Apply for a local environmental award

Outstanding South Australian environmental community groups are encouraged to apply for the new Green Adelaide Urban Landcare Award to recognise and celebrate green achievements.

The new award forms part of the National Landcare Awards, which is an annual and Australian-wide celebration to honour environmental champions from urban and rural communities excelling in sustainable agricultural practices, environmental protection, conservation of land and waterways, coastlines and biodiversity.

The Green Adelaide Urban Landcare Award celebrates an outstanding community group protecting and improving the urban environment through on-ground action or sustainable capacity building.

The award winner will receive a $1,000 cash prize and a trophy.

The winner will be announced at the National Landcare Awards in March 2022.

Its easy to apply for the Green Adelaide Urban Landcare Award, take a look at the criteria below, draft up your responses, then visit Landcare Australia to register your application for your group or to nominate a group. Applications are due by 6 December 2021.

Green Adelaide Urban Landcare Award criteria:

• Describe the group you are nominating. Please include how long they have been involved, why they got involved and the location of the project.
• Describe what environmental management issue the group is responding to with their urban landcare project activities; describe any key challenges the nominee has faced and the strategies used to overcome them.
• Describe how the group has repaired degraded land or natural assets, built capacity for sustainable living and/or nature connection and advocacy in an urban area, including the wider community/public benefit from project activities; include how the group has sought advice, worked with and involved the wider community, other landcare/community groups, government, local business, environmental management agencies, schools and youth groups, and Indigenous land managers in the development and implementation of its plans and projects.
• Provide examples of how the group has shared and communicated its ideas, plans, skills, and results to encourage others in the community to increase engagement and participation in urban landcare (e.g. field trips, school visitation programs, community education campaigns, training workshops, online or media promotions, creating partnerships).
• In 25 words (2-3 sentences), please summarise your nomination, highlighting the key messages that best describe why this group should be recognised for outstanding achievements to urban landcare.

The Pelzer Prize Award is a new award for South Australia's green heroes, conservation leaders and champions of the environment, named in honour of Adelaide’s first city gardener – August Wilhelm Pelzer.

The Pelzer Prize Award celebrates Adelaide’s unsung environmental heroes from schools, community groups as well as professions that go above and beyond to restore landscapes, create habitat for wildlife, connect people to nature, or clean up our parks, beaches and waterways.

Green Adelaide partnered with The Advertiser and Sunday Mail, the University of Adelaide Environment Institute and the Australian Science Media Centre to launch the inaugural Pelzer Prize in June 2021 and received almost 100 nominations. The Pelzer Prize winner was awarded $10,000 to dedicate towards an environmental cause and selected by a panel of experts.

Gardener and nature-lover Jill Woodlands won the 2021 Pelzer Prize Award for SA environmental heroes for her efforts to reconnect people with the planet.

Jill is an exceptional communicator, a curator of the Nature Festival building partnerships and expanding the program, and organiser of many other nature-based events such as the Parklands Project, Zoodle and Amongst It. Her research extends into the natural history of Adelaide, such as the existence of the Forest League (a society of Adelaide’s founders). She has also been involved with organisations like the Mediterranean Garden Society and the Nature Conservation Society. She strongly believes that being attached to nature is hugely important for conservation and for our own wellbeing. Jill is also a manager at Diggers, Australia’s number one gardening club.

The SA Environment Awards celebrate and acknowledge our state's champions working in nature protection, climate action, sustainability and care for Country.

You can review the full list of worthy SA Environment Awards winners, including the Unsung Hero Award presented by Green Adelaide Presiding Member Chris Daniel, to two winners: Kangaroo Island community conservation group Eco-Action KI and nature facilitator Jill Woodlands.

The major accolade – the Jill Hudson Award for Environmental Protection – was won by ecologist Peri Coleman for her instrumental role in bringing attention to the plight of the St Kilda mangroves and saltmarsh.

The City of Salisbury’s Watershed Creative Prize provides an opportunity to allow creative people to capture what 'Sustainability' means to them via traditional artworks, written works and those developed using emerging technologies like blogs, music and video.

The winner of the Mayor’s Award went to David Taylor's constructed ‘Fire Path’ on a black canvas, creating a striking contrast between the colours representing the elements (red-fire, yellow-air, blue-water and green-earth), as well as allowing for the work to be interpreted as either night or day.

Stormwater SA Excellence Awards encourage, recognise, promote and celebrate excellence in the innovation, development, completion and management of stormwater projects and the people involved.

Green Adelaide was the category sponsor for ‘Excellence in strategic or master planning’.

All state winners go into the national awards.

Wallbridge Gilbert Aztec won this award for their strategic planning project at Springwood, Gawler East, which not only addressed stormwater generated by the new development, but helped to rehabilitate a degraded site with challenging topography and sensitive remnant ecosystems.