During the later part of 2000 and the first half of 2001, the team at CARE have been involved in a range of projects including:

New England - North West Forestry Investment Group

David Thompson has taken on the project management role for this Group which is essentially a continuation of the Regional Plantation Committees previously funded by AFFA. Funding for the new Group is shared by AFFA and NSW Department of State & Regional Development. The Group has just developed a draft business plan to be finalised by the end of July. Key strategic directions include:

1. Fostering the commercial development of native forest resources (hardwoods and cypress pine);

2. Accessing cash-flow friendly investment vehicles to increase the ability of landholders to invest in plantations; and

3. Exploring the potential for commercial incentives to increase environmental tree planting in lower rainfall parts of the region.

Given the short time frame for the project (2 years at present), the Group has chosen a small number of commercially focussed projects which are aimed at developing realistic opportunities or plugging key gaps in the regional forestry industries

Ecosystem Services in the Gwydir Valley

This is a collaborative project with Ecosystems Management at UNE and the DLWC. It comes under the umbrella of a national Ecosystem Services project being run out of CSIRO in Canberra

The project will focus on identifying important ecosystem services in the Gwydir valley, and developing tools to assess the farm and regional level bio-physical and economic impacts of alternative management systems aimed at preserving those services. This work will represent an important step in valuing ecosystem services which are often taken for granted.

Northern Australia Forum

CARE was involved in developing situation analysis papers for a number of regions in northern Australia as part of the Northern Australia Forum process. We have made use of the regional analysis tools we have been developing over a number of decades now to derive key indicators of regional economic performance. To our knowledge, these indicators are unique in Australia in the field of regional economic development

Mouser

Another tool developed over the past 6 months was the model ‘Economice’, a bioeconomic simulation tool for investigating alternative mouse management options in wheat crops in Victoria. This model has been incorporated into the Mouser CD, a decision support tool developed by CSIRO Wildlife and Ecology (contact: Dr Peter Brown) in Canberra

Regional economic impact of National Parks

In keeping with previous work on national parks, two more studies were completed for the Sturt, Kinchega, Mutawintji and Warrumbungles National Parks.

Farm Forestry Financial Model

Following road testing, the RIRDCJV funded Australian Farm Forestry Financial Model (AFFFM) is now in the final stages of programming. CARE has been a collaborator on this project with James Cook University, University of S. Qld, University of Qld and QDNR. The model allows users to assess the financial implications of adding a forestry enterprise (plantations or managed native forest) to an existing farm business. We have also made use of the PlantGro software to provide suitability rating and yield information for a number of key species which are applicable to the New England region of NSW and SE Qld. Yield data for these species can be loaded directly into the model for simulation purposes.

The project has also been experimenting with the linking of GIS and regional impact analysis tools to assess the regional economic impacts of farm forestry options.