Natural Asset Management Update - May 2016

By: Regional Natural Asset Management Coordinator, Travis Sydes...

Coastal Hazard Adaptation Program- Information session on minimum standards and guidelines

A follow-up session to take LG’s through the minimum standards and guidelines for the development of Coastal Hazard Adaptation Plans under the QCoast2100 funded program was held in Cairns. We expect the call for projects will be announced in the coming weeks, coinciding with the release of the final guidelines. Next steps for most councils’ will be to seek initial project dollars to embark on Phase 1 & 2 of the project which plans for the life-of-project stakeholder communication and engagement and scopes the coastal hazards issues within the area of interest for councils. The project guideline provides minimum standard through to best practice guidance on the delivery of each phase of a Coastal Hazard Adaptation Plan, they are;

1. Plan for life-of–project stakeholder communication and engagement
2. Scope coastal hazard issues for the area of interest
3. Identify areas exposed to current and future coastal hazards
4. Identify key assets potentially impacted
5. Undertake a risk assessment of key assets in coastal hazard areas
6. Identify potential adaptation options
7. Undertake a socio-economic appraisal of adaptation options
8. Strategy development, implementation and review

We will continue to work with individual councils in this early stage of development of proposals w to see if there are any opportunities or synergies across the region where a regional approach or brokerage may be useful.

What’s up daisy? Local taskforces on our priority daisy weeds gearing up

The recent rains across the region will provide a growth spurt to the range of high priority daisy weed species which are targeted by a series of local taskforces during their peak flowering period over June. These include Siam weed (TRC, MSC, DSC, CRC, CCRC, and HSC), stevia (TRC), fireweed (TRC) and Mikania vine (CCRC and HSC). Most of these daisy weeds have very conspicuous flowers so peak flowering is the key operational time for ground based and sometimes even aerial survey operations. For many years these priority projects have been delivered by collaboration between LG’s, state departments and landholders in local taskforce operations. Keep an eye on your local media for updates.

Fireweed	Mikania vine	Siam weed	Stevia ovata