SEO5 Designing Incentives for Biodiversity Targets

Project Title: Designing Incentives for Achieving Biodiveristy Targets in the Burdekin Dry Tropics NRM Region with specific emphasis on the Bowen Broken and Bogie River subcatchments

Project Collaborators: River Consulting Pty Ltd, CSIRO &  ACTFR

Description: The Bowen, Broken and Bogie river catchments contain eleven highly significant areas of remnant vegetation within the Northern Brigalow Belt as well as several wetland areas that meet the criteria for Wetlands of National Significance. These areas are not formally protected and maintenance of their ecological integrity thus relies on on-farm conservation. The areas are part of the State's leasehold estate and thus part of working cattle stations. Grazing enterprises are under various pressures to intensity production, which poses a major threat to biodiversity conservation. Farm debt has been identified as a key driver of intensification.

The project will be working with landholders in the Bowen, Broken and Bogie river catchments to develop incentives focused on achieving biodiversity conservation outcomes.

The landholders in these sub-catchments stood out (on the basis of a 2003 landholder survey) from other regions within the Burdekin Dry Tropics Region as being interested in innovative incentives and open to novel approaches, including debt-for-conservation-swaps.

Project Service Provider: Romy Greiner, River Consulting Pty Ltd

Funding: $192,532

Project Identification Number: BC002

For more information contact Kate Masters, kate.masters@bdtnrm.org.au