To facilitate a more diverse rural sector, enhanced biodiversity and innovative industries based on non-traditional uses of the rangelands and their wildlife.
Research Manager:

Dr George Wilson, Phone: 02 6281 2160, Fax: 02 6285 1195, Email: georgewilson@awt.com.au
Research Budget: $744, 580

2006-07 Program Details

Key Performance Indicators

See also Sustainable Wildlife Enterprises

The drought in many parts of Australia has seriously reduced livestock carrying capacity on the rangelands and has contributed to biodiversity loss and environment damage.

Under current arrangements, wildlife is a liability over which landholders have little control. Yet some wildlife produces high quality meat and leather, and appears to be softer on the environment than equivalent numbers of livestock. Wildlife is also an asset to the tourism industry and a core component of the national heritage. Clearly there needs to be better ways of integrating wildlife conservation with commercial resource use and development. Giving landholders the opportunity to capture the value could be an incentive to restore natural systems.

Several rural research corporations and other research agencies have a continuing priority to support the development of alternative production systems and options for ?reinventing Australian agriculture?. Some are considering ecosystem services and returning landscapes to their prior condition particularly through the planting of trees and native vegetation. The Rangeland and Wildlife Systems Sub program has a similar approach through a focus on trialling wildlife based options on the rangelands. In 2005, with financial support from the Australian Government?s National Landcare Program, two trials commenced to test the option of giving landholders both greater responsibility for wildlife and the opportunity to benefit financially from conservation activities. If all goes well, they will run for up to six years.

The Sustainable Wildlife Enterprise trials give effect to the recommendations of the 1998 Senate inquiry into the commercial use of native Australian wildlife. The trials are being undertaken in Wildlife Management Conservancies (WMCs) located on the Murray River near Mildura, on the Maranoa- Balonne catchment near Roma, Qld and by a group of landholders near Broken Hill, NSW. The desired outcome is increased wild resources being conserved and restored and biodiversity enhanced.

• Determine the Effects of Commercial Utilisation of Wildlife - Determine if commercial utilisation of wildlife, whether consumptive or non-consumptive, enhances biodiversity, ongoing ecosystem services, reduces land degradation, improves farm viability and leads to broader social and economic community benefits.
• Integration of Production Methods - Integration of conventional agriculture production, tourism and sustainable commercial use of wildlife.
• Identify Rangeland Response to Climate Change - Identify how rangelands agriculture should respond to climate change - threats and opportunities.

• Operation of successful collaborative decision making framework between landholders (Wildlife Management Conservancies) to progress their sustainable wildlife enterprises and aspirations.
• Development of enterprise options in support of the WMC's.
• Establishment of financial and strategic partnerships with existing wildlife resource industries, government support programs and philanthropic conservation organisation to underpin the WMC's.
• Development of property management planning and accreditation processes that enable easy visualisation of complex data management and attainment of standards.