ABSTRACT
Landcare has been operating as a national programme in Australia for 16 years. With over 4,000 local groups involving in excess of 120,000 participants across different state jurisdictions, Landcare provides a powerful example of the potential of local watershed organizations. At the same time, there have been important criticisms of Landcare, including that insufficient attention has been given to articulating the roles and responsibilities of different natural resource management actors, and that critical issues affecting the long-term capacity of Landcare have not been addressed. In this chapter I draw on my experience over almost 20 years as a researcher and as a Landcare participant to identify some key lessons from the Australian experience with monitoring and evaluation of Landcare. In doing this I attempt to identify some of the topics that evaluations of watershed groups should examine and reflect on the opportunity for monitoring and evaluation to influence policy and management.
