The legal aspects of connectivity conservation: case studies

This publication follows on from Volume I in the series on legal aspects of connectivity conservation. It provides five case studies that continue to define and develop connectivity conservation law for supporting protected areas and for providing opportunities to address climate change as part of biodiversity conservation agendas. Volumes I and II together aim to advance conceptual thinking and legal understanding about important law and policy tools and options for supporting the connectivity of protected area systems. The legal research and analyses reflected in these papers span international, regional, national and local levels. A range of legal instruments existing in most national legal systems, from conservation and sustainable use laws to land use planning, development control, voluntary conservation and economic instruments are explored

Case Study: 27.4 Legal instruments: Great Eastern Ranges initiative

The Great Eastern Ranges (GER) Initiative aims to establish a conservation corridor inland of the east coast of Australia, stretching 3600 kilometres from north to south. The corridor is primarily defined by the Great Dividing Range and the Great Escarpment of eastern Australia (Mackey et al. 2010)

The Australasian Journal of Natural Resources Law and Policy: Editorial

This special issue of the Australasian Journal of Natural Resources Law and Policy contains five papers relating broadly to the topic of designing policy instruments for biodiversity conservation. Four of the papers (Adam, I Beeton et al, Burgman et aP and Whelan et al ) had their genesis at a symposium on Threatened Species and the Law held at the Ecological Society of Australia (ESA) Conference in Brisbane in 2005, one part of a larger project examining intersections between science and law in the context of threatened species legislation, supported by the Australian Research Council. This symposium was specifically designed to explore the increasing interaction of natural scientists with environmental lawyers and legal systems. Scientists sit on scientific committees, constituted by legislation, which advise on listing decisions (and in NSW, actually make the ~ecisions). They appear in courts, giving expert evidence on the likely environmental impact of proposed development on species and ecosystems. Research ecologists are increasingly involved in the development of environmental policy through legislation

Measuring success in e-learning-a multi-dimensional approach

In 1999 Northumbria University published a strategy document entitled "Towards the web-enabled university". This prefaced an assessment of need and of available platforms for developing online teaching and learning which, in turn, led in 2001 to the roll out and institution-wide adoption of the Blackboard Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) now referred to as our eLearning Platform or eLP. Within a very few years we had over 90% take-up by academic staff and the eLP had become integral to the learning of virtually all our students. What has always been relatively easy to measure has been the number of users, frequency of use, number of courses, levels of technological infrastructure, etc. However, with the publication of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) e-learning strategy in 2005 it became apparent that such quantitative data was not particularly helpful in measuring how the university matched onto the 10-year aspirations of that document and its measures of success. Consequently an on-going exploration was embarked upon to try to measure where we were and what we should prioritise in order to embed e-learning, as envisaged within the HEFCE strategy. This involved a number of key approaches: The measures were broken down into manageable sizes, creating 16 measures in all with descriptors for "full achievement" through to "no progress to date" with suggested sources of information which would support the description. A series of interviews with key staff were set up in which they were asked to rank where they felt the university stood against each measure and what evidence would support their views. An academic staff survey was developed on-line which invited staff to explore a number of statements based around the HEFCE criteria and express degrees of agreement. This was followed up by a range of face-to-face interviews. An online student survey was developed and students were asked to express degrees of agreement with these. Student responses were followed up with an independent student focus group exploring issues in greater depth. The outcomes of the three approaches were then combined and an interim report prepared which identified strengths and areas for further development. Some of the latter are already being addressed. Subsequently, the university has joined phase 2 of a national benchmarking e-learning in Higher Education exercise, running from May to December 2007, supported by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). During this exercise we are engaging in a deeper exploration against a wider set of criteria, based upon the "Pick & Mix" (Bacsich, 2007) methodology. Pick&Mix comprises 20 core criteria and the option of a number of supplementary criteria. Through this approach we will be able to set a baseline for where we currently are and it will allow us to revisit criteria later to measure our progress in those areas we identify for development. This paper shares methodologies used, identifies key outcomes, reflects upon those outcomes and offers readers the opportunity to reflect upon their own institution's e-learning practice

