MERV

MERV

During Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett’s recent visit to the NSW North Coast, he drew attention to the National Audit Office’s review of past Natural Heritage Trust funding.  The review found a lack of accountability, not enough monitoring and evaluation and an inability to evaluate project success and asset condition in many projects.

How timely that Peter Garrett was then introduced to MERV, a new software program developed by EnviTE Environment and partners to help address this issue.

Currently being tested

A trial of MERV is currently underway with a free version being distributed for testing under ‘real life’ conditions.  So far, the response from users has been overwhelmingly positive.

“MERV will give natural resource management (NRM) stakeholders the means to capture, store, query and report on this information within a database designed specifically for this purpose”, explained Paul O’Connor, EnviTE Environment's technical manager (pictured with Peter Garrett discussing MERV).

“Many natural resource management (NRM) projects invest in vegetation restoration and an intended outcome is improvements in biodiversity. MERV allows users to gather information in a systematic and explicit way so that improvements can be accurately assessed and evaluated.”