What is Environmental Stewardship?
Environmental Stewardship is part of the Caring for our Country initiative that aims to maintain and/or improve the condition and extent of targeted matters of National Environmental Significance under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, in particular endangered ecological communities.
Environmental Stewardship uses competitive auctions through which eligible private land managers can bid to provide a range of agreed management activities to protect, rehabilitate and improve particular ecological communities. Eligible land managers include farmers, Indigenous communities, and other managers of private freehold and leasehold land.
Successful land managers are contracted to manage nationally endangered ecological communities on their land and can receive funding for activities that are additional to their normal legislative responsibilities, for up to 15 years.
Relevant management activities could include:
- reducing stocking and grazing intensity
- reducing fertilizer use
- expanding weed management
- undertaking or expanding replanting of native species (relevant to the ecological community)
Program outcomes
The Environmental Stewardship program provides long-term opportunities for farmers to get involved in conservation on their land and recognises the vital role our farmers play in biodiversity conservation and the stewardship of our natural environment.
Program outcomes include to:
- improve habitat across the landscape
- increase viability, integrity and buffers to high quality remnants for ecological communities
- improve the long-term protection of nationally endangered species and ecological communities
- improve the condition and function of ecological communities
- create enduring changes in land manager attitudes and behaviours towards environmental protection and sustainable land management practices.
Further information is available in the Environmental Stewardship Strategic Framework.
Environmental Stewardship projects
The Environmental Stewardship Program is delivered through discreet Projects, which target different matters of NES in selected regions, using specific market based funding rounds.
Multiple Ecological Communities Project
In 2010-11 Environmental Stewardship will deliver the Multiple Ecological Communities Project in New South Wales and South Australia targeting a number of ecological communities through a single process in each project area.
Expressions of interest for the Multiple Ecological Communities Project in New South Wales and in South Australia are now open.
Further information can be found at these pages
- Multiple Ecological Communities Project in New South Wales
- Multiple Ecological Communities Project in South Australia
Box Gum Grassy Woodland Project
The first target for Environmental Stewardship was the white box, yellow box, Blakely's red gum grassy woodland and derived native grasslands ecological community (box gum grassy woodland) which extends from Queensland through New South Wales to Victoria through the wheat-sheep belt.
This critically endangered ecological community has been reduced to less than five per cent of its original extent and occurs as remnants of varying quality on productive agricultural land, where, without active management, it is still at risk.
All funding rounds for Box Gum Grassy Woodland Project are now closed.
Evaluation and monitoring
The Australian National University has been contracted by the Australian Government to undertake an ecological benchmark and monitoring survey for the Box Gum Grassy Woodland Project. More than 125 farms will be part of the study.
Further information
Other market based approaches
Key
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