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Session 2 — Industry and community NRM

Chair: Paul Novelly

Is Heffernan right? What is the real potential for pastoral and agricultural development in North Australia? Neil MacDonald, Robyn Cowley and Steve Petty

With extended droughts in the south and projections for worse to come under climate change, the focus of Australian agriculture has clearly turned to the tropical north. The practical implications of this are already being seen, with a major increase in the value of farms and pastoral properties over the last few years and in the number of development applications submitted.

This paper sets out to look critically at the real potential for northern development, particularly in the pastoral area. This assessment will be based on the findings of the TS-CRC project “Developing Grazing Management Tools to Improve Savanna Condition”, which set out to extend our capability to objectively estimate safe carrying capacity, and also on the Pigeonhole Project which looked at alternative models of intensification.

Fire management: Jeremy Russell-Smith

Before considering future challenges facing fire management and associated applied research issues across the tropical savannas, it is useful to consider the achievements of the Tropical Savannas CRC and its partners over the past decade or so. These have been substantial. An early challenge was to develop a coordinated approach to fire management research across the north that was inclusive of and relevant to all major extensive landholders, the rural fire agencies and fire researchers.

Monitoring and managing biodiversity John Woinarski, Alaric Fisher and Alex Kutt

There has been a substantial savanna biodiversity program, in various guises, for the lifetime of two iterations of the Tropical Savannas CRC.

The general objectives of this program have been to increase our basic knowledge of the distribution and conservation status of savanna biota; to investigate the impacts of a range of land management regimes on biodiversity; to better incorporate consideration of biodiversity conservation into land management planning and decision-making; to develop robust techniques for assessing and monitoring biodiversity ‘health’; and to provide information about biodiversity in useful forms to a wide array of land managers and other stakeholders.

Talking turkey about future conservation directions: how to cater for dispersive species in a dynamic landscape: Mark Ziembicki

Many birds of Australia’s arid and monsoonal regions are characterised by dispersive or nomadic movements and large population fluctuations in response to variable climatic conditions. These characteristics, compounded by our generally limited knowledge of bird movements and population dynamics, complicate population monitoring and conservation for such species. Indeed, the protection of dispersive fauna in general is regarded as one of the greatest challenges for conservation biology because conventional conservation practices and representative reservation cannot adequately cater for such species.

This presentation discusses these issues in light of a study that used the Australian Bustard as a ‘model’ for developing techniques to monitor and predict population fluctuations and dispersive movement patterns over broad spatial and temporal scales.