Wednesday, 11 September 2024

Trust for Nature

Report 2022–23

Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (17:33): I rise today to speak on the Trust for Nature’s 2022–23 annual report, which was released in June. This report was of particular interest to me given Trust for Nature’s work certainly complements our work to tackle climate change. Trust for Nature are pretty well loved in my office, and I always look forward to meeting with the trust’s CEO Corinne Proske. I need to highlight that my good friend and fellow AFL SportsReady alumna Nina Braid is the trust’s deputy chair. In the next few weeks I am looking forward to meeting Ash Bartley, who enjoys the role of the trust’s First Peoples partnership manager. She is leading some incredibly important collaborative work with the Warreen Beek rangers. Ash and her team are helping to empower traditional owners and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to learn skills to work on country by providing accredited training in skills such as pest and plant control, revegetation, construction, chainsaw use, occupational health and safety and cultural studies. I wish Ash and all the participants in the Warreen Beek rangers program the very best and look forward to their graduation, which I have enjoyed for the last couple of years. I will just share very quickly that one of the graduates of the ranger course recently participated in the Olympics in Paris in boxing, so I was especially interested – probably for the first time in my life – in watching boxing and seeing Marissa Williamson go for gold. The trust has just celebrated its 50th anniversary, and I am sure everyone here would agree that this is an outstanding achievement.

The trust was established by an act of Parliament in 1972 and since then has been charged with preserving ecological and culturally significant land, conserving wildlife and native plants and educating the public on conservation science. One of the powers given to the trust by the establishing act is that they may enter into conservation covenants with landholders, and these voluntary legal agreements between the trust and landholders place permanent protection on private land. Landholders are exempted from land tax and may receive a council rebate or concession if they agree to restrict activities on their land that may damage the native habitat, such as clearing, intensive farming or indeed subdivision. The conservation covenant system is a wonderful complement to our existing state and national parks in Victoria which allows landholders to continue to work the land without exposing it to long-term damage.

The report shows that there were 51 new conservation covenants covering 2416 hectares of land which were agreed to in 2022–23. This is a 25 per cent increase in the number of covenants signed in the two preceding years and brings the total area of Victoria covered by conservation covenants to 78,342 hectares. They are certainly taking advantage of the government’s targeted investments in environmental restoration. This government has put forward $77 million as part of the BushBank program to support organisations like the Trust for Nature to plant native trees and shrubs to encourage the repopulation of species which are threatened by overdevelopment, such as the southern brown bandicoot and the greater glider, which have all benefited from the BushBank, as well as protecting native species. The re-greening of Victoria will contribute to our efforts to reach net zero emissions in the state by 2045. Trust for Nature has taken advantage of BushBank funding and used it to restore 260 hectares of degraded land at Stuart Mill between Bendigo and Horsham. Based on the lessons learned from the regeneration and restoration at Stuart Mill, the trust hopes to expand their BushBank-assisted work to restore 5000 hectares of land in Victoria.

This report was particularly interesting to me given some work that they do around reducing the effects of human-induced climate change, which are becoming more extreme year on year. Our first responders in the CFA and the state emergency services are working with Trust for Nature, providing some really life-saving responses. The trust is taking some of the pressure off emergency responders by helping bushfire-affected communities build back stronger from tragedy in a way that makes land bushfire resilient into the future without compromising on conservation. Finally, can I just say that I am happy to report that this trust remains in a strong financial position thanks to our government’s continued funding efforts. I look forward to reading their report and celebrating, at the graduation, the Trust for Nature’s incredible work.