Forico Pty Limited manages about 173,000 hectares of land in Tasmania. Management aims to maintain and/or enhance existing natural values and biodiversity assets for conservation purposes. This is often achieved through collaboration with ecological experts and researchers to ensure appropriate scientifically robust principles and operational prescriptions are applied for future management of the natural values. Ptunarra brown butterfly Oreixenica ptunarra is endemic to the highland Poa grasslands of Tasmania. Predation by the introduced wasp Vespula germanica has been identified as a major threat to the species. In 2017 Forico initiated a study to identify options to reduce the impact of wasps on butterflies at its Surrey Hills plantation estate in northwest Tasmania. The study has revealed that the abundance of wasps in native grasslands is related to the age of adjacent eucalypt plantations. Newly established and young plantations support a very high abundance of wasps, and wasp nests, and are the likely source of wasps predating butterflies in nearby grasslands. Results suggest that the establishment of dense forest buffers and control of wasps in plantations may reduce the abundance of wasps in adjacent grasslands. Trials to control wasps are underway and effective techniques may be applied more widely to protect populations of butterflies across the plantation estate.

Large-scale reforestation of pasture can sustain and restore biodiversity and ecosystem functions involving carbon and water, but there are both ecological and social barriers to achieving this. Overcoming them requires long-term partnerships involving practitioners, land managers, and researchers, plus a willingness to risk unexpected outcomes. The "Kickstart trials" tested new techniques of catalysing rainforest regeneration on retired pasture in Queensland's wet tropical uplands; as an alternative to costly intensive tree-planting. Beginning as one component of a larger funded collaboration (10 organisations), the initial kickstart project idea came from stakeholders, the specific approach and methods were developed by researchers and practitioners, researchers led the design and monitoring, and many players contributed to implementation.
Realistically, many years are needed to obtain and evaluate evidence of tree recruitment and likely cost-effectiveness, and the project's continuation beyond the original three-year funding depended on commitment by key individuals and organisations, goodwill, personal networks, in-kind contributions, and shoestring funds from several sources. Analyses and communications have involved researchers and practitioners, and have included scientific publication and presentation, community newsletter articles, and field days. Eight years on, we have learnt a lot, from both surprise events and predicted outcomes, about what worked, what didn't, some of the ecological reasons for this, and how the approaches could be modified, scaled up and further tested. Conclusion: the menu of evidence-based practice and ecological knowledge in biodiversity conservation and NRM could be expanded through more researcher-practitioner collaborations, but this needs a tailored funding scheme, and a better-integrated landscape restoration industry.

April 2018 saw the re-introduction of indigenous burning to privately-owned native grasslands in Tasmania; a landscape from which Aboriginal people have been alienated for over 150 years. This was made more unusual by the coupling of these burns with fire ecology research by University-based scientists. Importantly, the research was not an examination of Aboriginal burning practices, but focused on how fire, herbivores and plants interact. This important distinction was one of the reasons that this unintuitive collaboration between a farmer, scientists and the Aboriginal Community has been highly successful. Such collaborations are challenging, but also exciting, and will be vital to reincorporating Indigenous fire use in the modern Australian landscape.

Co-development of research questions by ecologists and land management practitioners is crucial for effective conservation land management, however it is often overlooked.

Ecologists often assume they know what land managers perceive as crucial knowledge gaps and can also fail to effectively communicate research results to practitioners. This lack of engagement can reduce the application of research to improve land management actions.

In 2017, in consultation with ecologists, local land managers and conservation groups, the Conservation Ecology Centre established the Otways Threatened Species Research Network. The aim of the Network was to support researchers studying threatened species in our region, with a strong focus on engaging with land managers prior to developing studies and communicating results. The Network, an unofficial group of more than 150 researchers, practitioners and conservationists, now holds an annual conference for the direct communication of results to land managers.

This presentation will outline how the Network was established and will summarise the various research partnerships that the Network has supported. A collaborative research program that complements the Otway Ark, a native mammal recovery program, established as a result of concern from land managers regarding crucial knowledge gaps for effective invasive predator management, will be specifically discussed. This program, drawing on the resources of several research institutions and government agencies, includes investigations of how cat abundance changes with fox control, how DNA can be used to track individual foxes throughout the knockdown period of a baiting program, and how threatened mammal species respond to predator control.

Necessity is the mother of invention. In this presentation we share a case study of how a problem threatening the integrity of a predator-proof fenced reserve has given rise to a multi-disciplinary collaboration to seek a solution. Arid Recovery is a 123 km2 fenced reserve in northern South Australia which protects five reintroduced threatened species and is a hub of research into ecological restoration. First established in 1997, the 80 km of specialised fencing is ageing and corrosion has emerged as a major challenge to the long-term upkeep of the reserve, with netting in contact with the ground needing to be replaced every 5-10 years. Seeking a solution, we have built a team of soil scientists, metallurgists and product engineers to understand the soil properties, develop new fencing products and test them. Collaborators come from CSIRO, the University of Adelaide and Waratah Fencing Products. I will share perspectives on how researchers have been engaged in this applied problem, and the project’s goals for communicating our findings to managers facing similar problems.

