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Queensland farmers invited to help protect biodiversity
CSIRO researchers and Terrain Natural Resource management invite landholders to a workshop in Mission Beach in north Queensland on Saturday, 19 April, to participate in a research study looking at the use of financial incentives for incorporating revegetation and habitat protection into property management plans.
Auctions - also known as competitive tenders - are a potential new method for allocating conservation funds among landholders.
The research project aims to adapt these tenders so they can be used for conservation at the landscape scale.
'With the help and participation of farmers and other landholders, we can hopefully design tender processes which are more attractive to them and which also offer better protection to the ecosystems upon which the longer term sustainability of their properties and region relies,' said Dr Andrew Reeson of CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems.
'For example, for large species like the cassowary, it is important to connect conservation areas across the landscape, rather than conserving isolated pockets of habitat.
'This is made all the more important by climate change, which is predicted to force many species to adjust their range by moving across landscapes.'
CSIRO's research is utilising new advances in competitive tender processes and computer programs that will improve coordination issues, but they need the assistance and participation of landholders to ensure that it is relevant in the real world.
'The workshop will allow our researchers to test a novel form of competitive tender, while landholders will benefit by learning about auctions and how these new methods could apply to them in the future,' Dr Reeson said.
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