Worldwide on-the-ground examples of Biodiversity Offsets — Koala Offset in South East Queensland

I am very happy to announce our first on-the ground bio­di­ver­sity off­set exam­ple that is the result of some intense work and exchange. It describes a species off­set for the Koala in Queens­land (Aus­tralia). While we have devel­oped the struc­ture together, Alan Key from Aus­tralian con­sul­tancy Earth­trade, has pro­vided all the con­tent and illus­tra­tions. Many thanks Alan for your time and com­mit­ment. This is a valu­able resource! Hope­fully, oth­ers will fol­low. Please get back with any ideas for exam­ples that could be pre­sented here on the Bio­di­ver­sity Off­sets Blog (for more infor­ma­tion see also my pre­vi­ous post). I am happy to sup­port longer or shorter exam­ples. Don’t hes­i­tate to com­ment on the sug­gested struc­ture and please do also get in touch if you are miss­ing an impor­tant issue that you would like to be included in this (and pos­si­ble other) exam­ple! Your feed­back is greatly appre­ci­ated! Please leave a reply below!

Exam­ple of a dry Euca­lypt for­est — habi­tat for Koala

Sum­mary

Fol­low­ing, the case of an Aus­tralian bio­di­ver­sity off­set is pre­sented, which was trig­gered by the clear­ing of Koala habi­tat at the impact or project site, i.e. a species off­set for the Koala which is listed as an endan­gered ani­mal of national sig­nif­i­cance under the EPBC Act. The devel­oper was con­di­tioned to com­pen­sate for the loss of 67.14 ha of habi­tat crit­i­cal to the sur­vival of the Koala, by secur­ing and man­ag­ing a min­i­mum of 161.11 ha of Koala habi­tat. The details were spec­i­fied in an Off­set Area Man­age­ment Plan (OAMP). The off­set is a legal arrange­ment between three par­ties being the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sented by the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment (DoE), the Devel­oper and, in this instance, a pri­vate land­holder on whose prop­erty the off­set will be secured in per­pe­tu­ity. A con­sul­tancy sup­ports and car­ries out the plan­ning of the off­set. The OAMP is the legal agree­ment between the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment and the devel­oper. The land­holder is bound by a legal con­tract with the devel­oper with regards the mon­e­tary pay­ment amount and sched­ule, for imple­ment­ing the agreed man­age­ment actions within the OAMP, which is bound legally to the prop­erty and is there­fore bind­ing on cur­rent and future owners.

In this case, the land­holder rec­og­nized the prop­erty needed reha­bil­i­tat­ing due to the clear­ing of tim­ber and over­graz­ing of the prop­erty over an extended period result­ing in a degraded ecosys­tem, weed inva­sion and habi­tat degra­da­tion. A base­line assess­ment of the canopy, shrub and ground lay­ers of the open Euca­lypt for­est ecosys­tem (by using the Bio-condition Method­ol­ogy as devel­oped by the Queens­land Herbar­ium) found a con­di­tion of medium with regards the qual­ity of the for­est. The over­all goal is there­for to improve the con­di­tion to a good con­di­tion along with increas­ing the num­ber of habi­tat and for­age trees for the Koala pop­u­la­tion. The man­age­ment regime pro­posed for the off­set area is to enhance the level of pro­tec­tion afforded to exist­ing koala habi­tat through exclu­sion of land man­age­ment prac­tices that are incom­pat­i­ble to achiev­ing a net gain in koala habi­tat qual­ity. Fur­ther, key threat­en­ing processes which could inter­fere with the recov­ery of koala as described by the Draft EPBC Act refer­ral guide­lines for the vul­ner­a­ble koala are to be actively man­aged to result in a net gain in koala habi­tat qual­ity in time.

With a through process, under­stand­ing of the tech­ni­cal, legal and finan­cial processes and vari­ables and the deter­mi­na­tion from the start of the process as to the out­comes required by each of the par­ties involved, off­sets can be nego­ti­ated and secured within a rea­son­able period of time and be legally and finan­cially respon­si­ble to the par­ties involved.

