Biodiversity and ecosystem function (BEF) studies have shown the number of species within a community impact ecosystem function. However, information obtained through BEF studies is limited because community assembly components are not considered. The Community Assembly and Functioning of Ecosystems (CAFE) framework uses an ecological application of the Price equation to separate the impacts of changes in species richness from changes in community structure. This new statistical method has not been widely tested, especially in fire prone ecosystems. Wildfire plays an important role in many Australian ecosystems, but wildfire regimes and severity are predicted to change. This could change the proportion and identity of species present and their functioning, altering overall ecosystem function. Changes in function could also change primary productivity, threatening habitat and limiting carbon sequestration. We used the CAFE framework to understand how a recent wildfire in the Blue Mountains National Park altered the abundance, composition and functioning of vegetation. This will identify which species are restoring function and are of high conservation value. Phenocams were also used to quantify the effect of wildfire on the productivity and phenophase of vegetation. Here we show that wildfire changed community composition and lowered ecosystem function. High functioning species were lost, and the functioning of resident species was lower in burnt communities. Ongoing surveys will identify temporal shifts in abundance, composition and function, and track the trajectory of this change. We will also identify key species driving these changes, the impact on primary productivity and implications for conservation.

Australia’s forest and woodland birds are threatened by habitat loss and degradation, particularly through the disproportionate loss of habitat on better-quality soils. In a disappearing landscape it is critical to know what parts of the landscape must be preserved to support or recover the remaining avifauna. This study surveyed an assemblage of threatened woodland birds and determined that they preferentially nested close to the lowest landscape contours on the more productive and mesic soils. The location of 413 nests were mapped using a Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) with sub-metre accuracy. Nests were significantly clustered around the lowest landscape contours. In addition, using 70 point counts along 7 transects, a gradient of increasing abundance and species richness of woodland birds was detected as the lowest contour was approached. All results support the hypothesis that low-lying areas with more mesic soils and more productive vegetation must be preferentially reserved and or restored.

Biodiversity is under threat worldwide, with more than 1,700 Australian species and species groups at risk of extinction. Threats to biodiversity are related to human activities, which raises an opportunity: how can we better involve the community to care for the environment? There is increased recognition that communities have strong role in protecting biodiversity: the Australian Biodiversity Strategy calls for 25% increase in the number of Australians participating in biodiversity conservation. Despite this, there is a lack of clarity about what types of actions should be prioritised. To address this challenge we have developed an empirical behavioural prioritization framework for biodiversity actions – the Impact-Likelihood Matrix.

Stage 1 involves ranking actions according to perceived impact. Initial expert interviews generated a final list of 28 conservation-related actions, including on-ground, civic, and household behaviours. Conservation experts completed a survey that quantified relative impact using best-worst scaling methods. Preliminary data is available for 115 participants (62% terrestrial experts, 14% marine/aquatic, 24% mixed). Top five actions involved on-ground or civic engagement: included: voting for the environment, restoration activities (priority and local areas), purchasing land for protection and restoration. Stage 2 involves ranking according to likelihood of uptake. An online community survey (currently in progress) quantify effort and willingness involved in performing each behaviour. Quantifying impact and likelihood provide complementary ways to prioritize community actions. We discuss the differential influence on each metric in the prioritization process, and how behaviour change opportunities may differ across social-ecological settings.

Southeast Asia represents is outstanding for its high biodiversity and endemism but also of great conservation concern. While land-use change and environmental degradation are well advanced throughout most of the Indonesian archipelago, Indonesian New Guinea (Papua) is still home to an extensive remaining forest cover. While being one of our planet’s last great wilderness areas, Papua is now at a crossroads between major investments into conservation actions and severe environmental degradation. While recent political momentum in form of a government declaration aims to conserve 70% of Papua, the region increasingly moves into the focus of national development agendas. Lately, Papua is becoming a new frontier of palm oil development and other land-uses, accelerating deforestation rates and potential jeopardizing ambitious conservation targets. Here, we explore the current status of the protected area network and compare the representation of elevational belts and ecoregions within the network to the representation of designated land-use concessions. We further evaluate opportunities and pitfalls for conservation efforts in Papua and provide a fact-check on the feasibility of new conservation targets. Based on our assessment, we conclude that drastic action is required to reach the proposed pledges. This includes a fundamental review and restructuring of existing, but undeveloped land-use concessions to reach an equal representation of all habitats within the protected area network. The current situation in Papua provides a narrow window of opportunity to design a new large-scale and science-based haven of conservation to prevent considerable biodiversity loss in an increasingly pressured unique environment.

Assessments under WA’s Environmental Protection Act 1986 are supported by large amounts of biodiversity information, including species observations, vegetation maps and habitat maps. The Index of Biodiversity Surveys for Assessments (IBSA), a new WA program launched in 2018, captures this information and provides a platform for voluntarily sharing it. Before IBSA this information was siloed and not re-used.

