Land

Native vegetation

Biodiversity benefits of vegetation enhancement

One of the objectives of programs such as the Natural Heritage Trust is to improve biodiversity by supporting activities that enhance native vegetation such as tree planting, weed removal and fencing of native bush to control grazing. Are these on-ground activities useful ways to protect and improve biodiversity? How do we plan and implement new on-ground activities that are most beneficial to biodiversity?

Biodiversity Benefits Framework

The Australian Government Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts and the CSIRO, in consultation with the Biodiversity Benefits Task Group have developed the Biodiversity Benefits Framework as one way of addressing these questions. The framework is designed to:

  1. Provide a way of designing a monitoring program to assess the biodiversity benefits of past and current vegetation enhancement projects.
  2. Provide a way of designing new vegetation enhancement projects that have clear objectives, clear expected outcomes and tightly integrated monitoring and assessment procedures.

This framework is not a recipe or an alternative to existing planning, monitoring and evaluation procedures. Rather, it is one way of working through the many complex issues involved in assessing the biodiversity benefits of past projects and designing new ones. The framework may prove useful for catchment authorities, landcare groups and individual land managers to think about the concept of biodiversity, identify threatening processes, select appropriate enhancement activities, predict expected benefits and design ways to monitor the expected benefits of enhancement activities.

The framework was applied to a series of seven case studies, which demonstrated how it could be used to assess biodiversity benefits of on-ground works. The case studies also demonstrated the importance of collecting spatial data about a project in order to be able to accurately assess the impact of the project over a long-term timescale. To aid groups in determining what data should be collected a draft set of suggested minimum data specifications has been developed.

Mapping of Vegetation Enhancement Activities

More recently, this work was extended to operationalise the mapping methodology developed for the seven case studies. This project mapped on-ground activities covering 216,379 ha at 691 sites across six different landscapes.  In addition to primary data collection, this project developed mapping and attribute data collection protocols and tools that can be utilised by community groups, agencies or contractors to assist in mapping, inventory and assessing investments in on-ground vegetation enhancement activities.

More information

Revegetation along Campaspe River, John Baker

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