Can regional-scale conservation planning influence farm-scale actions?

Major sustainability challenges in agricultural landscapes include the loss of biodiversity, soil erosion from wind and water, and increasing rates of salinity. Other than relatively few exceptions such as the listing or enlargement of nature reserves and the establishment of large corridor plantings (e.g. biolinks in Australia), addressing these challenges generally occurs at the paddock scale through a range of natural resource management policy instruments such as government funded devolved grant and incentive schemes. These schemes typically also include a major in-kind landholder contribution. In Australia this may include schemes such as EnviroFund, BushTender and Landcare in addition to private industry and landholder funded initiatives. The scale of the paddock is generally the scale at which farmers are best placed to visualise, analyse and hence respond with appropriate management actions. Treating these challenges at such scales may also provide paddock scale production benefits (e.g. stock shelter, ecosystem services, wind breaks). Although decisions regarding on-ground actions are made at paddock scales, ecological restoration priorities such as increasing the extent and quality of native vegetation are often prioritised and planned at catchment scales. For example, catchment management authorities typically develop catchment action plans and related strategies to restore and enhance biodiversity, and these are expressed as quantitative regional targets. A 10% increase in native vegetation extent may be a typical objective for native vegetation restoration. As such there may be a disjuncture between regional imperatives and farm-scale actions. In some instances this is overcome by partially ‘scoring’ applications for conservation incentive payments by how well the application addresses regional conservation priorities. However, the scoring methods are relatively simplistic and can only be applied when delivering structured incentive programs. They have limited impact when farmers fund their own conservation actions, which based on earlier research in Australia represents a substantial portion of on-ground conservation activities. We worked with staff from the Wimmera Catchment Management Authority to develop hypothetical maps of their regional revegetation priorities using spatial multi-criteria assessment (MCA) methodologies. The outcomes from the MCA methodology were then presented to key farmers in the Wimmera region of Western Victoria via an interactive workshop, and an additional MCA elicitation process where farmers were asked to weight alternative paddock-scale land use options. Potential actions focused on revegetation activities to mitigate wind erosion and salinity, to provide shelter for stock and for aesthetics. Farmer land use priorities were elicited with and without access to maps of CMA-based regional conservation priorities. Results from this component of the research were elicited via entry and exit interviews, in addition to quantitative data derived using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) via the farmer MCA workshop. Results highlight that production imperatives drive farmer-led conservation actions and that regional conservation priorities have only limited impact on actions. In addition, results have shown the limitations of applying MCA approaches such as AHP at the scale of the enterprise, rather than the region, owing to interactions between competing land use options.