The Friends of Bass Valley Bush Inc submission to the State Government's green paper on Land and Biodversity calls for a change in the way our catchments are managed. The current fragmented approach is a result of a complete inconsistency in skill levels within Catchment Management Authorities.
Some understand what they are doing but others don't seem to have a clue. In the case of West Gippsland, they are always trying to reinvent the wheel - the only problem is that every model they come up with is square - and made of concrete (so not only won't it roll, no-one can even lift the damn thing). Regional bodies need to be retained as committees of an organisation with State-wide responsibilities and vision to prepare management plans. All those plans should meet the same standards overseen by the body which may well be a re-vamped Victorian Catchment Management Council.
Funding is also an issue. The CMA's should not control Federal purse strings for landscape-scale programs, especially those which cross boundaries between CMA's. A big difficulty for some time has been that the rhetoric around protection of native vegetation being the number one priority has not been reflected in funding. If just a tenth of the money allocated...
[More]
Tags:
caring for our country, catchment management, land and biodiversity
Posted at: 11:08 AM | 0 Comments | Add Comment | Permalink
