Press Release - January 2 2007

There is over a million hectares of native vegetation remaining on private land in Victoria. Much of it is of high conservation significance for native flora and fauna and is important for salinity control, water quality, land protection, greenhouse and landscape reasons.

The management of native vegetation depends on the already substantial efforts of private landholders who are supported by a range of incentive and extension schemes. The BushTender auction-based approach is a new tool to target priority native vegetation and increase the level of landholder participation in conservation. Under the BushTender approach, landholders competitively tender for contracts to better protect and improve their native vegetation.

Corangamite Catchment Management Authority (CCMA) recognized the importance of competitive auctions for allocating public funds for biodiversity outcomes on private land and the need to undertake a systematic approach to their implementation. The CMA contracted Spatial Vision to develop their Conservation Tender Management System based on the BushTender approach, funded by the Australian Government's Natural Heritage Trust.

The Conservation Tender Management System was designed to assist the CMA in managing the tender process to protect native vegetation on the Victorian Volcanic Plain Bioregion. The system provides tools to support the management of the tender process from beginning to end including registration, assessment and bidding. Once the auction is complete, the system maintains a record of landholder contracts and their on-going reporting requirements.

The Conservation Tender Management System proved to be successful and is being used by a neighbouring CMA in tenders for salinity control and Red-tail Black Cockatoo habitat.

The Department of Sustainability & Environment (DSE) is now testing the use of the Conservation Tender Management System to run statewide tender processes for protecting native vegetation across a range of bioregions. Spatial Vision has recently completed a series of enhancements to the system to enable it cater for a broad range of tender types and their associated assessment processes.

Further information on BushTenders can be found on the DSE website: www.dse.vic.gov.au/nativevegetation.
For further information, please contact:

Scott Manley
Ph: (03) 9691 3000
email info@spatialvision.com.au

Copyright © Spatial Vision, Tuesday, 2-January-2007