Land in Manilla Shire, New South Wales, is characterised by serious soil erosion and land use is characterised by high rates of adoption of the recommended soil conservation measures. This behaviour is analysed to attempt to determine what factors are promoting soil conservation at each stage in...

In New South Wales there are one million acres of land bearing cypress pine and held under lease from the government. This land is suitable for the joint production of timber and livestock or for timber production alone. Alternatively, the timber can be harvested to provide capital for property...

Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius, L.), is an exotic leguminous shrub, native to Europe, which invades pastoral and woodland ecosystems and adjoining river systems in cool, high rainfall regions of southeastern Australia. Broom has invaded 10,000 hectares of eucalypt woodland at Barrington Tops...

An appropriate economic framework for valuing the benefits of weed management technologies is to treat weeds as a renewable resource stock problem. Consequently, the weed seed bank is defined as a renewable resource that changes through time due to management and seasonal conditions. The goal of...

When a weed invasion is discovered a decision has to be made as to whether to attempt to eradicate it, contain it or do nothing. Ideally, these decisions should be based on a complete benefit-cost analysis, but this is often not possible. A partial analysis, combining knowledge of the rate of...

Invasive animal pests inflict many kinds of damage on the environment, and threaten native fauna and flora. We attempt to value the benefits from the extra biodiversity that is protected if these threats were removed. The NSW Rural Lands Protection Board is a major agency that undertakes pest...

Environmental Economics: Concepts, Methods and Policies, second edition, draws on the salience of the laws of thermodynamics and principles of ecology and illustrates how concepts and methods in economics need to be revised for policy analysis. Conceptual premises advanced in the text are...

Australian attempts to value the environment began at least 40 years ago. Since then, environmental protection and natural resource management have become major national issues. But have the methods of valuation kept pace with the importance of the issues that they are meant to resolve? Can...