Anthropogenic fragmentation of natural habitats is now at unprecedented levels. Conospermum undulatum is endemic to southwest Western Australia, a global biodiversity hotspot. Significant fragmentation of remnant patches is likely to constrain the reproduction of this species by altered plant-pollinator interactions and expression of inbreeding depression. In 2017 we collected data from 12 populations looking for differences in reproductive output and pollinator assemblage. In 2018, we set up a pollination experiment to test for pollen limitation (PL) and inbreeding depression.
We found the reproductive output to be affected by population size, isolation, and floral display. Small fragments showed a less diverse pollinator assemblage compared to larger populations, with the most active visitor species missing. Results indicated that both PL and genetic factors prevent the development of seeds. We found that hand cross-pollination produced a ten-fold increase in seed production compared to natural pollination. By using pollen sourced from different populations we found that small patches produced 50% fewer seeds than what they are able to produce via inter-population breeding due to the combined effects of PL and reduction of compatible mates. Our results suggest that fragmentation may result in patches that are too small and isolated to be attractive for pollinators and to allow long-term population viability. Outcomes of this research will inform recovery plans to enhance the future persistence of C. undulatum by means of improved awareness of factors that constrain both its reproduction and its adaptation ability over the long-term.

Achieving a balance across competing forest management objectives requires sound decision-making by environmental managers. In a world of differing stakeholder views, highly politicized environmental issues, and uncertain science and information, making sound decisions is challenging. The Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) is drawing on the decision sciences – specifically, structured decision making – to help navigate this challenge. Structured decision making (SDM) provides a framework for bringing together facts and subjective values in a transparent and logical way. Here, we present the findings of a comprehensive review of four SDM processes applied by DELWP regions and partner agencies as part of strategic bushfire management planning. We briefly describe the SDM process applied, including how regions clarified the decision context and relevant values, generated management alternatives and evaluated these, made explicit trade-offs and selected one or more preferred alternatives. We share some of the positive outcomes achieved, ranging from the enhanced capacity to identify strategies with benefits across multiple values, through to better documented and more defensible decisions. We then draw on the reflections and learnings of regional planning teams, outlining the factors that contributed to the success of the SDM processes, as well key technical and organisational challenges the teams needed to overcome. Finally, we outline DELWP’s current strategic priorities to build internal capability and capacity to apply SDM as part of future forest and fire management planning, and to ultimately help drive a cultural shift in the way that government organisations make decisions.

Re-establishing extinct populations of threatened fauna is a challenging task. The outcomes and importantly, learnings from these programs require well thought out monitoring programs which extend over several generations. Successful rehabilitation depends on the genetic diversity of source populations, which underlies species persistence and evolutionary success in changing environments. However, genetic diversity is often overlooked when management actions are taken to rehabilitate threatened species. Here we investigate the effectiveness of two management approaches, stocking and translocation, in the rehabilitation of the threatened Macquarie perch in the Ovens River, Victoria. After habitat restoration, the Ovens River was repopulated with Macquarie perch produced at a hatchery (stocking), along with wild fish translocated from Lake Dartmouth. Fin clip samples were collected for genotyping from each fish translocated to the Ovens River, broodstock parents and fish collected during monitoring. Population structure in the Ovens River was investigated using genetic identity, parentage and kinship analyses, with individuals identified as stocked, translocated or locally bred. Survival probabilities of translocated and stocked individuals were estimated using binomial survival models. Improved understanding of the factors that determine survival (e.g., hatchery crossing strategies, size during translocations) will strengthen management efforts to ensure the persistence of rehabilitated species in freshwater systems.

Conservation management often seeks to achieve multiple values of importance to people and nature. For example protected areas provide habitat for threatened species, ecosystems and generate services for humans such as food, medicine and spirituality. Deciding how to prioritise management efforts in these areas is challenging, given limited resources and information. This talk describes a decision science approach for prioritising the strategies and resources required to manage for multiple outcomes, applied to case study protected areas in Australia and Indonesia. The approach brings together experts, managers and decision makers to define the values and threats to these values, as well as the costs and benefits of management strategies to abate threats and improve all values. Estimating the benefit of management strategies for multiple values requires the definition of a goal for each value, such as a measure of intactness or success. Our approach finds the set of strategies and the resources required to achieve targeted outcomes within each area and prioritises strategies by their cost-effectiveness. The information provided by the approach can inform improved investments in protected area management that achieve success for multiple values.

