The Threatened Species Scientific Committee (TSSC) is a national, independent statutory committee established under the EPBC Act. One of its key functions is to provide advice to the federal Environment Minister regarding the listing and protection of threatened species and ecological communities (entities) under the Act.

Since 2019 there has been Indigenous representation on the TSSC despite no legal requirement. This study examines the impact of this leadership. It compares the structure and content of key conservation documents (Conservation Advices and Recovery Plans) approved by the TSSC before and after 2019.

Results show a dramatic increase in the inclusion of cultural information into these documents. There is now a section in the templates that recognises Traditional Custodians as more than stakeholders. Indigenous content is being included earlier in documents and key Indigenous partners are being named as critical to the survival of entities. There are now also examples of best-practice Indigenous engagement and empowerment in the form of Indigenous-led Recovery Plans.

This is significant given the key role these documents play in directing funds and actions on the ground to protect entities into the future. They set the tone, identify priorities and create opportunities with benefits to people and Country.

This project is funded by NESP, Resilient Landscapes Hub.

With global biodiversity being lost at an alarming rate, conservation plans for individual species are urgently needed to direct and prioritise conservation action. Structured, evidence-based, species-specific conservation plans are crucial to successful threatened species management. Yet, with an ever-growing number of threatened species and limited resources, this is challenging to achieve at a large scale. As such, there is a growing need to up-scale conservation planning approaches to improve efficiency and obtain greater coverage of all threatened entities. Here we present a case study on the use of a structured, systematic conservation planning process to achieve state-wide planning coverage in New South Wales, Australia under the state government’s Saving our Species program. We describe the framework and approach used by the Saving our Species program to develop detailed, species-specific conservation strategies for over 1000 threatened entities in NSW. We present key aspects of the conservation strategy development process under the program that facilitate an upscaled planning capacity and highlight the benefits of this approach to threatened species management in New South Wales. The Saving our Species program’s strategic planning methodology could be applied to biodiversity conservation programs in other jurisdictions, ensuring that the majority of threatened entities are covered by effective, individualised conservation management plans.

The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) manages 7.5 million hectares of land across NSW; an area home to nearly 800 threatened species. Under the Threatened Species Framework, NPWS has introduced a zero-extinctions commitment. This commitment aims to protect and actively manage key on-park habitat for threatened flora and fauna by declaring habitat sites as Assets of Intergenerational Significance (AIS). Once declared, site-based conservation action becomes a legislative obligation. To date, the AIS program has declared 360 sites protecting key habitat for 132 threatened species across the NSW national park estate. These declarations have led to strengthened species-specific fire planning, more effective targeted control of pests and weeds, and consistent monitoring of threatened species populations to track their response to threat management.

At the core of the AIS Program is a targeted conservation approach centred on identifying, prioritising, and mapping key habitat sites. Boundaries for these sites are informed by recent, validated on-park distribution data and defined in collaboration with species experts and land managers – balancing data-driven decision making with operational practicality. However, defining site boundaries comes with many considerations, including variances in data availability, identifying appropriate sites for widespread and migratory populations, planning for climate resilience, and evaluating the trade-off between restoration and conservation.

These considerations highlight the complexity of defining habitat boundaries in a way that supports both scientific rigor and effective management.

Healthy Land & Water (HLW) is the official natural resource management body for South East Queensland (SEQ), delivering environmental and community change for 25 years. Since 2019, HLW has been delivering koala conservation activities, targeting key landscape areas. Works include revegetation, weed control, increased natural regeneration through improved grazing management and mitigating bushfire risk to habitat through fire-trail upgrades. Delivery of this long-term program highlighted the need for more robust monitoring to improve understanding of koala habitat utilisation over time. This knowledge is critical for guiding future koala habitat conservation efforts and funding decisions.
To address this need, we established a partnership with CSIRO and aligned our monitoring approach with the National Koala Monitoring Program (NKMP) and the Queensland Koala Research and Monitoring team to ensure consistency with state and national methodologies.
The HLW, CSIRO and Queensland teams surveyed 10 restoration project sites, in 2024 and again in 2025. Koala surveys utilised line transects and thermal drone methodologies, aligning with the NKMP and feeding into the national dataset. A standardised rapid vegetation assessment was conducted at each site to track project success and record habitat attributes. These data form the first step in understanding how vegetation management impacts koala habitat use.
The method is still in its early stages; however, this evidence-based approach has already unified key stakeholders, aligned monitoring protocols, and supported a more coordinated regional dataset. The program has connected 11 SEQ councils and five First Nations groups with CSIRO, to be trained in the NKMP methodology. Data analysis across all sites will be used to better inform future conservation investments aimed at protecting this iconic and endangered species. We hope to continue to grow stakeholder engagement and investment in monitoring and improve awareness of the effectiveness of koala conservation management actions.

We investigate the application of the umbrella species concept for broader threatened species conservation at the landscape level. While umbrella species are increasingly adopted by governments worldwide, there remains limited understanding of the concept's implementation at the landscape scale. This research aims to quantitatively assess how different conservation priorities affect landscape-level biodiversity outcomes when using umbrella species. We use the brush-tailed rock wallaby (Petrogale penicillata) as a case study — a national priority species under the Australian Government's recent Threatened Species Action Plan that is anticipated to provide benefits to other threatened species within its distribution through its management. Focusing specifically on Southeast Queensland, we build on previous return-on-investment frameworks to explore how cost-effective solutions vary depending on the different management actions relevant to the brush-tailed rock wallaby (including predator control, habitat restoration, and grazing management), budgets, co-benefit objectives (e.g. maximising the number of benefitting species, rare species, or threat status), and balancing focal species conservation and broader biodiversity outcomes. Our approach compares how optimal management actions and locations shift depending on these various objectives and constraints. By using readily available datasets and an accessible methodology, this approach can be applied to other Australian priority species to help maximise conservation benefits through their allocated funding. More broadly, as the umbrella species concept is increasingly adopted worldwide, this research demonstrates the critical importance of strategic planning throughout its implementation, beyond the initial selection of the umbrella. Given the limited available funding, it is crucial we allocate resources strategically at all spatial scales to maximise biodiversity gains.