Abstract for presentation at Biodiversity Extinction Crisis Conference - A Pacific Response

To achieve conservation across the landscape, landholders are being asked (and in some cases being provided incentives) to adopt sustainable practices, with the conventional vision being that incremental improvement in land for production and ‘protection’ of land for conservation will achieve NRM targets. This vision is not being realised because adoption is fragmentary, there are real and perceived costs to landholders including lost production and because incentives are orders of magnitude too small. There is also considerable doubt in the farming community about whether the ‘lock up and protect’ strategy, which many believe is the principle behind the native vegetation legislation and regulation, is actually better for the land than their land stewardship, which is proudly expressed by landholders and often discounted or dismissed by conservationists.

At present there is no clear way of determining the relative benefit of different forms of land-use on soil and resource condition so these differences of opinion and perspective cannot be resolved. This paper calls for a rigorous and objective methodology that can assess and monitor resource condition that is robust enough to be used by a range of people including landholders, work with different forms of land use and operate across a number of scales. This paper describes Landscape Function Analysis (LFA), outlines a preliminary assessment that points to its potential as this missing link, describes a program of research to evaluate its potential and reports on preliminary results.