George Wilson

Sharing Skippy: how can landholders be involved in kangaroo production in Australia?

For 2 decades, calls for Australian rangeland landholders to expand their reliance on the abundant species of native kangaroos and decrease their reliance on introduced stock have been made. These calls have received recent impetus from the challenge of climate change. Arguments for landholder involvement in kangaroo production include reduced greenhouse gas emissions, better management of total grazing pressure, reduced land degradation, improved vegetation and biodiversity outcomes, and greater valuation of kangaroos by landholders. However, there is little understanding of how landholders could be involved in kangaroo harvest and production, and there is a widespread misconception that this would include domestication, fencing, mustering and trucking. This paper reviews the options for landholder involvement in managing and harvesting wild kangaroos, and assesses the possible benefits and feasibility of such options. We conclude that collaboration among landholders, as well as between landholders and harvesters, forms the basis of any preferred option, and set out a proposed operating model based on the formation of a kangaroo management, processing and marketing co-operative.

Support for Indigenous wildlife management in Australia to enable sustainable use.

Wildlife managers could play a greater role in ensuring that Indigenous wildlife harvesting is sustainable and helping to address community health and employment challenges facing Indigenous Australians in remote and rural areas. Wildlife managers need to listen more to what Indigenous people say they want from their country and for their people, such as increased game to supplement their diet and security for totemic species, to maintain culture. In pre-colonial Australia, adherence to customary law maintained wildlife species Indigenous Australians wanted. Today the long-term sustainability of Indigenous wildlife harvesting is threatened. Where Indigenous communities lack leadership and other social problems exist, their capacity to apply customary land-and sea-management practices and to operate cultural constraints on wildlife use is reduced. The Indigenous right to hunt should coexist with responsible management. Improved wildlife management that combines science and traditional knowledge has implications for Indigenous people worldwide. Western science can support Indigenous passion for caring for the land. It can draw on traditional Indigenous practice and, through reciprocal learning, help reinstate Indigenous law and culture in communities. In Australia, wildlife managers could be more engaged in supporting Indigenous Australians in activities such as surveying populations and estimating sustainable yields, identifying refuge areas, maximising habitat diversity, controlling weeds and feral animals, and exchanging information across regions. Although support for Indigenous land and wildlife management has risen in recent years, it remains a minor component of current Australian Government resource allocation for addressing Indigenous need. Wildlife management could be a stronger focus in education, training and employment programs. Proactive wildlife management conforms to both the western concept of conserving biodiversity and Indigenous wildlife management; it can support sustainable harvesting, provide employment and income, create learning and training opportunities and improve Indigenous health. If greater expenditure were directed to Indigenous wildlife management, wildlife managers, especially Indigenous wildlife managers, could become more engaged in cultural initiatives across traditional and scientific practices and so contribute to programs that address the health and motivational challenges facing Indigenous communities.

Case Studies on Food Production, Policy and Trade

The purpose of this book is to critically examine food security issues in Australia, a country that is often assumed to be food secure. Australia, although a substantial producer of agricultural products, currently has many citizens suffering food insecurity (Temple 2008) and a growing number with diet-related health problems (AIHW 2010). Governments see diet issues as important social and economic problems because: Many diet-related chronic diseases … are the major cause of death and disability among Australians. Poor nutrition is responsible for around 16% of the total burden of disease and is implicated in more than 56% of all deaths in Australia (NHMRC 2011a p7). In addition to health-related food insecurities, a range of other pressures impact increasingly on the cost of food as well as its production. For example, globalization exposes food supply systems in Australia to rising resource prices as world demand increases. Australia’s agricultural production is not immune to the negative aspects of climate change. Indeed Garnaut maintains that Australian agricultural and resource industries are likely to be affected profoundly by climate change and the global response to it (Garnaut 2010 p9). Economic and population growth, changing attitudes to biodiversity conservation, and the pressure of climate change on native biodiversity (Lindenmayer et al. 2010), also have implications for food security by increasing competition for resources, such as land and water (Alston and Whittenbury 2011; Carey et al. 2011). Consequently, the food production status of Australia will change and food security, including dietary issues, is likely to become increasingly important for Australians. In order to contextualize Australia’s food security challenges, and how a more sustainable, resilient and equitable food system might be created, we need an appreciation of global food security issues.

Environmental Management Systems as Adaptive Natural Resource Management: Case Studies from Agriculture

There are strong parallels between Environmental Management Systems (EMS) and Adaptive Management (AM); both focus on a cycle of continuous improvement through planning, doing, checking and acting and they both enable the modification of management practices based on monitoring. AM is a science-based structure for natural resource management. The strength of AM is that it brings a scientific approach to the management of complex biological, ecological, economical and social processes and that is what agriculture is. EMS can be based on an international standard. A manager using EMS identifies likely environmental impacts and legal responsibilities and implements and reviews changes and improvements in a structured way. EMS was developed so it could be used in all business sectors. The complexity of issues facing agricultural managers can provide a challenge to the application of EMS within that sector, however at the same time the process involved in developing an EMS can assist greatly in reducing and clarifying the complexity. An understanding and application of AM can also assist the application of EMS in agriculture. Importantly, in both AM and EMS the modifications are continual and can be determined mid-course. This chapter draws on an analysis of a group of 17 agricultural EMS case studies as examples of adaptive management in an industry that uses natural resources. Adaptive Management and Environmental Management Systems Why Introduce EMS in a Book on Adaptive Management? Chapter 2 describes the components of adaptive management (AM), and provides a framework and a set of operational methods for application to complex natural Chapter 12 Environmental Management Systems as Adaptive Natural Resource Management: Case Studies from Agriculture George Wilson, Melanie Edwards, and Genevieve Carruthers G. Wilson and M. Edwards Australian Wildlife Services, Canberra, ACT G. Carruthers NSW Department of Primary Industry, Wollongbar, NSW C. Allan and G.H. Stankey (eds.), Adaptive Environmental Management: 209 A Practitioner’s Guide,