Auctions for conservation contracts: an empirical Examination of Victoria’s Bush Tender Trial

In this paper we provide an analysis of Victoria's BushTender Trial. BushTender is an auction-based approach to allocating conservation contracts that is currently being trialed in two Victorian regions. We analyse the bids provided by landholders. We compare the discriminative price auction to a hypothetical fixed-price scheme. We also comment on anecdotal evidence about the likely indirect benefits of BushTender.