2021-01-18 GC - Item 1 - Attachment 1 - Noosa Biosphere Reserve Foundation 2019 20 Annual Report

                                                       NOOSA BIOSPHERE RESERVE FOUNDATION – 2019/20




REPORT FROM THE CHAIR – Rex Halverson


Presenting the Noosa Biosphere Reserve Foundation annual report for the Fiscal Year 2019/2020 on behalf
of the Noosa Shire Council and community.

While creating this report we were mindful of wanting to provide clarity regarding the activities and financial
details specific to the fiscal year ending 30 June, however at the same time the necessity of reporting on the
full year on year since the last report in order to provide a complete perspective of our progress.

It should also be noted that as many of our projects, as well as supporting initiatives, are either multi-year
and/or are not fully contained in a single financial year time period.

As the following pages will detail both the financials and projects relating to the last fiscal year I’ll just touch
on some of the highlights and trends.

A YEAR OF TRANSITION

The previous Chair and I shared this fiscal year as my term began in December of 2019, and a more
challenging start could not have been imagined with first the fire emergencies, and then the COVID-19
management response, impacting every aspect of ours and our project partners’ lives and activities.

Later in the year we welcomed Sharon Wright into the newly expanded role of Executive Coordinator, and
her contributions to community engagement, fundraising and productivity are already being widely seen and
well received in the Noosa community.

We also launched our new communications plan, led by Alison Cooper, highlighting what we do and the
relevancy and benefits of the projects we support, resulting in a growing understanding of what the Noosa
Biosphere Reserve is and the economic, social and ecological value of our work on its behalf for the
community.

A YEAR OF PROGRESS

Even with these challenges we were able to bring to completion and publication a large number of projects
initiated over the previous two years in the 2019-2020 financial year and late 2020 (detailed in the following
pages).

We were very pleased to see that three of these initial NBRF projects; the Noosa Trail Masterplan, the Oyster
Reef Restoration Trial and Keep on Keeping It In Kin Kin all leading to significant additional state and federal
funding to implement expanded programs thus providing even more return on our initial investment and
validation of their value to the Noosa region and people.

In cooperation with Tourism Noosa we supported their fresh new and very successful “Enter the Biosphere”
campaign including short videos focused on some of the Noosa Biosphere’s heroes and how their NBRF
supported efforts have contributed to the region’s economic vitality and environmental values.