Potential of revegetation incentives to meet biodiversity and salinity objectives: a study from the Goulburn Broken Catchment

Revegetation of depleted native vegetation can address both salinity mitigation and biodiversity conservation objectives. Financial capacity is a major impediment to landholders undertaking revegetation. We used a mail survey of landholders to examine the potential of enhanced financial incentives for achieving substantially increased revegetation in the Goulburn Broken Catchment, Victoria. There was considerable interest in our proposed incentive scheme, with 51 per cent of respondents indicated that they would revegetate some of their property, at a price. Most of the landholders who responded positively to the proposal already intended to undertake same revegetation, with the additional financial incentives enabling them to revegetate a larger area. Across the dryland portion of the catchment, we estimate that, over five years, landholders would revegetate about 19,756 ha at a cost of $18,471,079 ($935 per ha). This is additional to the 7,624 ha of native vegetation that would be re-established without the proposal. However, the total revegetation would not be sufficient to meet biodiversity conservation targets for several high priority vegetation types. Similarly, the proposal is likely to achieve only a marginal improvement to the amount of tree cover in areas of high priority for salinity mitigation. Economic incentives will not therefore, by themselves, enable biodiversity conservation and salinity mitigation targets to be achieved. Incentives need to be integrated with other instruments such as revolving funds, regulations and continued education programs.