Protecting 30% of Australia: a critical response to Australia’s dire state of the environment

In response to the dire Australian State of the Environment report released yesterday, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek firmly committed Australia to the protection 30% of lands and 30% of oceans by 2030. While this target (dubbed 30x30) seems ambitious, and it is, Australia is well positioned to meet it and pave the way for other countries to do so.

Australia has built a network of protected areas based on science and diverse approaches.

Australia has based its protected area network policy on science for many decades. Prior to the 1900s, our national parks and nature reserves were developed mostly by the states and territories, largely in isolation from each other. In the mid-90s, in response to signing on to the Convention on Biological Diversity, national science-based policy focused on developing a ‘comprehensive, adequate and representative’ reserve system that sought to sample landscapes and ecosystems from around the country and prioritised those with little or no protection. It’s also at that time that the Australian Government took an important coordinating role and greater involvement in funding an expansion of the existing National Reserve System. The fund offered up to two thirds of the purchase price for significant properties that contributed to the national reserve system by filling gaps in key underrepresented ecosystems, such as imperilled native grasslands and grassy woodlands.

While national parks and nature reserves on public land are some of the most common approaches used to meet national protection targets, Australia has pioneered several other approaches to land conservation.

Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs) are managed for nature and cultural outcomes through voluntary agreements between indigenous owners of land and the Australian Government. Currently, some 78 IPAs cover over 74 million hectares and make up 47% of our protected area estate on land. These include iconic landscapes such as the Kimberley, Arnhem Land, Cape York and the vast deserts of central Australia. Bilbies, rock-wallabies and Gouldian Finches are just a handful of many species that have benefited from improved management coming from Indigenous rangers and Indigenous Protected Areas.

Australia also has more than 5000 privately protected areas and has the largest area of land under this arrangement in the world. Through progressive philanthropic and government investment in land purchase by non-government land trusts, and commitment from private landholders to forever protecting habitats on their properties through conservation covenants, privately protected areas conserve some of Australia’s most threatened ecosystems and provide critical stepping stones in the landscape.  

Thanks to the development and expansion of new protection approaches in the last two decades, the diversity of Australia’s often unique natural habitats is better represented throughout protected areas. Much remains to be done though, and quickly. Our native grasslands, grassy woodlands and wetlands, for example, urgently need better protection. These systems have been largely replaced by agriculture and urban development but those that remain provide stunning displays of wildflowers and habitat for unique mammals, birds, reptiles and frogs. They continue to be threatened by land clearing, degradation and, in the case of wetlands, draining.