To date 608 biodiversity surveys from throughout WA have been captured in IBSA. Metadata are published for every survey and for 353 surveys raw data and/or full-text reports have been voluntarily shared by proponents. This information is accessible to anybody at no cost.

IBSA is the first program of its kind in Australia. It is a product of collaboration between State and Commonwealth governments, non-government organisations, industry and environmental practitioners.

Stakeholders support IBSA; in a 2019 survey, 81% of respondents stated either that it is ‘important’ or ‘very important’ for improving environmental impact assessments. Many believe the IBSA requirements should extend further; 42% stated that biodiversity information from assessments should always be shared, regardless of proponents’ wishes.

IBSA benefits ecologists and other users by unlocking otherwise inaccessible data and grey literature that can inform both small-scale, e.g. population ecology, wildlife management and local impact assessment, and large-scale studies, e.g. distribution modelling, taxonomic investigation, climate change ecology and cumulative impact assessment. IBSA is a springboard for other biodiversity data initiatives, including marine data capture, curated databases and analytics services.

Here we present key results from IBSA’s first year and outline potential future initiatives.

Offsetting schemes are usually important to avoid biodiversity loss in environmental policy implementation on private lands. However, its practical definition may be a challenging and conflicting target. Particularly, offsetting may increase biodiversity gains, but also restrict the available areas for trade, raising the compensation costs. We developed a dynamic tool to balance environmental and economic demands for native vegetation compensation and applied this approach for the implementation of the Brazilian Native Vegetation Protection Law in Brazil. The tool is based on two compensation strategies: like for like (trade for similar areas according to abiotic variables) and trading up (trade for areas with high biodiversity value). The dynamic tool allows the comparison between ecological similarity gain and land offer according to the degree of ecological similarity required, i.e., the feasibility of compensation implementing according to a balance between demand and supply. For this purpose, the tool automatically plots the trade-off in selecting the appropriate number of subdivisions: minimizing the heterogeneity of the abiotic characteristics or facilitating the balance between native vegetation surpluses and deficits in the same similar region. The tool also allows the inclusion of alternatives for compensation: inclusion of areas for trading up or restoration of pasturelands with low agricultural suitability. Both strategies increase the supply for compensation, improving its feasibility of implementation. Decision makers can use the dynamic tool as a negotiation framework to define the level of ecological equivalence required. The proposed approach is flexible and can evaluate different compensation schemes.

Biodiversity indicators are important conservation tools that show policy makers where and how biodiversity is changing, from local to global scales. In order for an indicator to effectively support conservation action, they need accurately represent real world change, and also be sensitive to policy measures. Global scale indicators like the Red List Index and Living Planet Index are used to measure progress against international targets for biodiversity. Their use is often also mirrored at the national scale, making them some of the most widely adopted indicators in the world. Despite the widespread adoption (and subsequent influence on global conservation efforts) of these global indicators, few have been rigorously tested for their efficacy. In addition, existing indicators focus on species identity, without addressing ecosystem function. Using the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem as a study site, we used the Madingley mechanistic ecosystem model to undertake the analysis. We use the modelled output to test four global biodiversity indicators: The Red List Index, the Living Planet Index, the Biodiversity Intactness Index and Number of species extinctions, and a number of commonly used marine ecosystem function indicators. We tested each indicator for their ability to reflect different policy scenarios, and their sensitivity to different geographic, taxonomic and time-based sampling constraints. We found that some indicators flagged underlying change to the ecosystem more effectively than others, and that marine ecosystem indicators provide a potential opportunity to address the current gap in metrics of ecosystem function.

The sustainability of human life on Earth depends upon the integrity of the relationship between humanity and nature. Nature supports humanity, and knowledge and understanding of how nature works form the foundation of ecological literacy. It is ecological literacy that underpins our capacity as humans to make well-informed decisions about how to live in sustainable ways. It is therefore of concern that levels of ecological knowledge and understanding within many contemporary human communities may be too low to enable effective decision making in support of sustainable human settlement. Our concern led to an exploration of the concept of ecological literacy and the assessment of a sample of South Australian adults. We found that while ecological literacy can vary significantly in correlation with a range of socio-demographic and psychographic characteristics, no one factor is necessarily more critical than another. Based on this work we have identified five pathways for growing eco-literate communities. While the patterns and drivers of ecological knowledge and understanding naturally vary between cultures and communities, our findings certainly invite serious consideration for a society, and indeed a world, that aspires to cultivate informed citizenry, leadership and governance with capacity for building sustainable human settlements.

