BIO2040 Conservation biology

The unit involves a single teaching session each week, which incorporates a range of teaching approaches, including lectures, tutorials and practicals. All teaching approaches used are highly interactive. A core component of each teaching session are a series of small group discussions which involve peer-assisted learning and interaction with teaching staff. These small group discussions involve debates, problem solving, and discussion of key issues in conservation biology.

The Conservation Forum is designed to build skills for understanding a conservation issue, what kinds of stakeholders have responsibility and interest in conservation management decisions, and how decisions are arrived at about how to balance various views, costs and benefits. The conservation issue we will examine is the collection and harvesting of firewood from woodlands in Victoria. Each student will be allocated to a stakeholder, whose position they will adopt and defend in negotiations about how firewood collection and harvesting should be managed in the State of Victoria. Each student will have 1 or 2 partners allocated to the same stakeholder. There are 5 stakeholders, so negotiations will be conducted in groups of ~10.