In a first-of-its-kind initiative, seven landholders from the Murray-Riverina are now protecting, enhancing and extending patches of important native vegetation while generating Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) with restorative plantings and diversifying their on-farm incomes.
788 hectares of threatened native habitat has been protected under conservation agreements with the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust, with an additional 141 hectares registered with the Australian Government’s Clean Energy Regulator to restore, connect and extend habitat through environmental plantings projects under the ACCU Scheme.
Using local seed supplied by Murray Native Seed Services, these plantings will replicate and extend the protected patches of Murray threatened woodlands, providing new pathways for threatened animals like squirrel gliders and woodland birds to move through otherwise highly modified agricultural landscapes.
Landholders who have taken up the opportunity can earn and sell ACCUs generated from the environmental planting projects, while receiving annual payments to manage conservation areas under funded agreements with the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust. All areas will be protected forever under the in-perpetuity conservation agreements. Landholders are responsible for ensuring their ACCU Scheme project complies with the requirements of the environmental plantings method. ACCUs will only be issued when additional abatement is achieved.
Landholders are receiving support to plant high integrity native vegetation that expands existing patches of threatened Box Gum Grassy Woodlands, Inland Grey Box Woodlands and Sandhill Pine Woodlands.
"The local landholders who have entered into agreements with us, and the Clean Energy Regulator, have signed up to planting a diverse mix of local plant species," NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust Regional Manager Dieuwer Reynders said.
"Landholders will be able to earn carbon credits while these plants are growing and drawing carbon out of the atmosphere. When the plants mature, the sites will be protected forever under conservation agreements, ensuring the carbon remains in the landscape and provides exceptional biodiversity benefits in a highly modified landscape," she said.
"This project has had the benefit of drawing on the expertise of local landholders and experts at Murray Native Seed Services who provide locally sourced seeds in their plantings.
The ecological communities to be protected provide critical habitat for threatened flora and fauna such as squirrel gliders, sand-hill spider orchids, superb parrots, bush stone-curlews, pink-tailed worm-lizards and many threatened woodland birds.
For conservation agreement-holder and landowner Judy Frankenberg it's a commitment that extends existing decades of work on her property and protects it for the future.
"I've put something in here that will last forever and it's in-perpetuity, it's really wonderful, and it's contributed to the ecological values around this district," Judy said.
"The carbon planting will add to the existing plantings and will increase the value of that area enormously just because the block of native vegetation will be larger, and the bigger the area of vegetation the more diversity, the more species can live in it."
"It's been really helpful to have the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust staff to show me the way and give me an idea of how to do it, and really, I know a fair bit about the ecology myself anyway, but for someone who doesn't have that there's plenty of support to help them sort out exactly how they want to do what they want to get out of it to get this wonderful diversity back into their landscape."
The Restoring Murray Woodlands project is the first time the NSW Government has used environmental plantings under the ACCU scheme to expand on the private land conservation network.
The NSW Government will invest $6.31 million into the conservation areas. Funding has been set aside in the NSW Government's Biodiversity Conservation Fund for private landholders to manage the newly protected sites ranging in size from 45 hectares to 272 hectares in-perpetuity.
"The Restoring Murray Woodlands biodiversity and carbon initiative is the first of its kind in NSW, creating a conservation area with both existing patches of protected vegetation and strategic carbon plantings to connect and enhance these threatened ecological communities," NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust CEO Erin Giuliani.
"Coupling private land conservation with high integrity restoration plantings to produce carbon credits is key to increasing the extent, quality, and connectivity of the remaining remnants of threatened woodlands in this part of NSW."
For more information about how the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust supports conservation on private land, visit bct.nsw.gov.au
All media enquiries: Mindy Greenwood, media@bct.nsw.gov.au