In its Report, Commercial Utilisation of Australian Native Wildlife, the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee considered that the traditional approach to biodiversity conservation of relying on the protection of representative areas was too narrow.1 It concluded that:
the nature of biodiversity conservation in Australia now depends very much on finding mechanisms, and particularly financial incentives, for natural habitat to be restored and conserved on private lands and that, if appropriately managed, commercial utilisation of wildlife is one such mechanism.2
The basis for this conclusion is the proposition that:
when a value is placed on a species, an indirect value is placed on the habitat occupied by that species and an incentive to preserve habitat emerges.3
The creation of a sustainable economic value of wildlife was thus a primary rationale for the Senate Committee's advocacy of commercial utilisation and, in particular, of the sustainable harvesting of wildlife.
As was noted earlier in this report (Chapter 7) harvesting can have a direct impact not only on the population of the targeted species but also a range of indirect environmental impacts. Many species are also clearly suffering from environmental stress associated with current pressures affecting habitat.
While the harvesting of species may be one mechanism to create an incentive to protect private land habitat, in Victoria there is a range of other mechanisms, both financial and non-financial, available. These alternative mechanisms can avoid many of the detrimental impacts potentially associated with wild harvest, while providing for the utilisation of native species by other sectors. Some of these arise from statutory requirements for habitat protection; mostly the available mechanisms are voluntary programs.
In this chapter the Committee reviews such other mechanisms as are currently available in Victoria and elsewhere and that directly provide for the protection of habitat while also providing for utilisation not reliant on wild harvest.
