'Back on Track' - Links
Development of the 'Back on Track' method
'Back on Track' is based on the method of Professor Helene Marsh et al. (2006). See the paper Optimizing Allocation of Management Resources for Wildlife, published online in Conservation Biology.
Other prioritisation programs
- The State Wildlife Grants Program, in the United States of America, encourages States to prioritise species of the greatest conservation need for funds. In
doing so, some States developed similar prioritisation programs, including:
- North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (2003). Species prioritisation – species review process.
- The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.
- The Partners in Flight species prioritization scheme has prioritised North American bird species for research and conservation management.
- Molloy, J. and Davis, A. (1994). 'Setting conservation priorities for New Zealand's threatened plants and animals.' Department of Conservation, Te Papa Atawhai.
- Department of Environment and Conservation, in Western Australia, uses a scoring system to identify priority species in their Policy Statement No. 50 Setting priorities for the conservation of Western Australia's threatened flora and fauna.
Links to Natural Resource Management bodies
'Back on Track', which is funded by the Australian Government Natural Heritage Trust, is working with the 14 Natural Resource Management (NRM) regions across Queensland (map), which are:
- Torres Strait Regional Authority
- Cape York Peninsula Development Association
- Northern Gulf Resource Management Group
- Southern Gulf Catchments Ltd.
- Far North Queensland NRM Ltd.
- Burdekin Dry Tropics NRM
- Desert Channels Queensland Inc.
- Mackay Whitsunday NRM Group
- Fitzroy Basin Association
- South West NRM Ltd.
- Queensland Murray-Darling Committee Inc.
- Condamine Alliance Inc.
- Burnett Mary Regional Group for NRM Inc.
- South East Queensland Catchments
The Australian Government web page Natural Resource Management provides information about the implementation of the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality (NAP) and the Natural Heritage Trust (NHT) programs at the regional level.
Some examples of advocates of species prioritisation
- Professor Hugh Possingham and colleagues recommended that other criteria, apart from threat to extinction, need to be taken into consideration for the allocation of conservation resources.
- Jon Paul Rodríguez and colleagues developed a priority-setting process for the conservation of threatened birds in Venezuela.
- Associates of the World Wide Fund for Nature and Cambridge University suggested using species and ecosystem priorities to improve the conservation recommendations for African biodiversity.
- The Noah’s Ark Problem is the challenge of preserving the greatest biological diversity under a limited budget constraint. It was introduced by Martin Weitzman in: Weitzman, M.L. 1998. The Noah’s Ark Problem. Econometrica 66:1279-1298.
- The Noah’s Ark Problem is discussed in The Harvard Magazine.
- Professor Mike Steel and Dr. Charles Semple are working on a Noah’s Ark formula to help biologists and governments measure the conservation importance of different species.
Return to 'Back on Track' main page
Last updated: 04 January 2007