Out­line

  1. Country/location
  2. Descrip­tion of the national con­text (reg­u­la­tion, pol­icy, market)
  3. Involved parties/responsible
  4. Motivations/incentives
  5. Time­frame
  6. Size
  7. Brief descrip­tion of the envi­ron­men­tal base­line and the impacts
  8. Sur­ro­gate of the offset
  9. Goal of the offset
  10. Brief descrip­tion of the off­set measures
  11. Impact-Offset-Relation
  12. Out­come and lessons learned

1. Country/location

South East Queens­land, Australia

2. Descrip­tion of the national con­text (reg­u­la­tion, pol­icy, market)

a) Gen­eral description

Both species and ecosys­tems are a reg­u­lar require­ment for off­set­ting impacts in Aus­tralia. The Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment pro­tects both “Threat­ened Eco­log­i­cal Com­mu­ni­ties” and “Threat­ened Species” at the national level. These are ecosys­tems or species that are threat­ened at the national scale. The mech­a­nism for this is the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and Bio­di­ver­sity Con­ser­va­tion Act 1999 (EPBC Act).

Addi­tion­ally, each state in Aus­tralia has their list of “trig­gers” as to what needs pro­tec­tion at the state level – so again, a list of threat­ened ecosys­tems and species. These are pro­tected under a num­ber of dif­fer­ent leg­isla­tive triggers.

b) Case spe­cific descrip­tion: which legal, pro­ce­dural or other con­di­tions apply?

In this case, the off­set was trig­gered by the clear­ing of Koala habi­tat at the impact or project site. The impact trig­gered a require­ment for an off­set for impacts to habi­tat crit­i­cal to the Koala which is listed as an endan­gered ani­mal of national sig­nif­i­cance under the EPBC Act. The devel­oper was con­di­tioned to pro­vide the following:

  • To com­pen­sate for the loss of 67.14 ha of habi­tat crit­i­cal to the sur­vival of the Koala, the approval holder must secure and man­age as Koala habi­tat, a min­i­mum of 161.11 ha of Koala habi­tat as shown as “Pro­posed Off­set Area”.
  • To com­pen­sate for the loss of 67.14 ha of Koala habi­tat, the approval holder must sub­mit an Off­set Area Man­age­ment Plan (OAMP) to the Min­is­ter at least two months prior to commencement.
  • The OAMP must include, but not be lim­ited to:

  1. loca­tion of the habi­tat off­set area includ­ing maps in elec­tronic Geo­graphic Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem (GIS) format
  2. details of how the off­set site has been or will be legally secured within 2 years of com­mence­ment to ensure its long-term protection
  3. details of how the off­set site ade­quately com­pen­sates for resid­ual sig­nif­i­cant impacts to the Koala in accor­dance with the EPBC Act Off­sets Policy
  4. a detailed base­line descrip­tion of the off­set site, includ­ing sur­veys under­taken, con­di­tion of exist­ing Koala habi­tat, con­nec­tiv­ity with other habi­tat areas and bio­di­ver­sity corridors
  5. man­age­ment mea­sures to improve Koala habi­tat qual­ity over time
  6. spe­cific goals and asso­ci­ated time­frames for habi­tat man­age­ment and improve­ment mea­sures with cri­te­ria for assess­ing the suc­cess of habi­tat man­age­ment mea­sures and cor­rec­tive mea­sures to be imple­mented if cri­te­ria are not met
  7. a mon­i­tor­ing pro­gram for the off­set site suit­able to mea­sure the suc­cess of the man­age­ment mea­sures against stated per­for­mance cri­te­ria includ­ing mon­i­tor­ing loca­tions, para­me­ters and timing
  8. a descrip­tion of the poten­tial risks to the suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion of the OAMP, and details of mea­sures that will be imple­mented to mit­i­gate these risks
  9. an out­line of how com­pli­ance with the OAMP will be reported
  10. details of qual­i­fi­ca­tions and expe­ri­ence of per­sons respon­si­ble for under­tak­ing mon­i­tor­ing, review, and imple­men­ta­tion of the OAMP
  • The approval holder must not com­mence the action until the OAMP has been approved by the Min­is­ter in writ­ing. The approved OAMP must be implemented.
  • The most recent approved ver­sions of the plans described in these con­di­tions must remain acces­si­ble to the pub­lic on the web­site of the approval holder for the dura­tion of the Approval.
  • Within ten days after the com­mence­ment of the action, the approval holder must advise the Depart­ment in writ­ing of the actual date of commencement.
  • The approval holder must main­tain accu­rate records sub­stan­ti­at­ing all activ­i­ties asso­ci­ated with or rel­e­vant to the con­di­tions of approval, includ­ing mea­sures taken to imple­ment the plans required by this approval, and make them avail­able upon request to the Depart­ment. Such records may be sub­ject to audit by the Depart­ment or an inde­pen­dent audi­tor in accor­dance with sec­tion 458 of the EPBC Act, or used to ver­ify com­pli­ance with the con­di­tions of approval. Sum­maries of audits will be posted on the Department’s web­site. The results of audits may also be pub­li­cized through the gen­eral media.
  • Any poten­tial or sus­pected non-compliance with these con­di­tions of approval must be reported to the Depart­ment in writ­ing within 48 hours of the approval holder becom­ing aware of the poten­tial or sus­pected non-compliance. Within three months of every 12 month anniver­sary of the com­mence­ment of the action, the approval holder must pub­lish a report on their web­site address­ing com­pli­ance with each of the con­di­tions of this approval, includ­ing imple­men­ta­tion of any plans as spec­i­fied in the con­di­tions. Doc­u­men­tary evi­dence pro­vid­ing proof of the date of pub­li­ca­tion must be pro­vided to the Depart­ment at the same time as the com­pli­ance report is published.
  • Upon the direc­tion of the Min­is­ter, the approval holder must ensure that an inde­pen­dent audit of com­pli­ance with the con­di­tions of approval is con­ducted and a report sub­mit­ted to the Min­is­ter. The inde­pen­dent audi­tor and audit cri­te­ria must be approved by the Min­is­ter prior to the com­mence­ment of the audit. The audit report must address the cri­te­ria to the sat­is­fac­tion of the Minister.

