Central Tablelands district began as “Orange Bathurst Landcare” back in the early 1990’s. It was one of the first districts in Australia to have a Landcare Coordinator. At the time there were 4 landcare groups located between Orange and Bathurst. This was considered large enough to warrant a paid staff person to help the community find the information and funding they needed to do more landcare projects.

The early days of this district had the fame and fortune of being the location where Bob Hawke (the then Prime Minister of Australia) launched the ‘One Billion Trees’ program by planting a native tree in the Panuara Four Mile Creek Landcare Group area.

Since the early 1990’s through to the early 2000’s the number of Landcare Groups grew to over 70. During this decade other districts had also applied for funding for their very own Landcare Coordinators. Even though this district took the lead we soon realized that other districts were coordinating smaller areas and smaller numbers of Landcare groups. Unfortunately the district was deemed to be ‘covered with a support person’ so no further division or expansion of the staff numbers was ever achieved.  After 2005 active Landcare group numbers dropped to around 49 and have continued to decline with the rising costs of insurance for small groups and a lack of money for groups to implement on-ground projects.  Since 2010, Central Tablelands Landcare has moved to support individuals along with groups in the district and has a membership of over 300 individuals / families in the district.

In 2013, the committee voted to change names to Central Tablelands Landcare Inc to reflect the change away from managing lots of individual small Landcare groups to a mixed model of Landcare membership - where individuals are encouraged to participate with and join Central Tablelands Landcare.

This Committee has met bimonthly, almost without a break since the early 1990's.