Geraldton is a Biodiversity Hotspot

Biodiversity - Noun:The variety of plant and animal life in the world, or in a particular habitat, a high level of which is usually considered to be important and desirable. Oxford English Dictionary

The Geraldton area is one of only 34 of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, and is of very high biodiversity value. However it is under significant threat.

The City of Greater Geraldton and the Shire of Chapman Valley are seeking community support to maintain this important and desirable habitat, through a survey to develop private landholder incentives to preserve Geraldton’s ranking as a biodiversity hotspot.

City Senior Environmental and Sustainability Officer, Robyn Nicholas, said the two local governments’ policies and strategies show a commitment to environmental values, and to halting and reversing the observed trends towards collapse of local ecosystems.

“The City has developed a Local Biodiversity Strategy, which can be found on the City’s website under town planning then public consultation on www.cgg.wa.gov.au, to address some of the issues and the values of which historically have been hard to quantify,” she said.

“However, more recently concepts including ecosystem services, triple bottom line, sustainability indicators, natural asset management and carbon price have helped to identify the value of such areas.

“The development of the strategy included substantial community and stakeholder engagement, and to achieve the vision, will need stronger action from government and must provide for stronger support for local community groups and private landowners.

“Indeed an action from the strategy is to develop and support an incentives program for private landholder conservation,” said Ms Nicholas.

“We would like private landholders’ thoughts on how to encourage the retention, protection and management of this vegetation on private land by encouraging them to complete a survey and be in the draw to win 50 local provenance seedlings valued at $165 each.”

To discover how this program could work the City is encouraging private landholders to complete a survey which can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/K8FWC2P and closes on Thursday July 24, 2014. You could get the chance to win two prizes of 50 local provenance seedlings valued at $150 each.

For more information contact Robyn Nicholas on 9956 6629 or robynn@cgg.wa.gov.au.