Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
an array of research projects that have been completed or are ongoing in the
Fenner School of Environment and Society at The Australian National University.
The overarching aim of these projects is to improve the ecological sustainability of
farming enterprises (including the conservation of farm biodiversity).
Our audience
Our intended audience for this topic is broad and we hope that many kinds of
people with a diverse array of interests will find it useful and informative. Our aim
has been to write material that will be valuable for:
farmers on grazing and cropping properties
●
private landholders, including hobby farmers who live close to large urban
areas
●
winegrowers, who often have valuable areas of woodland near their vineyards
●
natural resource managers, such as those associated with Catchment
Management Authorities, Landcare groups and state government agencies
●
policy makers in state and federal government departments
●
members of the lay public with interests in wildlife conservation and
management.
●
We are aware that family farms are increasingly being taken over by large
pastoral companies and we hope that the managers of these organisations might be
interested in the conservation and management insights in this topic. Finally, we
also hope that some of our scientific colleagues might find new perspectives in this
topic that will be of interest to them.
Because our target audience is diverse, we have tried to write this topic in an
open and engaging style. We have elected to keep the topic as short as possible and
have not exhaustively summarised the rapidly expanding literature on farm
wildlife. We apologise to our scientific colleagues who find this approach annoying
and 'unscientific' - our intention was not to offend. We have used a numbering
system to refer to appropriate scientific publications which are listed at the end of
each chapter.
What is the difference between this topic and previous ones?
We dedicated substantial effort to communicating the importance of biodiversity
conservation on farms in two previous topics -
Wildlife on Farms
:
How to Conserve
Native Animals
(CSIRO Publishing, 2003) and
Woodlands - A Disappearing
Landscape
(CSIRO Publishing, 2005). This new topic differs in some important
ways. In particular, the past two topics were based on general conservation and
management principles, whereas this volume is underpinned by more than a
decade of new research insights and findings. Many of these new perspectives were
unexpected or surprising to us when we first discovered them. The structure of
