When Ian Whiting began planting trees and shrubs on his sheep farm, he didn't realise his efforts would create a valuable habitat for a diverse range of birds beyond the usual magpies and crows he saw.
Now retired, the third-generation farmer, who spent 20 years planting shelterbelts on his prime lamb and wool farm in Branxholme, in south-west Victoria, always believed the revegetation of farms was good for birdlife.
And now findings from one of the longest-running farm restoration studies — recently published in the journal Biological Conservation — has given credence to his belief.
Revegetating cleared land
Mr Whiting's grandfather purchased the undulating property in 1937 and, apart from a few monoculture shelterbelts of pine, it was largely devoid of trees because of historic land clearing.
In the 1990s, with the guidance of the late John Fenton, a trailblazer in pastoral revegetation, Mr Whiting and other locals started the Smokey River Land Management Group.
Mr Whiting also began revegetating his 2,500-acre (1,012-hectare) farm at the rate of one shelterbelt a year for 20 years.
"We learnt to grow much more attractive shelterbelts to assist the birdlife," he said.
The shelterbelts offered birds protection to safely feed on the insects that lived there.
Over time, Mr Whiting and his wife Sally began seeing more finches, wrens and kookaburras on the property.
He also built a dam, and fenced it off from livestock, which attracted resident waterbirds.
Altogether, Mr Whiting's restorations covered about 5 per cent of his farm and was a "massive improvement".
"It was a huge difference in the 20-year period from the time we started our Landcare plantings to where I finished," he said.
Study paints long-term picture
In 2007, he was approached by La Trobe University research fellow Angela Haslem, who was eager to learn how well revegetated landscapes on farms could recover.
Dr Haslem's team began surveying bird numbers and species found amongst native vegetation, shelterbelts between paddocks, tree plantations and landscapes around creek corridors as an indicator of how well the land had recovered.
Her team surveyed 23 800-hectare areas, including Mr Whiting's shelterbelts which were about 15 years old by then, and compared them with remnant parcels of land that had never been cleared of native vegetation.
Twelve years later, her team returned to the same sites to survey the birds for a second time, making it one of the longest studies in revegetation research.
She found that in 2007, remnant landscapes had about 20 per cent more birds than revegetated landscapes that were between two and 40 years old.
But by 2019, those bird numbers on revegetated landscapes had "essentially caught up".
"Restored and remnant [vegetation] were supporting similar numbers of woodland bird species," Dr Haslem said.
"Anecdotally, we could see that as the revegetation was improving, there were more species, but we [didn't have the capability] to go out and count them ourselves," Mr Whiting said.
"So, to have a university take part and do those counts [which] went for quite a long time, the data shows that revegetation on farms is good for birdlife."
Native vegetation still best
Dr Haslem said although bird numbers rose in revegetated areas, the types of birds found were different from those at native remnant sites.
She said restored landscapes tended to support birds such as blue fairy-wrens and New Holland honeyeaters which preferred shrubby vegetation, whereas remnant vegetation supported species including the brown treecreeper and crested shrike-tit that depended on bark and mature canopies for foraging and breeding.
"This really highlights the importance remnant patches and elements have, even if it's just a scattered, mature tree in a paddock," Dr Haslem said.
For Mr Whiting, the benefits of restoring and reserving land for wildlife were clear.
"The cost is quickly offset by improvements in productivity on farms, grazing pastures, and survivability of livestock, so it's a win for farmers to be putting the trees in."