Designing auctions with outcome bonuses: An application to ground nesting birds in the Murray Catchment, NSW-Draft Final Project Report

Nest Egg is a trial of a tender for ground nesting birds in the NSW Murray catchment management area of New South Wales. It is a partnership between the Murray CMA and CSIRO and part of round two of the National MBI pilots program. The project began in June 2007.
This research project evaluates a new approach to conservation funding whereby landholders are rewarded for achieving conservation outcomes. The project involves designing and implementing a tender, called Nest Egg, for the conservation of three threatened ground nesting bird species: Bush stone curlew, Plains wanderer and Brolga. To allow evaluation of landholders willingness to accept contracts with outcome based payments, landholders were asked to choose between an input based contract and an outcome based payment contract. Landholder were also required to submit a bid for both contracts.