The Evidence
Jodie Caunt from Rangeland Monitoring Services has been employed by the Gascoyne Catchments Project to develop a Self Assessment Monitoring and Reporting Tool (Monitoring Tool).
The Monitoring Tool will aim to collect specific and consistent information at property and regional scale to document the historic and presently occurring change in the rangeland condition throughout the Gascoyne region. The Tool will also provide landholders with a tool for observing their country’s condition so they the ability to make more effective management decisions.
The ongoing element of the monitoring tool is the reassessment of relevant Pasture Monitoring Sites. Properties within the project area are being provided with the opportunity to have a number of PMS sites reassessed. 
The reassessment of the PMS will provide the landholder with a perspective of the range condition (specific to perennial vegetation) of their property over the last 20-30 years.
Alternative methods for range condition monitoring are also being trialled in the project area to ensure that the most appropriate monitoring technique is engaged to suit the Gascoyne’s needs. To date these have included Landscape Function Analysis (a David Tongway method), Jim Addison’s fixed monitoring method, Stocktake and Grazing Land Management.
To tie in with Jodie’s monitoring work the steering committee decided that some qualitative and quantitative evidence collected from pastoralists in the Gascoyne would be beneficial to the project. This evidence could then be used in a transparent and robust way to depict change in rangeland condition over the last 20-30 years through the eyes of the pastoralists.
“Drawing a line in the sand”- is a story of change in the Gascoyne catchments. This evidence based story has been developed from interviews with seventeen pastoralists, scientists, rangelands workers and scientific literature. The story is divided into two key time periods – 1950’s to 1980 and the 1980’s to 2008 based on a timeline that was developed during the pastoralist interviews.
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