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Bushtender Assessments Begin In GippslandBushTender offers landholders the opportunity to receive some economic return for the provision of this service By DNRE - 29th October 2002 - Back to News The BushTender Trial site assessments have begun in Gippsland, with three BushTender Project Officers being appointed in the region by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment (NRE).
The new officers are Bruce Atkin, who will cover the Trafalgar trial area, Nathan Oliver, who will be working in the Buchan/Snowy River area and Sheri MacFarlane, who will be working with landholders in the Bairnsdale area.
Bruce said that the BushTender trial is about recognising the fact that landowners managing native vegetation beyond current obligations are providing a service to the rest of the community, a biodiversity service.
"BushTender offers landholders the opportunity to receive some economic return for the provision of this service and is a way of encouraging landholders to better manage bush on their property," he said.
"The landowner registers an expression of interest through the NRE Customer Service Centre (ph: 136 186), then the Field Officer goes out to the property and assesses the type and quality of the vegetation. It’s quite a detailed assessment, depending on the size of the bush, the quality and so on. Throughout the process, every effort is made to remain objective and to provide each applicant with equal opportunity."
"Once we’ve done the quality assessment, we talk with the landholder about what sort of management actions would be appropriate and what they are prepared to do. Having reached an agreement, we go away and write up the proposal and determine the habitat service score that is a measure of the agreed landholder commitments that maintain or improve the quality or extent of the native vegetation."
"The draft management plan is sent back to the landowner and they put in a sealed bid, like a tender, which states how much money they require to manage the vegetation for the agreed period. It’s basically up to them to work out how much they want to tender for. They might be going to fence the vegetation off, they might be prepared for example, to forego the right to remove timber. They have to bear in mind that the tendering process is competitive. Given that there’s a limited amount of money available, the successful tenderers will be the people offering the best value for money, in other words, the best biodiversity service for the least dollars."
Nathan Oliver recently worked for NRE on the Hinterland Project and has experience as a Forest Research Officer. Nathan said he hoped to encourage landholders in the Buchan-Snowy region of East Gippsland region to participate in the Bush Tender Trial.
"This program provides the benefit of conserving and increasing the ecological values of an area through appropriate land use as well as offering landholders the opportunity to be financially rewarded for costs incurred," he said.
"Hopefully by the end of the project, an increased number of landholders will view remnant patches of vegetation on their property as more of an asset than a liability."
Sheri Macfarlane spent six months working for NRE in Ballarat as a Flora and Fauna Officer, involved in various projects before she was offered this position as BushTender Project Officer.
"I have had a very long interest in conservation and biodiversity management, having been raised on a large farm in the Mallee. My dad had a keen interest in the environment, which I guess rubbed off on me," Sheri said.
"I am so excited to be involved in the BushTender Trial. It is fantastic to see that conservation on private land is now being acknowledged as not being the sole responsibility of farmers. It also gives landholders the opportunity to contribute their knowledge and experience of the land to the management process and offers them the chance to obtain some financial assistance to follow through on that. I would love to see this concept go Australia-wide and ultimately incorporate much wider issues than just biodiversity conservation."
Source: http://gippsland.com/ Published by: news@gippsland.com
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