 3. Involved parties/responsible

Gov­ern­ment NGO Busi­ness Con­sul­tants Acad­e­mia Landown­ers

x

x x x

The off­set is a legal arrange­ment between three par­ties being the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment rep­re­sented by the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment (DoE), the Devel­oper and, in this instance, a pri­vate land­holder on whose prop­erty the off­set will be secured. A con­sul­tancy sup­ports and car­ries out the plan­ning of the off­set. The off­set is also secured on the prop­erty by a legally bind­ing instru­ment admin­is­trated by the Queens­land (State) Gov­ern­ment by the Land Act 1994 and the Land Titles Act 1994.

4. Motivations/incentives

Moti­va­tions for land­hold­ers vary. Some land­hold­ers use the pro­vi­sion of off­sets as another ser­vice that they can gain an income from much as graz­ing and crop­ping returns. Some land­hold­ers use off­sets as a means of reha­bil­i­tat­ing land that has been over cleared or is degraded in some way. Other land­hold­ers like to use off­sets to pro­tect the land from future devel­op­ment and to reha­bil­i­tate and or improve the con­di­tion of the ecosys­tem that is present. All are legit­i­mate approaches to the pro­vi­sion of off­sets by landholders.

In this case, the land­holder rec­og­nized the prop­erty needed reha­bil­i­tat­ing due to the clear­ing of tim­ber and over­graz­ing of the prop­erty over an extended period result­ing in a degraded ecosys­tem, weed inva­sion and habi­tat degra­da­tion. The use of the prop­erty for off­sets has enabled the land­holder to start improv­ing the con­di­tion and reha­bil­i­tat­ing the ecosys­tem and habi­tat with the con­tract between the land­holder and the devel­oper pro­vid­ing the money nec­es­sary for this. The land will be secured in per­pe­tu­ity to pre­vent the risk of loss in the future.

5. Time­frame

started plan­ning imple­men­ta­tion com­pleted
2014 July – Novem­ber 2014 Jan­u­ary 2015 2025

6. Size

161 ha

7. Brief descrip­tion of the envi­ron­men­tal base­line and the impacts

The open Euca­lypt For­est was assessed and had a con­di­tion of medium with regards the qual­ity of the for­est. The over­all goal is to improve the con­di­tion to a good con­di­tion along with increas­ing the num­ber of habi­tat and for­age trees for the Koala pop­u­la­tion. This base­line data col­lec­tion included the assess­ment of the canopy, shrub and ground lay­ers of the ecosys­tem by using the Bio-condition Method­ol­ogy as devel­oped by the Queens­land Herbar­ium. https://www.qld.gov.au/environment/plants-animals/biodiversity/biocondition/

With ref­er­ence to the Koala, there were a num­ber of poten­tial threats deter­mined for the site.

