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An important institution for regional resource governance is civic engagement in local affairs, including resource use issues. Local civic engagement has traditionally been structured around local government and, more recently, to catchment-based decision-making bodies. If citizens are to participate in regional resource management in ways that are meaningful to them, it is important that both the landscape units being discussed and the jurisdictional boundaries are meaningful. We have been examining how boundaries for resource management regions might be identified. Three considerations are believed to be important if regional resource management is to be meaningful to the citizens involved. Firstly, that the regional boundaries maximise the areal proportion of the region that residents consider to be part of their 'community', which should lead to greater commitment to civic engagement in resource management. Secondly, that the character of the landscape units within the region possess a high degree of homogeneity, reflecting greater coincidence of interest among the inhabitants of the region. The third consideration is a hierarchical multi-scaling capacity to deal with externalities of resource use. The approach was tested through identification of a series of nested 'eco-civic' resource management regions for north-eastern New South Wales in Australia. The results delineate resource governance regions that nest at local to regional scales for integrated natural resource management. Such 'eco-civic' regions demonstrate a better spatial representation of social and ecological characteristics than existing regional frameworks. Crown

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The improvement of the sustainability of meat and wool production in the high rainfall temperate zone of Australia depends, in part, on the extension of grazing management approaches to maintain a desirable species composition. A survey of producers in this zone was undertaken to describe some of the factors relevant to the adoption of grazing management practices. It was found that there is widespread concern among producers about pasture decline. Weeds and weed control appear to play an important role in producers’ perceptions of the problem and appropriate remedial action. Producers do not seem to doubt that grazing management might be used to maintain a desirable species composition, but substantial numbers believe that other influences, such as drought, may over-ride the capacity of grazing management to maintain a desirable species composition. The implications of these findings for the extension of grazing management practices to producers, are discussed.

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River catchments have been the dominant form of regionalisation for natural-resource management in many countries since the 1980s. Local governments play a considerable role in planning with ever-increasing responsibilities for sustainable environmental management, planning and development controls. There has also been an increasing emphasis on community participation in resource management, which emphasises the need to re-examine the requirements for spatial definition of resource governance regions. This paper proposes three principles. First, the nature and reach of environmental externalities of resource use should determine the size and nesting of resource management regions. Second, the boundaries of resource governance regions should enclose areas of greatest interest and importance to local residents. Third, the biophysical characteristics of a resource governance region should be as homogenous as possible, which provides resource planning and management efficiencies. The paper describes a range of concepts and empirical techniques used to apply these principles to the derivation of a resource governance regionalisation of the State of New South Wales, Australia.