Community consultation and engagement have been vital in development of the Southern NRM Strategy. More than 700 people contributed to initial development of the Draft Strategy. Views expressed during the consultation process have been used to form the core values, the vision, goals, threatening processes and management issues, management outcomes and management actions.

The consultation process consisted the following overlapping stages and processes:

• Building relationships and community understanding of the strategy development task (July – November 2003)
• Submissions (July 2003 – February 2004 and again once the Consultation Draft Strategy became available in June - August 2004)
• Feedback on the Discussion Papers (through targeted consultations and submissions) (November 2003 – January 2004). Stakeholders invited to participate in targeted consultation.
  Initial feedback from different ‘sectoral’ interests on the most important issues and challenges and options to address them (July 2003 – February 2004)
• Public meetings to gauge the level of NRM activity, perceptions of major issues and priorities and community views on what is needed to increase participation in NRM (mid December 2003 – end February 2004). Meetings were held in 19 locations (16 of them in rural and regional centres outside Hobart) involving local government, industry representatives, local landholders (particularly farmers), members of the ‘care’ community and other community groups and ‘ordinary ratepayers’.

• Review of issues, Management Actions and targets for consistency with key policies, plans and strategies at national, state and local level (May 2004)
• Further consultation (eg the Aboriginal community) started November 2003, but unable to be completed ahead of release of draft strategy for consultation – consultation is on-going
• Feedback on the Consultation Draft Strategy (opportunities provided to all stakeholders as well as the general community) (June – August 2004)
• Review of Resource Condition Targets by NRM South in consultation with key stakeholders and technical specialists (July – September 2004)
• Review of Management Actions and priorities in consultation with key stakeholders (September –November 2004)
• Re-prioritisation of Management Actions for strategic priorities by NRM South, informed by feedback from consultations (November 2004)
  Seeking feedback from & building partnerships with potential investors in the Southern Regional Investment Proposal in the light of the strategic framework (November 2004 – on-going)
  

To find out more about:

• The process for developing the Strategy, see Appendix 2 of the Southern NRM Strategy
• The outcomes of consultations on the Draft Strategy see Appendix 5 of the Southern NRM Strategy