Biodiversity declines globally and limited resources have motived an increased emphasis on understanding the effectiveness of interventions aimed at conserving biodiversity. As conservation interventions are undertaken in a dynamic and heterogeneous world, this requires understanding the changes that are attributable to our conservation interventions. This change is termed ‘impact’, and to determine it, we need to measure what occurred after the intervention (the ‘outcome’) and estimate what would have occurred without the intervention (the ‘counterfactual’). This allows impact to be calculated: the difference between the outcome and counterfactual. This is impact evaluation, which is well-established in many other fields, and is being recognized as increasingly important in conservation. One challenge of impact evaluation is determining the counterfactual, which, by definition cannot be measured and must be estimated. Many methodologies of traditional impact evaluation do not apply to conservation interventions. Here we discuss why this is, and identify four key challenges for determining counterfactuals in conservation: (i) counterfactuals can be highly in uncertain, and moving from measuring outcomes to measuring impacts may result in a significant increase in uncertainty; (ii) multiple plausible counterfactuals, and multiple scenarios of counterfactuals may be needed; (iii) counterfactuals at different spatial scales require very different data and statistical analyses; and (iv) many systems considered in conservation are social-ecological systems, and thus counterfactuals may require incorporating ecological dynamics and/or human behaviour. We discuss approaches for dealing with these challenges and propose future research required to help overcome them.

Australian woodlands have been heavily modified since European occupation. Indeed, there are currently 19 southern Australian eucalypt woodland communities listed as threatened under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and these require management plans to aid their recovery and/or to protect them from threats. However, in many cases there is a dearth of empirical research on the drivers, threats and condition of individual woodland communities. In particular, clear statements of cause and effect (models) are missing, thereby making it difficult for managers to plan and monitor. One of the biggest challenges practitioners face is to demonstrate that a management action is achieving the intended goal thus an objective measure of woodland condition is required. We used expert elicitation to create general ecosystem models for three broad woodland types across southern Australia to guide the recovery planning process for listed woodland communities. Experts identified causal pathways, drivers, threats and measurable attributes during this process, and from this we created a testable model that provides the basis for management guidance. Next, we used field datasets collected from different woodland types throughout southern Australia to validate the ecosystem models. In doing so, we systematically identified measurable attributes that can be used to distinguish between condition states across a range of different woodland communities. This will enable practitioners and stakeholders to objectively identify the condition state a given woodland, and assess management options for encouraging transitions towards a more desirable state.

Financial activities move and expend trillions of dollars each year on actions that affect biodiversity worldwide. There is a strong, growing desire in the finance sector for tools that will aid in investment decisions, accounting and risk management, and which are also environmentally responsible. A number of recently-launched initiatives, such as the Natural Capital Protocol and Global Reporting Initiative, reflect this desire. They offer examples of natural assets being formally included in planning activities for project finance, impact investing, and corporate insurance, from the banking, investment and insurance sectors. However, examples are not sufficient to mainstream these ideas across the financial sector, and very few fit-for-purpose tools exist to support the integration of biodiversity and conservation outcomes into their decision-making processes. This absence is particularly stark when compared to other environmental issues like water and climate, where more established standards and generalised tools exist around pollution mitigation and carbon offsetting. In contrast, biodiversity conservation remains a big challenge for businesses to integrate into their decision making. This project – currently in its infancy – aims to narrow this implementation gap, by identifying the most relevant available biodiversity conservation tools, frameworks and methods, and developing them into business-ready tools for the finance sector, leading to better biodiversity outcomes.

