1. Foreword
Pest plants and animals are a serious threat to our region’ s economic, social and environmental sustainability. They adversely affect the healthy function of ecosystems, reduce primary industry productivity and profitability, and can have significant impacts on a raft of social, recreational and health values.
In contrast to the enormous costs of pest plants and animals, the resources available for managing them are limited. Collaboration and aligning effort are key to ensuring maximum value of those resources.
In 2008, NQ Dry Tropics facilitated a process that brought together regional players in pest management; including infrastructure managers, and local and state government representatives. An early product of that process was the Burdekin region’ s first Regional Pest Management Strategy. Since then, NQ Dry Tropics has continued to provide support and stewardship to the Strategy and the Regional Pest Management Group. The Regional Pest Management Group is a stakeholder group represented by state and local government, natural resource management, infrastructure, industry and community groups and local Traditional Owners.
The Regional Pest Management Group has remained committed to a collaborative regional process. As part of
that ongoing commitment, the group, with support from NQ Dry Tropics, has continued to update its strategic intent. This document represents the strategic intent of the group for 2020-2025 where regional collaboration and coordination will continue to refine the pest plant and animal priorities of Local Government Biosecurity Plans. Recognising that any strategic approach needs to quickly adapt to emerging priorities and opportunities, this document is being developed and maintained by NQ Dry Tropics within a web-based environment.
Pest plant and animal issues do not exist in isolation from broader land and water management considerations. As such, this Regional Pest Management Strategy will continue to link to the management goals and activities of the Burdekin Dry Tropics Natural Resource Management Plan( 2016-2026).
NQ Dry Tropics is proud of what has been achieved by the Regional Pest Management Group. But the task of delivering against the strategy goes beyond the group and requires broad support from other organisations, agencies and community groups. Therefore, I invite anyone interested in supporting this strategy to contact our Regional Pest Management Group.
Dr. Scott Crawford CEO NQ Dry Tropics
P3 | RPMS 2020-2025 P3