Among the 2009 Landcare Heroes are Bill Hollingworth and Wilson Inlet Catchment Committee Inc (WICC).

Both will now go on to represent Western Australia at the national Landcare awards in Sydney next year.

Mr Hollingworth won the Australian Forest Growers WA Tree Farmer of the Year award which honours and acknowledges landowners or private forest managers who demonstrate effective tree growing, silvicultural management of tree crop areas, or other forestry practices on their property.

The award comes at an opportune time for Mr Hollingworth after his $million business suffered after the crash of MIS plantation management companies, Timbercorp and Great Southern.

Staff have had to be laid off and seedlings destroyed.

Apart from establishing sustainable farm forestry systems on farmland, he has utilised his time voluntarily to promote the benefits of the industry to local communities and presenting overseas through his Churchill Fellowship.

From landowner and nurseryman, Mr Hollingworth has become one of the region’s leading champions of the commercial and environmental sustainability of farm forestry.

His leadership in researching casuarina obesa led to the species’ proven ability to reduce the saline watertable on sites affected by salt, thus improving farmland.

He also established a range of eucalypt species managed for sawlogs on his property at his own expense.

The WICC won the Toshiba Landcare Community Group Award for adopting sound land management and working towards sustainable land use to protect an area on behalf of the community.

The WICC is an active voluntary community group which has been operating as an incorporated body since 1995.

It has been instrumental in the development and implementation of the Wilson Inlet Nutrient Catchment Action Plan 2003 and the Upper Hay Strategic Catchment Plan 2007.

The objectives of the plans were to reduce algal occurrence by first reducing nutrient input and to improve the water quality by containing salinity.