  • Habi­tat loss from forestry
  • Reduc­tion in habi­tat and for­age tree gen­er­a­tion due to fire and grazing
  • Pre­da­tion from wild dogs and other feral animals
  • Vehi­cle strike

Each of these threats was addressed in the man­age­ment plan (OAMP).

8. Sur­ro­gate of the offset

species Habitat/biotope types Whole ecosys­tems and its features
Koala is the sin­gle species tar­geted for the off­set – i.e. the off­set is to pro­vide increased habi­tat and for­age trees for the Koala population

9. Goal of the offset

The man­age­ment regime pro­posed for the off­set area is to enhance the level of pro­tec­tion afforded to exist­ing koala habi­tat through exclu­sion of land man­age­ment prac­tices that are incom­pat­i­ble to achiev­ing a net gain in koala habi­tat qual­ity. Fur­ther, key threat­en­ing processes which could inter­fere with the recov­ery of koala as described by the Draft EPBC Act refer­ral guide­lines for the vul­ner­a­ble koala (com­bined pop­u­la­tions of Queens­land, New South Wales and the Aus­tralian Cap­i­tal Ter­ri­tory) (DoE, 2013) are to be actively man­aged to result in a net gain in koala habi­tat qual­ity in time as artic­u­lated by the EPBC Act Envi­ron­men­tal Off­sets Pol­icy (DoE, 2012) and demon­strated via the Off­sets Assess­ment Guide (DoE, 2012).

10. Brief descrip­tion of the off­set measures

a) Technical-functional

The threats were addressed by the imple­men­ta­tion in the man­age­ment plan of the fol­low­ing key man­age­ment actions:

  • The exclu­sion of forestry oper­a­tions within the off­set area
  • The exclu­sion of any mechan­i­cal or chem­i­cal clear­ing of native vegetation
  • Allow­ing the shrub layer to regen­er­ate via the con­trol of weeds and the use of an eco­log­i­cal fire regime (note that fire is an impor­tant part of ecosys­tem devel­op­ment and func­tion in Australia)
  • Fire man­age­ment plan: includ­ing the instal­la­tion and main­te­nance of fire con­trol lines, reduced fuel loads via graz­ing as above and the use of fire at appro­pri­ate times for eco­log­i­cal burns. This would usu­ally occur dur­ing the cooler months of the year to reduce fuel loads of grass and other dry mat­ter and to encour­age the ger­mi­na­tion of nat­ural tree species
  • Weed man­age­ment plan
  • Man­age­ment of graz­ing to a lim­ited num­ber of cat­tle and a lim­ited graz­ing period only in the cir­cum­stances where a reduc­tion in grass was required to min­i­mize the risk of a wild fire
  • A pest ani­mal con­trol pro­gram, and
  • The erec­tion of sig­nage at the entrance to the prop­erty with regards the pres­ence of Koala

b) Legal-procedural

The con­di­tions of the devel­op­ment, agreed to between the reg­u­la­tor (DoE) and the devel­oper, require that the agreed Off­set Man­age­ment Plan be imple­mented. This is the legal agree­ment between the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment and the devel­oper for what needs to occur for the devel­op­ment to proceed.

The land­holder is bound by a legal con­tract with the devel­oper with regards the mon­e­tary pay­ment amount and sched­ule, for imple­ment­ing the agreed man­age­ment actions within the Off­set Area Man­age­ment Plan. This Off­set Area Man­age­ment Plan is bound legally to the prop­erty and is there­fore bind­ing on cur­rent and future own­ers. Prop­erty law in Aus­tralia is admin­is­tered by State Gov­ern­ments. Com­pli­ance with regards the imple­men­ta­tion of the man­age­ment plan can there­fore be enforced via 3 dif­fer­ent legal mechanisms:

  • Con­di­tions of devel­op­ment Approval,
  • the finan­cial con­tract between the devel­oper and the landowner,
  • and the Off­set Man­age­ment Plan as it is bound to the property.

With regards the finan­cial struc­ture, the money nego­ti­ated for man­ag­ing the off­set, in this instance, is held by the land­holder in Trust.

Com­pli­ance is under­taken by a com­pli­ance regime agreed between the 3 par­ties, and is under­taken by an inde­pen­dent third party to ensure that the Off­set Area Man­age­ment Plan is imple­mented. This gives con­fi­dence to both the reg­u­la­tor and the devel­oper that the agreed man­age­ment actions are being under­taken and that the off­set is pro­gres­sively achiev­ing its objectives.

