Living Landscapes: a process for integrating nature conservation into the agricultural landscape.

Smith A¹*, Penter M¹*

1. Greening Australia (WA), Northam, Western Australia, Australia

The Landcare movement has resulted in many agriculturally based catchment groups in Australia developing and implementing more sustainable farm and catchment-scale management plans. Initially the primary focus has been amelioration of the impacts of salinity and increasing agricultural capacity. More recently in Natural Resource Management there has been greater recognition that the planning context must be extended to consider broader landscape issues such as nature conservation and ecological health. This shift will require land managers to have a working understanding of complex ecological processes.

Living Landscapes is a social process, which provides opportunities for land managers to learn a new awareness and understanding of their local ecology. Based on a participatory learning approach, the project encourages group members to learn through their own experience and through the eyes of others, and then to apply their ‘new’ knowledge at the local level to contribute to landscape-scale outcomes. The project is based, broadly, on the hypothesis that shared knowledge and understanding amongst farming communities builds their capacity for improving ecological health. The landscape planning underpinned by the science of the focal species planning approach, which assist in guiding the decision making process. The long-term challenge is to realign our planning and management processes to a stage where we can meet our social and economic demands within the context of the ecological needs.

Living Landscapes links science and community through a simple framework for learning, planning, doing and reviewing.

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