How Healthy is our Catchment? Management Targets

Biodiversity

Enterprise Based Conservation

Management Target:
An ongoing program is established that allows landholders to incorporate land managed for conservation as an alternative land use and part of a viable enterprise, within 2 years of Blueprint approval.

What is ‘Enterprise Based Conservation’?

Enterprise Based Conservation is designed to develop conservation land use as a competing land use within the Western Catchment. The Brewarrina Regional Vegetation Committee originally developed the concept. The program will make payments to landholders for the ‘ecological services’ they are providing to the community at large when they put part of their land under voluntary conservation management. The payments must be competitive with the returns from other local land uses such as grazing. This program will build on the pilot program currently operated by WEST2000 Plus, the major difference will be that the WCMA program will be based on long term agreements rather than the 5 year conservation agreements under WEST2000 Plus.

What will it achieve?

The program is aiming to achieve a representative area of all land types/vegetation communities across the Western Catchment being managed as commercial conservation enterprises to achieve the 12% target for conservation. The Enterprise Based Conservation process will target voluntary ‘on-property’ conservation’ agreements, with a Western Conservation Trust structure developed to manage the long-term generation of funds to pay for the environmental services delivered.