The leaders of a project to rehydrate the landscape of a north Queensland cattle property say the results are proof that profits can flow from keeping more scarce rainfall on-farm.

Grazier Chris Le Feuvre, from Worona Station between Townsville and Charters Towers, said his property was a degraded landscape with significant erosion issues before changes were made a decade ago.

"There were a lot of cattle here, basically living on leaves falling off trees and molasses," he said.

Since 2015, a project to rehydrate Worona Station with assistance from NRM group NQ Dry Tropics and the consultancy arm of the Mulloon Institute has rehabilitated the country.

Splitting paddocks into small sizes and using large mobs of cattle grazing on rotation, Mr Le Feuvre is grazing pasture more intensively while giving it longer to rest, increasing carrying capacity.

Profitability has increased, with the comparatively small 6,677-hectare northern operation now providing full-time stable employment for the owner and his son.

Chris Le Feuvre avoids using molasses, saying better management can reduce the need for costly supplements. (File photo) ( Supplied )

"They do better now, also the species of grass and plants are changing, there's more variety now," Mr Le Feuvre said.

"We've got twice the cattle we had here before, we're up to 2,000 head ... we've got groundcover everywhere and there's enough feed to go until the end of January.

"We want all plants to grow: the more groundcover you have, when it does rain you'll have more rain infiltrating the soil."

Mulloon Institute chairman Gary Nairn said the issue of degraded gullies and streams was a national concern.

"We are pushing hard to get a change in attitude ... it will assist dramatically in making the agricultural sector resilient to extremes that come along," he said.

"In getting a rehydrated landscape you become more resilient to fire, drought, it also mitigates some of the flooding aspects.

"It's all about slowing the water down, holding it in the landscape longer."

Eroded catchment gullies created by mining, over-grazing or vehicle tracks have been mapped for remediation planning. ( Supplied: NQ Dry Tropics )

Erosion focus

Using cattle-grazing techniques where stock are moved from small paddocks on a regular basis and engineering works, the property's sediment runoff levels have reduced.

Sam Skeat, grazing officer with NQ Dry Tropics, said remediating gully erosion was a key factor in keeping damaging topsoil out of the Great Barrier Reef area.

"Once water would get into this gully you wouldn't see it again, it'd end up in the Haughton (River) and end up in the sea," he said.

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"Chris implemented some structures to get that water back up interacting with that landscape on the soil surface and growing more grass."

The plug-and-pond technique — also known as leaky weirs — involves small dam-like structures to lift the bed level of the water, which is then run onto the floodplain to grow pasture and recharge aquifers.

While weirs have been strategically constructed, Mr Skeat said grazing management was the most important tool to improve water retention in a landscape.

"We always say to people you can cover 99 per cent of your country with grazing and 1 to 2 per cent with the intervention in gullies," he said.

"If you can use cattle as a tool to regenerate the grassland, you'll get more infiltration, slow the flow, hold water up in the landscape and have you growing grass for longer."

Vegetation cover has improved on Worona Station to the point where nine-month gaps between rainfall can be accounted for. ( ABC Rural: Tom Major )

'Better than dams'

With significant Federal Government interest in the building of new dams and water storages, funding is underway for several feasibility and business cases.

However Mr Nairn, a former cabinet minister in the Howard government, said landscape rehydration offered much greater possibilities.

"I don't deny that there are some needed strategic dams, but nowhere near the wholesale building of dams that some advocate," he said.

The Mulloon Institute, founded to promote the Peter Andrews method of land rehydration, has been demonstrated near Braidwood, New South Wales along the Mulloon Creek.

Mr Nairn said he had shown Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack that the potential for storing water in soil was significant.

"We've been able to demonstrate in Mulloon, if we repaired and rehydrated the catchment through to the Sydney water supply, you could store the equivalent of Warragamba Dam," he said.

"It'd cost billions to build another Warragamba Dam but it won't cost billions to restore that landscape to a naturally functioning one."

With the recent announcement of a $5 billion annual Future Drought Fund to better prepare communities for climate change, Mr Nairn said the opportunity for rehydration was obvious.

"The language around that is all about spending that money for resilience ... so I'm encouraged by that," he said.

"I think it needs a lot more [money] than that to get work happening on rehydration of the amount of land that needs to be done."

Levels at Warragamba Dam, which supplies about 80 per cent of Sydney's water, have dropped to less than half capacity. ( ABC News: Geoff Kemp )

Carbon banking for water

Mr Le Feuvre said building up the soil carbon content during the past decade meant more water stored in the soil, a critical factor when rain falls intensely across a short period in the tropics.

"If you go around and measure the soil infiltration rates, some places are lucky to infiltrate half an inch (12mm) of rain an hour," he said.

"I know of people who can infiltrate 16 inches (406mm) of water an hour; if you can build your soil and organic matter to that sort of level, you can make more use of the rain.

"I believe we're getting enough rain, we're just not using it. We've got increased run-off, gully erosion ... when we get rain, it's falling on hard, bare soil."

Mr Nairn agreed that landholders needed to become much better at using scarce rainfall to gain the maximum value from moisture.

"Hydrating that landscape, so that the value of it lasts a lot longer, if you get long periods of dryness," he said.

Mulloon Consulting general manager Carolyn Hall said money raised though the group's work was used to lobby for more government drought scheme grants.

"We're making submissions wherever we can on those programs and highlighting our work," she said.

"Making sure politicians and decision-makers are aware of what we're doing ... how this work can assist with erosion and positive impacts on the Great Barrier Reef.

Additional funding could come from the Queensland Government's recently released plan to spend $500 million on expanding a pilot Land Restoration Fund program.

Under the scheme to increase the number of carbon credits produced in the state, long-term purchasing agreements will be signed with landholders.

The Government has promised that decisions to fund projects will be based on co-benefits, including increasing social and economic value to communities.