Ecology Expert Reference Panel

Invitation for Expressions of Interest in the Wetlands Protection and Ecological Restoration Group

The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) invites members and stakeholders with an interest and expertise in wetlands and ecological restoration to submit expressions of interest in joining a group to discuss the future of this area within Green Star. To begin with, the group will form a panel to consider wetlands issues, but this will be widened out to examine many other ecology and biodiversity topics later in the year.

The purpose of the initial meeting, at the end of July 2008, is to discuss and determine compliance criteria for the protection and restoration of wetlands under the Green Star rating system. The current Conditional Requirement relating to wetlands has been debated in several of the Technical Working Groups, and new information is being examined to determine how this might develop with rating tools.

The following will be discussed with relation to the existing Green Star rating tools:

• Features and definitions of wetlands requiring protection
• Compliance Criteria and methodology for wetlands restoration projects.

We are looking for individuals who are objective, informed and have expertise in at least one of the following areas:

• Wetlands classification
• Wetlands conservation
• Wetlands restoration
• Wetland biodiversity and endangered species
• Planning and zoning

Expressions of Interest

Interested Ecologists should send a CV to ecology@gbcaus.org with 'Expression of interest for Ecology ERP' in the subject line. If you would like to nominate someone else, please include their contact details in the email and copy them in on the e-mail to ensure that they know about the nomination.

Please include in the body of the email, a brief description of how you, or your nominee, would be able to contribute to the forum, i.e. which areas from the above list might represent your area of expertise.

If your area of expertise falls outside those mentioned above, but you feel any discussion of wetlands protection and restoration would benefit from your own expertise, please feel free to contact us.

Expressions of interest must be submitted by Friday 11th July 2008 to
ecology@gbcaus.org

Scope of Work Required by Expert Reference Panel (ERP) Participants:

• The first action of the ERP will be to review and prepare comments on a draft of the GBCA's Proposed Wetlands Protection and Ecological Restoration Methodology
• The ERP participants are then invited to attend a one-day meeting at the end of July 2008 where the proposal will be further discussed. Once the ERP has reviewed and discussed the assessment methodology, the proposal will be made available for a 30 day public comment period
• The ERP may then be reconvened following the 30 day comment period if further work is required.

Please see the timeline for more details and the time frame for each stage.

This panel is being set up in accordance with the GBCA's Stakeholder Engagement Process.

The GBCA will cover all reasonable travel and accommodation costs that may be incurred by participants; however there is no remuneration available for participant's time. Travel and accommodation requests should be made to the GBCA directly to enable them to make bookings well in advance.

Read more about the Green Building Council of Australia.
Read more about Green Star: An Environmental Rating System for Buildings.

Questions? Please e-mail ecology@gbcaus.org with 'Query re: Ecology ERP' in the subject line.