Preferred presentation format: Poster

Affiliation(s): Department of Primary Industries, Victoria.

Title: Mr Greg Day Position: Environmental monitoring officer Organisation: Department of Primary Industries, Victoria Contact email: Greg.Day@dpi.vic.gov.au Contact phone: (03) 5450 9540

Keywords: Biodiversity, Habitat, Wetland, Protect, Enhance, Community engagement.

The Loddon Murray region of Victoria is an important agricultural region that has degraded areas mainly caused by shallow watertables and salinity. The region possesses important environmental features and biological diversity.

The environment team, based at Kerang, works to promote the protection and enhancement of these environmental features. Our work is divided into two main focus areas, habitat management and wetland management. The way we operate can be described as a community engagement approach. One part of this approach is to provide information to the community, but other important elements are to actively seek their opinion and involve them in decision-making and actions.

We are integrated with other extension areas in the region, and with other local agencies so that multiple benefits for both sustainable production and for the environment can be achieved.

With habitat management, staff are involved in environmental protection or enhancement activities with the community, providing advice, support, equipment, and often labour. This contact is used to explain how these activities will contribute to improving biodiversity, and to provide information about how the most beneficial outcomes can be achieved.

With wetland management, community and agency based steering committees drive the process. Information about the wetlands is gathered from the local community to utilise their intimate understanding of the landscape. The department engages experts who use this information and other relevant data to determine what is happening at the wetland sites. The results of this process are fed back to the community, who are then involved with prioritising management directions for the most beneficial outcomes.

Key learning points:

• How is the community engagement model being used in natural resource management
• What benefits come from fully integrated steering committees (agency & community)
• The value of collaborating with our local community