Courses/WorkshopsLand

Applied Watershed Restoration Expert Coming to Australia

It is with great excitement that RegenAG announces an upcoming series of Applied Watershed Restoration courses in NSW and QLD with acclaimed watershed restoration and erosion control expert Craig Sponholtz, of Dryland Solutions.

We’ve managed to haul Craig out to Australia for a couple of weeks to skill us up on some ground-breaking, doable techniques in erosion control and passive water harvesting, as first brought to prominence in ‘Let the Water do the Work’ by Bill Zeedyk.


Craig Sponholtz teaching watershed restoration with Bill Zeedyk


Completed zuni bowl in dry gully with headcut – water is slowed
in order to prevent the headcut creeping further up the gully


Craig’s zuni bowl how-to, taken from his ‘Erosion Control Field Guide’

Craig Sponholtz’s Applied Watershed Restoration courses are a must. I was very impressed with the thoroughness, hands-on learning, and Craig’s deep knowledge — based on years of real-life experiences. The strategies taught are simple and effective. They build on natural patterns so you work with natural processes not against them. This way nature does the bulk of the work once the structures are in place. I highly recommend these courses for anyone working with the land and water…. — Brad Lancaster, author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond

Applied Watershed Restoration events in Australia 2012 with RegenAG

**FarmReady Approved Courses – eligible primary producers and their families may be eligible for a 65% reimbursement of course costs**

The techniques used in this kind of erosion control focus on passive structures, made from natural materials — it’s all about slowing the water down, taking the destructive energy out that does all the eroding and damage, and then literally letting the water do the work.

There is plenty of great writing on how the Australian landscape needs to, and can be, restored with a variety of techniques. We’re all starting to grasp that when an incised/eroded channel forms, that it literally ‘unzips’ the floodplain around it, causing the water table to drop, and drying out the land.

This ‘unzipping’ happens on all levels of the watershed — wherever water is cutting into the landscape in the form of a gully, any head cut or perhaps a creek with high walls of cut earth above the normal flow, this draining of the surrounding landscape begins to occur.

We’re all familiar with what happens to land and soil that has been literally bled dry. It becomes far less productive, more susceptible to further erosion, more saline, and basically takes the land backwards. Not something we want if we’re trying for regenerative agriculture.

So why bring an expert in from far away to tell us how to fix things, when there are Aussies who understand what the problem is? To us, it’s all about effective knowledge transfer. The reason we’re bringing Craig out to Australia to teach these innovative yet simple techniques (which have met with great acclaim in the US, because they just work) is that he’s teaching erosion control and watershed restoration in a way that is highly accessible and inspiring to boot.


Class making a ‘media luna’ structure which can be used to concentrate
or disperse sheet flow, depending on what is needed


Multi-step zuni bowls in action… water is slowed, silt is deposited, and
vegetation takes off to finish the job of repairing the situation naturally

In other words, this is watershed restoration taught and explained in a way that can be acted upon, and effectively implemented without a degree in fluid dynamics. This is rather helpful, as we would like to get on with restoring our watershed asap, learning as we go.

For anyone who would love to really get their head around the nuts and bolts of how to tackle watershed restoration, whether on your land or as a larger community riparian project, we invite you to come and learn how….

For more info on erosion control and watershed restoration, have a look at:


Installing in-stream features to slow the flow, promote formation of silt
and gravel deposits and increase sinuosity of the stream without
major intervention…. Let the water do the work!

3 Comments

  1. This course will be amazing! Craig is highly regarded in the US for his earth and water works. This is watershed restoration at its best for rocky soils and beyond.

  2. Craig’s the man! He was also a wild land firefighter for many years and has an understanding of the movement of fire through the landscape like none other that I’ve met. He consulted with me on a property regarding the fire sector 10 years ago and provided insights that have stayed with me to this day. I’m sure you will not be disappointed if you attend his workshops.

    Andrew Millison

  3. Regarding the book ‘Let the water do the work’, after 6 months on backorder at my local ABC book shop it finally came in a few weeks ago, so copies must be available in Australia again.

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