11. Impact-Offset-Relation

a) What kinds of impacts/development projects is the off­set related to?

The 161ha off­set was for the clear­ing of 67ha of Koala habi­tat for devel­op­ment. Please see the Refer­ral Guide­lines here: http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/publications/epbc-act-referral-guidelines-vulnerable-koala

b) Loss-Gain cal­cu­la­tions: How are impact and off­set mea­sured and weighed against each other?

The area of the off­set required was cal­cu­lated using the EPBC Off­set Assess­ment Guide and the “How to use the Off­set Assess­ment Guide­lines” which gives guid­ance to the input fig­ures for the spread­sheet, see more here: http://www.environment.gov.au/epbc/publications/epbc-act-environmental-offsets-policy

12. Out­come and lessons learned

A through process is required and good com­mu­ni­ca­tion between all the peo­ple involved.

A sin­gle point of con­tact for each party involved is essen­tial to ensure that there is a sin­gle mes­sage being com­mu­ni­cated and that there is no delay or con­fu­sion in cor­rec­tion to the doc­u­men­ta­tion. This is essen­tial as the doc­u­ments “cross link” and a change in one doc­u­ment will neces­si­tate the change in a num­ber of other doc­u­ments. There­fore, doc­u­ment con­trol is para­mount along with ver­sion con­trol as the doc­u­ments are reviewed by sev­eral parties.

The other crit­i­cal point is an under­stood out­come and para­me­ters of each of the par­ties to be under­stood and con­sid­ered dur­ing the nego­ti­a­tions for all of the par­ties. This point is crit­i­cal as any mis­un­der­stand­ing is exac­er­bated because of the com­plex­ity and as the process is new, the uncer­tainty of the out­come. This is crit­i­cal to man­age when there are con­stant changes to man­age­ment plans as the doc­u­ment is reviewed by the dif­fer­ent par­ties. To illus­trate, a change of a man­age­ment action requested by the reg­u­la­tor, needs to be accept­able to the land­holder and of course be prac­ti­cally imple­mentable on the ground, and also to be able to be legally defended and to be mea­sured for com­pli­ance purposes.

With a through process, under­stand­ing of the tech­ni­cal, legal and finan­cial processes and vari­ables and the deter­mi­na­tion from the start of the process as to the out­comes required by each of the par­ties involved, off­sets can be nego­ti­ated and secured within a rea­son­able period of time and be legally and finan­cially respon­si­ble to the par­ties involved.


Comments

Worldwide on-the-ground examples of Biodiversity Offsets — Koala Offset in South East Queensland — 3 Comments

  1. Per­haps I missed it, but I am won­der­ing about the loca­tion of the off­set site vis-a-vis the Koala habi­tat lost due to devel­op­ment. Is the off­set site con­tigu­ous with or at least prox­i­mal to the destroyed habi­tat. Does the loca­tion of the off­set site take into account the land­scape con­text prin­ci­ple of bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting, ensur­ing that there is no net loss of Koala habi­tat at the land­scape level.

  2. Good after­noon Divya,

    My apolo­gies in the delayed reply.
    The off­set site is in a dif­fer­ent veg­e­ta­tion cor­ri­dor as the impact site, and is 20km from that site. The Koala pop­u­la­tion is the same on both sites, ie they Koala are tran­sient through­out a larger regional area. The off­set adjoins a cor­ri­dor which is circa 563.5km² or 56,350 hectares in size and about 60km long. The impact site is adja­cent to another area of veg­e­ta­tion thus allow­ing indi­vid­u­als to move dur­ing the clear­ing of the veg­e­ta­tion on the con­struc­tion site. A con­di­tion of the devel­op­ments Approval required that an ecol­o­gist was on site dur­ing clear­ing and that the clear­ing was to be under­taken pro­gres­sively to allow for any Koalas present to move. If any trees that were to be cleared were observed to have Koala in them, they were required to be left stand­ing until the ani­mal had time to move. The off­set cal­cu­la­tor does take into con­sid­er­a­tion the land­scape con­text and scale of the impact and off­set site to ensure that there is no net loss of habitat.

  3. Pingback: Biodiversity Offsets Blog goes Spanish - on Mercados de Medio Ambiente - Biodiversity Offsets Blog

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