Biodiversity offsetting is increasingly used as a framework for delivering conservation gains to compensate for the biodiversity losses caused by development. Standard offsetting approaches generally use metrics that measure habitat condition. Despite their widespread use few studies have evaluated the performance of habitat-based offset metrics or compared them with other metrics. Consequently, there is little evidence supporting their effectiveness for ensuring biodiversity persistence long-term. Here, we compared the performance of several biodiversity offsetting metrics by simulating development and restoration within the Hunter Region of New South Wales. Development impacts were measured using four metrics: 1) area only; 2) condition only; 3) area x habitat suitability, 4) condition x habitat suitability. We quantified the effect of each metric by linking offset simulations with population viability models to asses persistence of three species; squirrel gliders (Petaurus norfolcensis), powerful owls (Ninox strenua) and Northern Brown Bandicoots (Isoodon macrourus). Our results demonstrate that no net loss and even net gains could be achieved when offsetting performance was assessed in terms of the amount of suitable habitat available. However, gains in suitable habitat did not translate through to species persistence. All four metrics failed to account for the impacts of development when offsetting was assessed in terms of predicted population trajectories. Achieving a no net loss when we are concerned with ensuring persistence, does not seem to be possible with the standard offsetting metrics even when considering species’ habitat suitability. Ensuring species persistence requires that population dynamics are explicitly accounted for in offsetting metrics.

The BioBanking Assessment Methodology (BBAM) (DECC 2008) was developed by the NSW Government to assess biodiversity values (including composition, structure and function of ecosystems) at development and BioBank (conservation) sites, and measure the loss or gain in these values. This method is often employed to monitor biodiversity values over time, particularly in the mining sector. At BioBank or Biodiversity Offset sites, the BBAM assesses the potential ‘gain’ over time from standardised management actions (i.e. controlling grazing, weeds, erosion and fire; managing human disturbance; retention of regrowth and remnant vegetation, rocks and fallen timber; and revegetation), but is it sensitive enough to detect changes over short periods of time? I will present a number of case studies where the BBAM has been applied to assess a baseline ‘biodiversity value’ and determine whether the expected ‘gain’ in these values can be measured over periods of 5-10 years.

Biodiversity offset policies in Australia have been simultaneously described as world-leading, rigorous but, also as largely ineffective, inadequately resourced and as a missed opportunity. Typically built upon policy goals of ‘no net loss’ to environmental values, biodiversity offset policies have emerged in all Australian states, territories and at the Commonwealth level. The promise of many biodiversity offset programs is to attempt to balance the, often, competing needs of environmental conservation and economic growth. This paper draws from a historical analysis of four case studies – Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Commonwealth – across a 20-year time span and asks: what are the drivers behind biodiversity offset policy emergence, design and evolution?

Exploring this question, this paper engages with government policy documents, FOI requests, and interviews with experts and public servants and argues that there is a deficiency in historical research mapping the policy design process. This deficiency has resulted in there being little ‘policy learning’ occurring which translates into the development of new policies built upon importing existing policy designs with limited critical evaluation of the imported policy’s design process. The persistence of biodiversity offset policies that include calculation errors, exemptions for certain landclearing, and a lack of transparency may be undermining the capacity of the policies to achieve their goals. A consequence is that we see native vegetation and the already fragmented habitat of many protected species continue to be destroyed upon the uncertain promise of a biodiversity offset.

Kenya hosts unique forest ecosystems characterized by high biodiversity and high threat from human interventions. This project aimed to assess species diversity and local management perceptions in three forest biodiversity hotspots to develop conservation approaches that take into account local livelihood needs. Field work was conducted jointly by German and Kenyan Universities in a semi-arid riparian forest landscape, the coastal Arabuko-Sokoke forest and the Taita Hills cloud forest. Interdisciplinary teams collected data on woody plant, butterfly and bird diversity in natural forest, managed forest and on agricultural land and conducted surveys and interviews with local farmers, civil society and government officials. In all study areas, high dependency of the local population on subsistence agriculture, fuel wood and timber undermined the enforcement of formal forest conservation measures. There was a sharp divide between the remaining natural forest characterized by high species diversity, including endemic and threatened species, and the surrounding agricultural areas that supported fewer species, and especially fewer specialized species. In the Taita Hills for example, 80% of all tree individuals on agricultural land were exotic, mainly Grevillea and Eucalyptus, with negative impact on ecosystem quality. Conservation measures must be tailored to the particular cultural and ecological circumstances in each area. Generally, pressure on the natural forest can be reduced through interventions that improve local livelihoods and the ecological quality of the landscape matrix, e.g., agroforestry systems with indigenous tree species. Moreover, enhanced communication and collaboration between governmental and community organizations is required to clarify forest use rights and benefit-sharing.