We know that the biodiversity outcomes of revegetation can vary depending on their spatial location. Revegetation practitioners wanting to achieve the most value for biodiversity look to science to help decide where in the landscape to replant, but ecological knowledge is often difficult to apply at local spatial scales and in the context of fairly small projects. Furthermore, there are often numerous prioirisation approaches for specific objectives, but these are rarely integrated into a single analysis of the relative, overall biodiversity value of revegetation across the suite of potential replanting sites.
To support on-ground decision-making, scientists worked together with the regional NRM body from the Wet Tropics region of Australia and local revegetation practitioners, community conservation groups and conservation management and planning authorities to develop a systematic approach to prioritising locations for revegetation based on a range of conservation objectives.
This work has developed an integrated prioritisation for revegetation to improve ecological connectivity at different scales, provide habitat under current and future climatic conditions and maximise carbon sequestration. The participatory methods used to develop this prioritisation enabled the approach to be cross-checked against local knowledge and experience, as well as being consistent with ecological understanding.
We describe how this approach incorporates information about feasibility and other factors relevant to on-ground outcomes, and has sufficient flexibility to adapt to the preferences of decision-makers, or the shifting focus of funding bodies. We also discuss the different priorities and perspectives between (and among) scientists, planners, and practitioners.

Twenty percent of land in Canberra’s nature reserves is an environmental offset, intended to achieve conservation gains to compensate for the impact of urban development. The ACT Government has committed to manage this land to benefit nationally threatened species and ecological communities. The onus to deliver these commitments is pressing, with legal and reputational ramifications for failure. To manage this risk, the ACT Government has formed an in-house transdisciplinary team to manage offset sites under an adaptive management framework. Our team is made up of ecologists, restoration practitioners, planners, rangers, and field and GIS officers. Together, we have responsibility for all parts of the adaptive management cycle, including planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. We will present on how our team collaborates to implement evidence-based land management to deliver on conservation commitments. Reaching this stage has involved initiatives for open communication and the development of new policies and practices. One such initiative has been developing an Adaptive Management Strategy to provide a basis from which decisions on offset management can be made. This strategy explicitly addresses the uncertainty inevitable in undertaking offset management by describing how, and when, new information is incorporated into decision-making and implementation processes. Via a process of monitoring, evaluation, and review, the strategy provides a framework to inform the planning and investment of offset site management. Our story of what we have learnt, achieved, and intend for the future highlights how the opportunities generated by having an in-house transdisciplinary team translates into improved onground biodiversity outcomes.

Old trees support features not found in young trees (e.g., hollows, exposed perches and large quantities of seed or nectar) and therefore represent important or exclusive habitat for several species. One study found that large eucalypts exclusively support 29% of native bird species. Another found that every additional five large eucalypts in an urban park increased the number of native birds by 150%. However, we predict that mature eucalypts could be completely lost from urban landscapes by the end of this century due to: a high rate of removal in greenfield residential developments; routine removal from existing urban areas for safety reasons; and insufficient recruitment of new trees. In a collaboration between researchers, government and a company developing 11,500 new residential dwellings we sought to demonstrate how mature trees can be managed sustainably within urban landscapes. The retention of mature trees was considered early in planning. The selection of trees for retention was based on the number of mature trees that would be perpetuated in the long-term rather than evaluating trees in isolation. Reducing risk associated with old trees focused on removing targets around trees rather than removing the trees. And adequate space was retained around mature trees for recruitment. This has resulted in the retention of 81% of mature trees which compares with a retention rate of 28% in nearby residential developments. Over the long-term we predict this development will provide 8x the number of large eucalypts and 3x the number of hollow-bearing trees of typical residential developments.

The first goal of the City of Melbourne’s Nature in the City Strategy is to create a more diverse, connected, and resilient natural environment. Key actions in the Strategy include improving ecological connectivity and increasing understorey habitat by 20%. There is strong evidence that increasing the volume of understorey vegetation in urban landscapes and the percentage of it that is native has positive effects on a range of fauna. However, moving away from ubiquitous urban landscapes of trees and mown grass to more complex understorey vegetation is challenging, particularly along streets which are the most common public landscapes. Complex native streetscape vegetation is currently almost completely absent and is expensive and difficult to establish due to harsh conditions, competing demand for space, and the horticultural limitations of many native plant species. These goals, constraints and unknowns lay the perfect foundation for a partnership based around a philosophy of learning whilst doing. The City needs to deliver strategic objectives that is doesn’t fully know how to do yet; researchers seek to learn more about ecological responses to changes in the urban environment and the capacity and practicalities of implementing them to benefit biodiversity. In this talk we will discuss how the City of Melbourne is using capital works programs to design and build new streetscapes collaboratively with researchers and test the effectiveness of these interventions for bees, butterflies and birds using a Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) experimental approach to learn and adapt.