Despite global agreements like the Achi Biodiversity Targets or Sustainable Development Goals which aim to protect biodiversity and simultaneously secure livelihoods, little progress has been made in reaching these aims. The key role of biodiversity in securing human well-being is often not recognized or not seen as priority - instead short-term economic profits which benefit a few are prioritized. Where local livelihoods rely on resources of protected areas for their immediate survival, top-down enforced biodiversity conservation not only increases social inequality, hunger and poverty, but regularly fails to succeed. By interviewing 51 predominantly Malagasy experts from various institutions, we identify key knowledge gaps to better protect biodiversity and simultaneously ensure well-being of the local poor by focusing on a priority conservation area in one of the world’s poorest countries: the dry deciduous forests of western Madagascar. The top 10 knowledge gaps include four political, three ecological, three socio-economic and two general ones. Two political knowledge gaps addressing strategies to improve law enforcement and reduce corruption ranked highest, followed by an ecological knowledge gap concerning appropriate restoration and a socio-economic one regarding economic benefits local small-holder farmers gain from biodiversity. The general knowledge gap perceived as most important addresses the need for the identification of strategies to improve long-term funding. We link the here identified top 10 knowledge gaps to the Sustainable Development Goals, Aichi Biodiversity Targets and 2°C-target of the Paris Climate Agreement and discuss why these gaps are considered a priority to help decision-makers and funding organisations streamlining resources.

Species translocations are increasingly being recognized as critical to the conservation of many vulnerable taxa worldwide. Widespread population declines and the difficulty of controlling threats such as introduced predators has led to the establishment of ‘sanctuaries’, usually taking the form of large fenced reserves or offshore islands. In Australia, many of the most vulnerable species are digging mammals with potentially important roles as ecosystem engineers; these species have therefore been targeted for conservation and reintroduction programs. However, there are many gaps in our understanding of how digging animals impact ecosystem processes, and reintroductions often proceed without consideration of the potential ecological consequences. Sanctuaries also impose significant limitations and risks, which may be magnified when the species being reintroduced is an ecosystem engineer that is expected to have widespread impacts on the ecosystem.

We held a workshop with Australian and international experts on ecosystem engineer research and conservation. This workshop aimed to develop recommendations for planning and management of reintroductions. We argue that sanctuaries provide a unique opportunity to undertake research and education on ecosystem engineers. We recommend greater clarity about the goals of species reintroductions to inform species selection and how to manage potential impacts. There is a need to incorporate experimental design in the early stages of sanctuary development and establish appropriate baselines, controls, and replication. Ongoing monitoring is vital to recognize and manage unexpected consequences. These actions will lead to improved management of sanctuaries and success of future reintroductions of ecosystem engineers.

Ecosystems are highly variable and dynamic across space and time as a result of landscape-scale disturbance and recovery processes overlaying climatic and edaphic gradients. However, these dynamic processes have not been captured in a systematic way to inform ecosystem classification, instead current systems assume ecosystems are represented by a static set of attributes representing an ‘old growth’ or ‘climax’ type. The Australian Ecosystem Models framework (AusEcoModels) has synthesised and summarised scientific knowledge of ecosystem dynamics and captured this knowledge in a set of 48 conceptual archetype models. This set of models provides a new disturbance-based, dynamic classification of Australia’s terrestrial ecosystems. The AusEcoModels framework describes a methodology for using high-level archetype models to describe ecosystem reference states, and transitions to alternative states, resulting from recent and transformative anthropogenic-driven (exogenous) disturbances. Following an introduction to the AusEcoModels framework in the sister presentation by Dickson et al. “Dynamic ecosystem models to improve decision making and support continuous learning: An Australian Government perspective”, we describe the application of this methodology for the development of state and transition models. We do this through a series of case studies including (1) management of ecological communities in the Howard Sand Plains, Northern Territory site of conservation significance; (2) development of rehabilitation trajectories for Ranger mine site; and (3) the conceptualisation of ecosystem condition and ecosystem extent accounts for protected areas. These case studies illustrate the utility of the framework for monitoring and evaluating natural resource management activities, against a background of dynamic ecosystem behaviour.

Biodiversity offsetting is increasingly relied upon to reconcile conflicts between development and biodiversity conservation. Notwithstanding the many critiques of how offsets are designed, implemented, and governed in reality, even best-practice offsets suffer a central drawback: achievement of 'no net loss' of biodiversity is considered only relative to a counterfactual scenario, not in absolute terms. Thus, even if the net *impact* of an offset is no net loss, the net *outcome* is generally still a net loss over time. We present an alternative approach: target-based ecological compensation, wherein ecological compensation is designed to achieve net outcomes at the project level that are aligned with jurisdiction-level biodiversity conservation goals or targets. The framework helps clarify the role that different types of ecological compensation can play in contributing to jurisdictional-level targets, and helps resolve ambiguity around the concept of 'no net loss'. Using several case-studies, we compare target-based compensation with counterfactual-based biodiversity offsetting approaches, and examine the benefits for conservation, industry and government of moving to such an approach – but also discuss several important risks. Target-based compensation represents an opportunity to ensure that schemes to compensate for biodiversity losses contribute to, rather than detract from, the achievement of broader biodiversity conservation goals.