This project aimed to provide greater regional community engagement in plant biosecurity.

What is the biosecurity problem?

The success of industry biosecurity is dependent on the engagement of not only industry representatives but also the entire community. Regional areas of Australia are particularly vulnerable if sectors of the community do not appreciate and engage in plant biosecurity.

The main outputs of this project were to:

• identify existing biosecurity education and networks in the region
• analyse stakeholder groups and devise an incursion alert and intervention model
• identify a process for moving the models into the communities involved
• run the models possibly as case studies with their own formative participatory evaluation processes, and
• evaluate the whole project using formative data and provide a summative product that identifies failures, risks and bottlenecks, and documents change.

Who are the end-users of this research?

This project produced a new PhD graduate with skills in community engagement and education in relation to biosecurity issues. The graduate will be immediately employable within the Australian plant biosecurity industry to assist in community awareness and communication. The end-users of this project are the OrdGuard Regional Biosecurity plan and other industry Biosecurity plans.