CQU economists Dr Jill Windle (Centre for Environmental Management) and Associate Professor John Rolfe (Faculty of Business and Informatics) have helped design a biodiversity auction which marks a new approach to land management.

The new scheme - the Biodiversity Tender (a single round auction) was developed in partnership with CQU, the Fitzroy Basin Association (FBA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The recent trial in the Isaac/Connors and Mackenzie catchments in the Fitzroy Basin has been a great success.

The Biodiversity Tender is a new type of incentive scheme designed to provide more cost effective environmental outcomes while ensuring landholders are provided with the right incentive to help protect biodiversity on private land.

In the competitive tender, each applicant was asked to meet a required management condition (maintaining minimum pasture biomass levels), but it was up to them to decide how they do that.

Each applicant put in a bid which represented the cost to them of meeting the management condition.

Each bid was then assessed on the cost and on the environmental outcome it provides (using a specifically designed metric). The bids that represent the best value for money were then accepted until the budget limit had been reached.

The scheme really is a win win – on the one hand it rewards landholders for doing the right thing and on the other it uses public funding in a more cost effective way.

Photo: The bid assessment team (left to right) John Compton (Herron Todd White – independent scrutineer); Kristy Dalton (FBA); Katie Elder (FBA); Jill Windle (CQU); John Rolfe (CQU); Juliana McCosker (EPA); Ruth Anderson (FBA).