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Download full report (450Kb) Purchase printed publication
Summary of full report
by George R Wilson and Beth Mitchell
October 2005
RIRDC Publication No 05/156 RIRDC Project No AWC-2A
Executive Summary
Australian agriculture needs
to operate in new and different ways if we are to achieve sustainable use
of Australia's natural resources and counter land degradation and declining
farm viability. While regulation is important in this process, the private
sector is likely to respond favourably if incentives are provided to participate
in remedial action. We require more innovative ways of utilising the nation’s
natural resources. Sustainable commercial use of wildlife is one option.
The RIRDC Rangelands and Wildlife Subprogram is supporting trials of conservation-based enterprises and testing if the commercial value of wildlife can act as an incentive to landholders to restore on-farm habitat. RIRDC's role is to coordinate and manage the contracts for the projects which make up the trial.
The Strategic Plan for Trialling Sustainable Wildlife Enterprises, which preceded these proposals, set out guidelines for such trials to determine if they do actually provide an incentive to landholders to retain and restore habitat. The aim is to encourage greater use of wildlife species, which are adapted to the Australian environment and conditions, to improve the reliability and quality of supply of products and services, including tourism, while at the same time improving outcomes for wildlife.
The process gives effect to the recommendations of the 1998 Report of the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee into the Commercial Utilisation of Native Australian Wildlife.
This Implementation Plan identifies two trial sites at which RIRDC will provide support for research and development and information exchange. We anticipate that two or three other Wildlife Management Conservancies (WMCs) will be established in 2005 and, with continuing support from the National Landcare Program and other sources of funding, run for up to six years. Other trial sites will be established, depending on funding resources. In the longer term, WMCs will become selfsupporting, when external inputs are no longer available.
The process used to select the two trial sites began with the publication of the Sustainable Wildlife Enterprises (SWE) brochure early in 2004 (copy attached). It coincided with media coverage, including an article about SWE in Australian Farm Journal.
The key attributes of a potentially successful trial site seem to be enthusiastic landholders, who are sympathetic to the notion of wildlife conservation through commercial utilisation, and an existing administrative structure able to serve as the basis of the proposed Wildlife Management Conservancy.
The preferred trial areas encompass a range of potential and existing wildlife enterprises – some consumptive, others non-consumptive, such as tourism – which could be the main commercial component of the WMC.
One of the proposed trial sites is in the Barkindji Biosphere at Mildura on the Murray River. The other trial involves the Mitchell and District Landcare Association, located on the Maranoa River, in southwest Queensland.
In late 2004, both the Barkindji and Maranoa groups submitted project proposals to RIRDC to initiate conservation planning and enterprise development projects. Their proposals had the advantage of a close focus on wildlife management planning and resource assessment. Following consideration of the proposals by RIRDC Rangelands and Wildlife Systems Advisory Panel, and, with funding from the National Landcare Program, work began under contract in early 2005.
Proposals have been prepared for initial resource assessment, wildlife management and property planning activities and the SWE trials are ready to proceed at the Barkindji Biosphere at Mildura and with the Mitchell and District Landcare Association – Box Creek and Maranoa Landcare Groups.
Each of these groups has the necessary structures in place, the enthusiasm, and the industry connections for a promising outcome. Concurrently, further planning is proceeding for the supporting structures and for scientific, economic, and socio-cultural monitoring, based on best available research advice. The initiatives will be supported with marketing and promotion.
This implementation plan focuses on the early years of the trial, given that the first year for a project is likely to be the most expensive. In 2005, SWE program management in RIRDC is approaching other funding sources to obtain extra resources to contract complementary aspects of the Strategic and Implementation Plans.
Detailed costing and ongoing expenditure needs will depend on the priorities and aspirations of local members of the WMC. It is important that the projects implement adaptive management and respond to circumstances and opportunities as they arise. A local management committee needs flexibility to be able to respond to the needs of landholders and to fine-tune the project’s directions.
The two pioneering trials, described here, promise to provide an essential measure of the usefulness or otherwise of incentive and conservation-based enterprises as a means of restoring habitat and conserving wildlife on farms.
The RIRDC Rangelands and
Wildlife Systems Program will fund other smaller complimentary projects
from its core funds. These will begin testing the SWE concept on properties
on Kangaroo Island in the South Australia and in the Northern Territory.
They will focus on integrating tourism as a conservation-based rural enterprise.
Other potential trial sites under discussion, but subject to funding availability,
include the South Australian riverland, Carnarvon River in Western Australia
and the lower reaches of Lachlan River in New South Wales.
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