Wetlands.edu

The Hunter Wetlands Centre Australia consortium, with funding from the Australian Government’s Natural Heritage Trust is currently establishing Wetlands.edu, a national wetland management skills program designed to provide capacity building and training for regional and community investments in wetland-related assessment, planning and actions. Wetlands.edu forms part of Wetland Management Solutions – a new partnership of wetland practitioners and experts working together for better management of Australian wetlands, with a particular focus on nation-wide delivery of training and support options that address regional and local issues and needs.

Wetlands.edu program is aimed primarily at regional natural resource management and catchment bodies and their stakeholders, including Landcare and river management groups, local governments and private landholders. The training is to be delivered through wetland centres and key regional towns and cities.

A primary focus of the training will be on retaining or improving the condition of wetland assets. This will be achieved through improved local and regional/catchment-level knowledge of the latest wetland planning and management practices. The program will cover a broad range of subjects, including:

• surveys and rapid assessment processes;
• data collation and management;
• condition monitoring;
• asset prioritisation;
• community engagement and awareness raising;
• target setting; and
• strategic investment planning.

The Wetlands.edu program will be delivered by the Hunter Wetlands Centre Australia consortium comprising the Hunter Wetlands Centre Australia, the WET program of the Sydney Olympic Park Authority, Banrock Station Wine and Wetland Centre, Dr Bill Phillips (Mainstream Environmental Consulting), Dr Rhonda Butcher (Water’s Edge Consulting) and Jennifer Hale Consulting.

The goal is to continue the training program beyond the three year NHT investment through the phasing in of user-pays, sponsorships and by forming strategic partnerships. The program has already secured the Murray-Darling Basin Commission as its first strategic partner.

Training needs assessment and development of training modules

In late 2005 Wetland.edu undertook a training needs assessment which resulted in over 120 responses to a questionnaire. This has helped identify priority training themes, the preferred duration of training events etc. Work has now started on developing the first training modules which will be pilot tested with training sessions in the second half of 2006.

More details of our program can be found at www.wetlandsedu.org.au through which regular updates of the program, scheduled training events and other details will be posted.

For further information please contact:

Dr Bill Phillips
Wetlands.edu coordinator
Telephone: (02) 6281 7470 / 0438 817 470
Email: wetlands.edu@mainstream.com.au

 

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