Natural Resource Management Facilitator Network
Australian Government, March 2005
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Julie Woodroffe, a board member of the Northern Rivers Catchment Management Authority says, “A project this size does not happen overnight. It has taken ten years to get to a level to achieve this sort of thing”.
The project has involved bioregional planning, managed by the Northern Rivers Catchment Management Authority, with a Steering Committee consisting of representatives from the NRCMA, the New South Wales Department of Environment and Conservation, Natural Resource Management South East Queensland (now SEQ Catchments), the community and the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage.
First up, a major regional information gathering exercise was undertaken to help in setting priorities and deciding where to target funds to protect biodiversity. Data was collected using the Biodiversity Forecasting Tool Geographic Information System (GIS), a computer program developed by the New South Wales Department of Environment’s GIS Research and Development Unit in Armidale. The material was analysed by the program to:
- help decide on the best way to conserve the remaining high conservation vegetation types in the region not adequately represented or protected in national parks or equivalent reserves; and
- identify ecosystems that could be restored, or rehabilitated, at a reasonable cost and effort.
Many of the ecosystems identified by the analysis are on private land, or crown land under threat from urban development, agriculture or logging.
A further landscape level assessment was undertaken to ensure action was targeted at areas most heavily cleared and under the greatest level of threat.
There are two main areas of activity for The Border Ranges Cross Regional Biodiversity Project. One is an Integrated Rainforest Recovery Program for the Border Ranges north and south hotspot. This encompasses both New South Wales and Queensland and will involve developing and implementing a multi-species rainforest recovery plan. The other focus will be on protecting high conservation value ecosystems and threatened species habitats in the upper Northern Rivers Catchment Management Authority region, including the Tweed, Brunswick, Richmond and Upper Clarence catchments in New South Wales.
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