it, and has seen both the environmental and economic benefits of doing so. She’d like to see more landholders taking a similar approach.
Why did you start undertaking conservation efforts on your property?
We moved to land in 1969, with the intention of clearing it for beef and Sheep farming. Then the drought hit and we had to shoot Cattle. We began to realise that what the land actually wants to produce is native vegetation, so we started up a firewood business. We let the cleared paddocks return to bush. We sustainably harvested the wood and would take our truck directly to a tree, using nearly all of it. We’d leave small branches on the ground to create a nursery for saplings.
We felled trees and split them on the same day and then left them for a year to season. When the bark falls off onsite it provides an organic resource for land. As saplings grow they take CO² so when firewood burns and produces carbon there is a synthesis – emissions are balanced. We’ve now sold the big firewood business and our son runs a smaller business from the land.
What else have you done?
Currently our land is a Wildlife Refuge, which means we’ve joined the Conservation Partners Program, which aims to encourage, support and assist landholders to manage areas for wildlife on their property.
What would you like to pass on to other landholders?
I’d like other landholders to see that environment is not something to be conquered, but to be embraced. Most of Canyonleigh is 20–25 acre blocks. 'Tree changers' coming into the area with a bucolic vision of life in the country clear land, plant grass and try to farm things like Alpacas, Sheep, Grapes, Olives, or Lavender. But it’s a heartbreaking exercise in futility that costs them a lot. Rainfall in this area is more like Goulbourn than Bowral. It’s very dry. The costs soon outweigh returns so owners often sell and newcomers buy and the cycle starts all over again. I’d like to see them working with the land, not against it.
