An innovative Tasmanian partnership between conservationists and farmers is providing a blueprint for future protection of our natural environment

photographers AMELIA CADDEY, MATT NEWTON and JAMES HATTAM

Bush Heritage ecologist Matt Appleby kneels in a paddock grazed by sheep and parts the native grasses to reveal small yellow flowers. A passing glance may mistake them for dandelions or common daisies but these are Tunbridge buttercups and lanky buttons, threatened plant species making a comeback to Tasmania’s Midlands. They represent the success of an innovative partnership between Bush Heritage, the Tasmanian Land Conservancy (TLC) and farmers, a partnership established a decade ago to reimagine conservation.

Located between Hobart and Launceston and surrounded by mountains, woodlands and grasslands, Tasmania’s Midlands is recognised as one of Australia’s 15 biodiversity hotspots. It is home to 32 nationally threatened species and more than 180 plants and animals threatened in Tasmania. The region also represents one of the earliest areas of grazing in Australia with free settlers venturing inland to the fertile doleritic plains in the 1820s, establishing sheep dynasties that thrive today.

“It's good grazing country because it produces wool at the fine end of the spectrum,” Matt Appleby says. “Obviously part of that is due to sheep genetics, but the country has a variety of pasture species available year round so there are no peaks and troughs in nutrition, which contributes to the wool’s quality with no breaks in it. The grasses are compatible with grazing because without it they become rank with a lot of dead material, which shades out the small herbs and, over time, causes biodiversity decline.

“The Midlands is also a stronghold for a lot of native marsupial species – the Tasmanian bettong, the eastern barred and southern brown bandicoot and the Tasmanian devil. These species are being pushed to the brink or are extinct on the mainland, but in Tasmania we can prevent this from happening by simply better managing those remnant areas.”

Yet, managing this tightly-held agricultural land for conservation, with less than 5 per cent of the Midlands in public reserves, required a new way of thinking. In 2013, Bush Heritage and the Tasmanian Land Conservancy (TLC) set up the Midlands Conservation Partnership (MCP, previously known as the Midlands Conservation Fund) and invited farmers to be part of the solution. “It seems crazy nowadays not to involve farmers, but it was probably one of the first projects, certainly for Bush Heritage, where we decided to get the landholders in at the planning stage and listen to their thoughts,” Appleby says.

The MCP was initiated and subsequently funded with donations from the Sidney Myer Fund, The Myer Foundation, Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, John T Reid Charitable Trust, Elsie Cameron Foundation and private benefactors, and now runs as an endowment fund. Seventeen agreements exist with 14 farmers, which protect 7,360 hectares of the Midlands.

Pierre Defourny is the MCP coordinator. “TLC employs me to administer the program and Bush Heritage provides ecologists who do ongoing vegetation monitoring and provide advice to the land owners we work with,” he says.

“These ecosystems have been shaped by human intervention for millennia, and so just putting them under glass and forgetting about them might not necessarily achieve the best conservation outcome because you actually need grazing and fire in these areas. We give farmers stewardship payments for managing the land in a certain way.”

John and Isabelle Atkinson are third-generation farmers who own several properties in the foothills of Western Tiers in the Isis Valley. “My father has always been fairly conservation-minded and he has entered into conservation covenants in the past where they lock up the land and sometimes [pay] a bit of compensation upfront, and then walk away from it,” John Atkinson says.

In 2019, the Atkinsons entered an MCP agreement to protect 1,258 hectares of native bush. According to John Atkinson, “The MCP is a good model because it gives ongoing annual payments provided we meet key performance indicators. As landowners, we manage huge tracts of native vegetation and forest, which are often not very productive areas but are for the greater good. This way we are deriving some sort of income from managing these native areas.”

A key feature of the Atkinson agreement is the control of invasive gorse, using a combination of fire, herbicide and low-level grazing. “We spend a fairly high percentage of our stewardship payment on a weed maintenance programme, but it will take more than my lifetime to deal with it,” Atkinson says. “The seed can sit dormant for 30 years, so there's follow up for years to come. We’re trying to stop the gorse totally taking over and choking out the native species.”

John and Isabelle Atkinson have seen a one-third reduction in gorse area since working with the MCP.

Other areas under agreements are seeing the return of native species such as the Tunbridge buttercups and lanky buttons. “Monitoring has shown we are heading in the right direction and getting positive outcomes and that feeds back to the landowners so they are better able to manage the areas of native vegetation they own,” Matt Appleby says.

“The other significant achievement has been the successful partnership between two conservation organisations, with one at a national level and the other with a focus on Tasmania, and a partnership with the farmers who have been really engaged with the program,” Pierre Defourny adds.

The biggest success of the MCP may be its replication at a larger scale and its blue-print for the future. John Atkinson, who would “readily” re-sign his 10-year MCP agreement, has been able to leverage his involvement to other projects. “I think the MCP agreements are great for private entities, and we have recently joined the federal government’s Enhancing Remnant Vegetation pilot, which, I think, has been closely modelled on the MCP,” he says.

“It's good to see the government follow suit, and I think it should be federally funded to make it more sustainable. Another spin-off of the MCP is that natural capital accounting is now coming to the fore, and hopefully there'll be other ways of generating revenue through similar systems in the future.” 

A decade of the Midlands Conservation Partnership has shown the value of natural capital on farming land, and proven that farmers and conservationists can work together to protect native flora and fauna.

Mandy McKeesick is an Australian writer and photographer who shares stories about the people and places of rural Australia. She has worked in the deserts of Western Australia as an exploration geologist, on fishing boats in southern NSW and in an opal mine near Lightning Ridge. Home is a beef property in central Queensland.