Making Conservation Pay

'Making Conservation Pay' is an innovative project which aims to bring economic, social and environmental benefits to northwest Victoria. The project comprises six inter-related components:

Productivity Mapping	Landscape Design
Water Management	Alternate Grazing Systems
Sustainable Soils	Habitat Management

'Making Conservation Pay' is a regional scale project, located in the northwest of Victoria. Notional boundaries will be:

North:	Notionally along a line joining Swan Hill, Manangatang and Ouyen
South:	Western Highway
East:	East of the Avoca River to the irrigation country.
West:	Wimmera River or Yarriambiak Creek.

At a local, regional and national level, the key drivers of the project's concept and scale are:

• Changing expectations of consumers. Consumers expect safe food, clean water and environmental stewardship.
• Regional economic prosperity is dependent on production and ecological health.
• Enhancing the health and vitality of the community in which people live.
• Testing and validating sustainability theories - supporting adoption

	A symposium was held in Melbourne on 12 November 2004 outlining 'Making Conservation Pay'. Click to view: Speakers biographies Presentation by David Freudenberger Presentation by Andrew Weidemann (Part 1  & Part 2) Presentation by Bob Belford Presentation by Tim Reeves Summaries from the day's presentations
Speakers from L-R: Ian McClelland, David Freudenberger, Bob Belford, Andrew Weidemann, Geoff Park.

'Making Conservation Pay' is led by an alliance between BCG, the North Central Catchment Management Authority, the Mallee Catchment Management Authority, the CSIRO and the Buloke Biolink Project.