First environmental accounts registered with Accounting for Nature

One of the four planting projects that have been registered. Photo credit Annette Ruzicka.

In a first for Greening Australia, four environmental planting carbon projects in New South Wales and Victoria have been successfully registered with world-leading natural capital accounting standard Accounting for Nature.

Together, this means 213 hectares of restoration will have baseline monitoring completed using globally-recognised rigorous scientific methods.

Greening Australia CEO Heather Campbell said: “We’ve been rebuilding nature in collaboration with partners for decades, so the standard of our work is known and trusted. But for our own learning and development, and to show investors they can count on us, it’s important that we can hold our restoration to a global standard.

“By registering these four projects as environmental accounts, we’re establishing baseline data that enables us to monitor the condition of assets like native vegetation and bird species over time, and to adapt our management of the restoration based on changes we observe.”

All four of these projects have been funded as part of the Nestlé Global Reforestation Program, which has planted over 3 million trees in Australia in partnership between Nestlé, Greening Australia, Canopy and One Tree Planted.

Greening Australia, Nestlé and One Tree Planted partners during a site visit to a project (now a registered environmental account) in Omeo Valley.

Working in collaboration with local landholders and communities in New South Wales and Victoria, the partners aim for the plantings to draw down carbon emissions from the atmosphere, as well as supporting clear co-benefits, such as rebuilding habitat for native animals and improving the long-term productivity of the land.

Keep reading to learn more about the registered environmental accounts.

Big Sky Birds (AU00084)

Location: South Eastern Highlands, NSW
Area: 58 hectares
Asset: Woodland birds
Method: Woodland Bird Method (F-02)

Working alongside a private landholder, this Yass River ecological revegetation project focuses on restoring grazed land to Southern Tableland Grassy Box Woodland, a critical habitat for woodland birds and other fauna. By reintroducing locally appropriate native vegetation, including diverse Acacia and Eucalyptus species characteristic of this ecosystem, the project aims to enhance habitat connectivity and support the recovery of woodland bird populations. The project’s success will be monitored using the Woodland Bird Method (F-02) to measure changes in bird species composition alongside improvements in the vegetation community over time.

Planting lines pattern a hillside at Big Sky. We’ll measure the impact of restoring native vegetation cover here for woodland birds.

Jasper Valley Native Vegetation (AU00085)

Location: Northern Rivers, NSW
Area: 26 hectares
Assets: Native vegetation
Method: CO2 Australia Native Vegetation Econd Method (NV-02)

This project focuses on working with local landholders to restore an area of a property that was historically part of the “Big Scrub”, Australia’s largest lowland subtropical rainforest prior to colonisation. With less than 1% of the Big Scrub remaining today, the restoration aims to rehabilitate areas in alignment with the Lower Richmond Hills Dry-Subtropical Rainforest (PCT3002), a critically endangered vegetation community under the EPBC Act 1999. The project will re-establish canopy species characteristic of this rainforest type to increase the extent of this at-risk vegetation community and support native species. The revegetation will also enhance ecological connectivity by linking the restored areas with an existing riparian zone along the Wilson River on the southern boundary of the property.

Our delivery of this planting site in the NSW Northern Rivers is also supported by the NSW Government.

The Jasper Valley Native Vegetation project features high diversity with over 70 different native species involved in the restoration. Photo credit Clare Douglas.

Allambee Reserve (AU00083)

Location: Strzelecki Ranges, VIC
Area: 20 hectares
Assets: Woodland birds
Method: Woodland Bird Method (F-02)

This privately-owned property is situated in the Strzelecki sub-bioregion of Victoria, within a fragmented production landscape shaped by industrial exotic timber plantations, historical native timber harvesting, and livestock grazing. Historically cleared for agriculture and heavily grazed, the property reflects the broader pattern of land use in the area. It is adjacent to remnant forest that once formed a large, continuous land cover prior to European settlement. We have revegetated part of the property with key native plant species, and the Woodland Bird Method (F-02) will be applied to monitor changes in bird species composition in tandem with shifts in the vegetation community.

In this video, hear more from the landholder Tom Brown and Greening Australia Program Specialist Drew Liepa about the project.

Omeo Valley Plantings (AU00082)

Location: East Gippsland, VIC
Area: 109 hectares
Assets: Native vegetation and aquatic vertebrates
Methods: CO2 Australia Native Vegetation Econd Method (NV-02), EnviroDNA Aquatic Native Vertebrate eDNA Method (F05)

The Omeo Valley Plantings project is an environmental restoration initiative in partnership with local landholders, focused on increasing the presence of native ecological vegetation communities in a previously cleared landscape and providing habitat connectivity for local native species. Another key objective is to enhance water quality in local rivers and catchments through ridge and gully restoration. The project’s location and targeted restoration zones have enabled us to design a monitoring program that can track changes in vegetation community composition and quality at the site level from pre-project baseline over time. We’ll calculate a native vegetation condition score (Econd®) using survey and analysis techniques, as well as applying the EnviroDNA Aquatic Native Vertebrate eDNA Method (F-05).

Young eucalypts can just be seen growing in the foreground of this hilly planting in Omeo Valley, now a registered environmental account.

For more information about the Accounting for Nature methods being used in all these projects, view the method catalogue.

So what’s next? Watch this space – we’ll share more details as these projects progress.
 
Wondering what Accounting for Nature is, what a natural capital accounting standard is, and what all this has to do with repairing nature? This explainer is for you.

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