The western edge of the Sydney basin in Australia has been one of the major sources of fruit and vegetables for the Sydney markets. A rapid expansion of urban development in this region has caused a significant reduction in the number of small farms and market gardens. Urban and peri-urban agriculture in the region also provides an important buffer between urban development and the neighbouring Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. The decline in urban agriculture can be attributed to various causes including urban expansion and economies of scale. This paper presents an overview of a fouryear project that explored options for supporting these vulnerable farming communities both in terms of the regulatory factors and economic and environmental sustainability. The role of agri-industries as landscape buffers to the neighbouring World Heritage Area was investigated in relation to resilience, communities of practice, and ecosystem services. The study developed tools, in conjunction with targeted representative landholders, that can assist in enhancing the economic and environmental resilience of these agri-industries. These tools included an integrated biosystem approach to waste using organic waste conversion, and the use of landscape function analysis to monitor across farms to help address erosion, loss of nutrients and inefficient water management.
Effective management of large protected conservation areas is challenged by political, institutional and environmental complexity and inconsistency. Knowledge generation and its uptake into management are crucial to address these challenges. We reflect on practice at the interface between science and management of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area (GBMWHA), which covers approximately 1 million hectares west of Sydney, Australia. Multiple government agencies and other stakeholders are involved in its management, and decision-making is confounded by numerous plans of management and competing values and goals, reflecting the different objectives and responsibilities of stakeholders. To highlight the complexities of the decision-making process for this large area, we draw on the outcomes of a recent collaborative research project and focus on fire regimes and wild-dog control as examples of how existing knowledge is integrated into management. The collaborative research project achieved the objectives of collating and synthesizing biological data for the region; however, transfer of the project's outcomes to management has proved problematic. Reasons attributed to this include lack of clearly defined management objectives to guide research directions and uptake, and scientific information not being made more understandable and accessible. A key role of a local bridging organisation (e.g., the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute) in linking science and management is ensuring that research results with management significance can be effectively transmitted to agencies and that outcomes are explained for nonspecialists as well as more widely distributed. We conclude that improved links between science, policy, and management within an adaptive learning-by-doing framework for the GBMWHA would assist the usefulness and uptake of future research.
This paper analyses the complex social and political dynamics of feral horse management policy in Guy Fawkes River National Park, NSW, and also suggests ways in which it might be made more effective. Cultural, historical and ecological dimensions of horse management are examined through an analysis of the government-led decision-making process, since an aerial cull of horses in October 2000. The paper focuses on challenges of effective community involvement when top-down management processes (e.g., centralized decision-making by government) are imposed. A key question addressed in this paper is who should be the final arbiter and by what process should decisions be made? The paper shows that it is the processes of social interaction in decision-making that determine substantive outcomes, rather than technical scientific details about ecology or biology. Several weaknesses in decisionmaking were identified. First, inadequacy of community consultation workshops for achieving genuine stakeholder input and satisfaction. Second was a well-intentioned public consultation that resulted in management policy being oversold in support of special interest groups. Third was over-reliance on traditional science which proved ineffective in resolving this value-laden conflict. Improvements in decision-making and management policy can come from using a "policy oriented" approach that brings a systematic focus on complex, interactive ecological, social, political and economic dimensions. Recommendations to improve the decision-making process are offered, including alternative means for community consultation, better integration of science with values, and keeping decision-making power localised (and strategies for doing so). It can be reasonably expected that these recommendations can improve management policy, with a minimum of additional resources.
South-east Australia has a complex predator assemblage which has historically been vulnerable to introduced species. This is the first Australian field study to analyse samples from members of the families Canidae, Dasyuridae, Strigidae, and Varanidae to describe the diet and diet overlap between these predators. Samples were collected opportunistically and hair and bone analysis was used to identify the content of samples. Wild dogs (Canis lupus) and lace monitors (Varanus varius) predominantly consumed large mammalian prey, which contributed to the high level of diet overlap (O jk = 0.79) between these two species. Foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and spotted-tailed quolls (Dasyurus maculatus) also had a high level of diet overlap (O jk = 0.76), a result of their diets containing a high proportion of medium-sized mammals. The diet of wild dogs and foxes showed moderate overlap (O jk = 0.59), and foxes were more likely to prey on species within the critical weight range than on macropods, which made up a high proportion of the diet of wild dogs. These data confirm that significant diet overlap can occur between predators from different taxonomic classes and further investigation of potential competition will be important to ongoing management.
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