Beautiful but critically endangered Swift Parrots rely on the box-ironbark forests of central Victoria to sustain them through the winter. They migrate from their breeding grounds in Tasmania to feed on nectar flows that were once abundant and reliable but are no longer so. The forests are less healthy, biodiverse and productive than they once were due to increasingly prolonged droughts on top of a history of degradation through gold mining and timber cutting.

The Spring Plains Nature Conservation Reserve, on Taungurung country, in central Victoria is a local hotspot for Swift Parrots and other threatened species. However, its damaged soils are no longer porous enough to absorb rainfall, so less water is available to the landscape and its food webs. Like many other box-ironbark forests, the ecosystem is so damaged that it cannot recover without active restoration interventions.

The Spring Plains Watershed Repair project will demonstrate the application of practical and innovative ecological restoration techniques to a 138-hectare catchment. The aim is to 're-set' the altered forest so that it can recover ecological health and better withstand the impacts of climate change. The measures are designed to make the land more absorbent (or less 'leaky'), and so more biologically productive.

The Project brings together the land's traditional Owners, the Taungurung people who want to heal Country, along with Parks Victoria, Birdlife Australia, and the Heathcote community.