Learning Conservation: the role of conservation covenants in landscape redesign at Project Hindmarsh, Victoria

Abstract

Biodiversity decline continues apace across the Australian landscape with a pressing need to redesign land use to address this situation. The significance of private land increasingly is recognised for the protection and enhancement of biodiversity as landholders inevitably make decisions that affect environmental quality. Biodiversity conservation is as much a social process as a physical one. Conservation covenants are perpetual agreements under which landholders choose to conserve land voluntarily, primarily for conservation purposes. The role covenants might play in landscape-scale conservation was investigated in north-western Victoria. In-depth interviews with a range of participants were undertaken, with an emphasis on the role covenantors might play as social learning and cultural change agents. Analysis of these interviews offers useful perspectives for understanding socio-cultural dimensions of landscape change and exploring the differing values of production farmers and nature conservation landholders. Consideration is then given to approaches to engaging local production farmers in nature covenants and promoting communication between this group and the largely non-production conservationists who currently form the mainstay of conservation covenants.

Keywords:

• Biodiversity
• Conservation covenants
• learning communities
• post-production landscapes
• Wimmera-Mallee
• Australia

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Chris Williams, TfN (Victoria) for his time, ongoing help and input in the project and James Fitzsimons, DSE/Deakin University for preparing the covenant distribution map and offering useful perspectives on the subject matter. In particular, we thank all research project participants who were more than generous in providing the unique insights for the project. We also thank Judy Lambert and Sally Stephens for valuable advice on drafts and Chandra Jayasuriya for cartographic services.

Notes

1. However, there are indications of change. Recently (in November 2005), an Environmental Farmers’ Network was formed in Victoria because its founding members felt that the Victorian Farmers’ Federation continually prioritises development ahead of conservation (see www.environmentalfarmersnetwork.net.au). While this organisation is still at a very early stage, it could well represent an example of a new phase of ‘ecological modernisation’ in the rural setting (see Marsden 2004).