Biodiversity conservation and natural resources management in NSW: complexity, coordination and common sense

Most environmental lawyers, like ecologists, wish to see broad scale landscape change, better management of land and improved protection of remnant vegetation and threatened species. Incorporating scientific knowledge into effective strategic planning is one step. Implementing strategic planning is another, necessitating the flow of priorities into statutory planning and regulation. The translation of broad landscape scale conservation objectives on to the ground requires not only improved understanding but also active use of the legal system. The law relating to the regulation of land use and vegetation clearing, threatened species conservation and catchment management is complex, inter-dependent and dynamic. While planning was once the exclusive domain of local government, now state government natural resource agencies and catchment management bodies routinely use it to determine priorities for both regulation and investment. In this paper we explore the potential of the current system for conservation. We consider the potential of the land use planning system and argue that its role has been constrained by its history. While there is significant reform in coastal and growth areas, rural areas continue to be neglected by this system. This gap would appear to be being filled in NSW by catchment management, which has a key planning role and is grappling with the management of existing uses; and native vegetation legislation which focuses on new development

The Jervis Bay Leek Orchid - a case study of the consideration given to threatened species conservation in strategic land use planning and development control processes in NSW

A case study of the decision-making process relating to a residential and commercial development on land in NSW where key populations of a Ii ted endangered \u27pecic of flora, the Jervis Bay Leek Orchid (PrasophyllunJ affine), are located is used to illustrate how threatened species con ervation is considered in decision-making processes at both the strategic land use planning level and during the subsequent development control process. While threatened species considerations can influence decision-making processes, landholder and community expectations generated by historical policy docwnents based on inadequate ecological survey data, which have no legal standing, ensure that the focus is not on whether development should be approved but on the conditions to be attached. In this context, Commonwealth decision-making processes under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) do not simply duplicate NSW processes but provide important checks and balances. Recovery planning, while significant in terms of generating important ecological data, has limited influence on decision-making processes relating to proposed development, although under the Commonwealth legislation recovery plans have the potential to playa more significant role if they are more precisely worded

The legal aspects of connectivity conservation: a concept paper

This publication aims to advance conceptual thinking and legal understanding about important law and policy tools and options for supporting the connectivity of protected area systems. The legal research and analyses reflected in this paper span international, regional, national and local levels. A range of legal instruments existing in most national legal systems, from conservation and sustainable use laws to land use planning, development control, voluntary conservation and economic instruments are explored. The paper is intended to offer concrete ideas of existing and potential legal tools and approaches that countries can use immediately to initiate priority connectivity conservation actions and to strengthen them progressively. It also is intended to provide a conceptual baseline for future research and case studies to continue to define and develop connectivity conservation law for supporting protected areas and for providing opportunities to address climate change as part of biodiversity conservation agendas

Threatened species listing as a trigger for conservation action

Legislative listing schemes, under which the listing of a species as threatened automatically triggers command regulation and/or recovery planning, raise significant issues for policy makers. In this paper, we explore strategies for factoring considerations beyond the empirical assessment of a species' conservation status into the resource allocation decisions that flow from listing. Even in threatened species legislation that appears to prioritise species conservation over socio-economic considerations by creating an automatic nexus between listing and conservation response, there are significant pressure valves that allow the latter to exercise a significant influence on decisions in practice. We critically examine two other techniques currently used in legislation that allow a broader range of considerations to be factored into resource allocation decisions: abandoning the automatic triggering of resource allocation by listing; and taking into account a broader range of considerations in the listing decision itself. We conclude by outlining the framework for a strategic approach to the allocation of conservation resources. This has three limbs to it: recovery plans that identify what needs to be done to bring about recovery, in addition to what available resources will allow us to do; a system for prioritising between the implementation of recovery plans; and the integration of threatened species conservation into strategic land use planning processes.No Full Tex