For the latest news on this project, check out the monthly Trial newsletters and the newly-formed Sustainable Wildlife Enterprises website
UNSW's FATE Program is working with the Barrier Area Rangecare Group (BARG), a group of about 25-30 landholders north of Broken Hill, on a rangeland sustainability trial involving kangaroo management. The trial aims to develop a role for BARG in the kangaroo harvest process that is beneficial to landholders, shooters and processors and helps to achieve BARG's rangeland management goals relating to control of total grazing pressure.
FATE believes that the missing element in kangaroo management in NSW is landholder engagement and this is largely responsible for the failure of kangaroo harvesting to create conservation incentives (see FATE and Kangaroos). FATE's aim with this trial is to explore ways in which landholders can be empowered to participate more actively in kangaroo management through greater flexibility in decision-making, increased ability to collaborate across property boundaries (reflecting the landscape-scale movements of kangaroos) and enhanced capacity to negotiate an economically valued role for themselves in the kangaroo industry.
The trial steering committee, consisting of BARG landholders, FATE researchers, local kangaroo harvesters and Western Catchment Management Authority representatives, has been holding negotiations with kangaroo processors as well as the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC), which oversees the kangaroo harvest in NSW. Negotiations with processors have been accelerating in recent months, with landholders, harvesters and processors realising the mutual advantages for consistency of kangaroo supply and meat quality that may arise from secure arrangements between a group of properties and a single processor.
Progress with DECC has been slower, as, despite the specific aim of the NSW Kangaroo Management Plan to facilitate adaptive management trials, DECC and BARG/FATE are yet to agree on exactly what kind of arrangements might be trialed. FATE and BARG have identified a lack of security over annual harvest quotas (with landholders limited to tags with a 4-month expiry) and the requirement to obtain property-specific harvest tags (which cannot be transferred to neighbouring properties even if the kangaroos move) as the major barriers to a group of landholders working together and entering into supply deals with processors. FATE and BARG are continuing to negotiate with DECC on ways to trial alternative arrangements which might alleviate these barriers to doing business.
For further information on this trial, check out:
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Or contact:
Peter Ampt
FATE Program Manager
Ph: (02) 9385 5677
Fax: (02) 9385 5710
p.ampt@unsw.edu.au
Alex Baumber
FATE Project Officer
Ph: (02) 9385 4603
Fax: (02) 9385 5710
a.baumber@unsw.edu.au
Katrina Hannigan
Local Research Officer (Western CMA)
Ph: (08) 8082 5204
Fax (08) 8087 2314
katrina.hannigan@cma.nsw.gov.au
The trial is being supported by funding from the Rangelands and Wildlife Program of the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC) and assistance from the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change and the Western Catchment Management Authority. Funding is for 3 years from July 2006 to June 2009. In July 2006, Katrina Hannigan commenced the role of Local Project Coordinator and Research Officer, funded by RIRDC and based within the Western CMA.
Last Updated 29 February 2008
