A conservation auction for landscape linkage in the southern Desert Uplands, Queensland
Jill Windle A E , John Rolfe B , Juliana McCosker C and Andrea Lingard DA Centre for Environmental Management, CQUniversity, Bruce Highway, Rockhampton, Qld 4702, Australia.
B Faculty of Business and Informatics, CQUniversity, Bruce Highway, Rockhampton, Qld 4702, Australia.
C Queensland Environmental Protection Agency, PO Box 906, Emerald, Qld 4720, Australia.
D Desert Uplands Committee, PO Box 310, Barcaldine, Qld 4725, Australia.
E Corresponding author. Email: j.windle@cqu.edu.au
The Rangeland Journal 31(1) 127-135 https://doi.org/10.1071/RJ08042
Submitted: 9 September 2008 Accepted: 8 December 2008 Published: 26 March 2009
Abstract
Conservation auctions are a type of market-based instrument (MBI) that can achieve a more cost-efficient allocation of public funds than approaches such as devolved grants. In this paper, the conduct of a multiple round conservation auction to improve biodiversity management in a rangelands area is outlined. The auction was designed to develop a wildlife corridor across the southern Desert Uplands bioregion in Queensland and to improve management of rangelands areas.
The conservation auction incorporated two important new design features. First, there was a need to promote landholder cooperation so that proposed areas for better land management were aligned and connected across the region. The second innovative design feature was to hold multiple bidding (three) rounds, which differs from the standard application of a single bidding round.
The auction outcomes resulted in conservation contracts covering 85 000 ha of remnant vegetation awarded at an average cost of $2* per hectare per annum. Although complete landscape connectivity across the Desert Uplands was not achieved, over 70% of the successful bids, accounting for over 62 000 ha (77% of the total bid area), were part of a group that formed a distinct corridor or landscape linkage with only single or part-property gaps. The results also indicate that multiple bidding rounds improved auction efficiency (for the government), although there was little improvement in connectivity. Sixty-six percent more environmental benefit units could be purchased for the given budget of $350 000 between rounds one and three.
Additional keywords: biodiversity, market based-instruments, vegetation corridors.
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*All values are in Australian dollars throughout the paper.
1Full details of how each category was assessed are provided in Rolfe et al. (2006).
2This would include new landowners who may have bought properties that had been run down and were in poor condition.
3A 100-m transect was used to measure ground cover by a point intercept method and five 0.25 × 0.25 m quadrats were cut to dry weigh and establish the pasture biomass.
