National Forum

Addressing nature conservation in the rangelands: EMU case study - Landholders designing with nature: an approach to off-reserve conservation in the Gascoyne-Murchison Strategy area
Ken Tinley and Dr Hugh Pringle
Conservation and Land Management/ Agriculture Western Australia
Ecosystem Management Unit ("EMU") of the Regional Environmental Management Programme, Gascoyne-Murchison Strategy.
Working with Landholders for Conservation Outcomes
11.15-11.30am, Thursday, 22 March 2001

A core objective of the Regional Environmental Management Programme (REMP) of the Gascoyne-Murchison Strategy (GMS) is to complement the world-class reserve system being developed through the Strategy with off-reserve conservation. The project was initiated along traditional lines: data would be collated and assessed, providing locations of conservation significance, whose future management would be negotiated with landholders. This traditional "top-down" approach is scientifically rigorous. Unfortunately it lacks one critical ingredient: people on the land.

Problems in collating data and the tight NHT time-lines led to serendipity. Instead of focussing on regional priorities alone, the Regional Environmental Management Programme developed a complementary pilot project to help landholders implement Ecologically Sustainable Pastoral Management (ESPM) on their sheep and cattle stations based on capturing their local expert knowledge. This is a less traditional, "grassroots" approach to nature conservation. The results have been spectacular in terms of the enthusiasm generated amongst landholders. Sound relationships have been established with landholders and their industry group, making the task of securing conservation management of identified off-reserve priorities easier.

The Regional Environment Management Programme will continue to work with landholders to "green the matrix". Employing further the approach to address identified conservation priorities in the region, the same approach will be used with previous landholders on lands acquired for the reserve system to capture their local knowledge.

The grassroots activity requires background research into issues such as the presence of priority flora, fauna and habitats, landscape junction areas (landscape rich areas), and the management history of stations. Adopting an inverted form of expert questioning, specific questions are asked and the landholders (the whole family is desirable) map salient features on clear overlays on a coloured land system map of their station. The experts are "on tap", not "on top".

The approach breaks the ice quickly. Landholders realise that this can be a genuinely equal partnership and that the quality of the process depends on their knowledge and commitment to the process. Equal partnerships breed trust and understanding, prerequisites for progress in multiple land use.

Conservation issues are not addressed in isolation from the human context in which they exist. A holistic approach is adopted, considering pastoral values, more efficient use of landscape patterns and processes (catena approach) and infrastructure (Total Grazing Management), and the likely economic consequences of any changes.

The outcome of the joint effort is the development of simple monitoring techniques to assess the relationship between landscapes and pastoral management: initiating intimate dialogue between landholders and their landscapes. Landholders are also helped to implement restoration plans and assess the outcomes from changes to management. The result is the formalising and continuity to an action learning process that landholders have been using for many decades.

A closely allied project in the Regional Environmental Management Programme uses the Ecosystem Management Unit process to develop formal Environmental Management Systems on station and an accreditation system. This will help progressive landholders demonstrate their environmental credentials. From there they can launch "environmentally friendly" marketing strategies.