In the early 20^th century, the Sydney-born developer Henry Halloran drafted grand plans for a new suburb to be built with more than a thousand new plots. He called it Environa. However, before his grand plans could come to fruition, the Great Depression struck, and his plans went bust. Now, nearly one hundred years later, Halloran’s descendants manage the land.

2.1 The Present: Work Experience

When we arrived, we were greeted by David Larcombe, one of the proprietors of the land.  On this property, he, his sister, and the rest of their family oversee the management the 400-ha Wandiyali-Environa Conservation Area and multiple other pieces of remnant vegetation along with a cattle herd 200-head strong. During our work experience trip, we helped remove plastic tree guards from native shrubs in one of the remnant patches of vegetation. They had been planted to establish a midstory to provide habitat to small birds within one of the protected vegetation patches. However, the conservation efforts are much more complex than this. To finance the Wandiyali-Environa Restoration Trust, they have sold bits of the original swaths of the property to developers, including the suburb development that we had gotten lost in previously and the Poplar innovation precinct. The conservation is also financed through biodiversity offsets credits financed by these developments. They were also able to create a predator-proof fence around the conservation area, due to grant from the Commonwealth government, with the hopes of making it a biodiversity haven

2.2 The Present: A Status Update

To prevent precipitous decline of biodiversity, researchers have found that we need to ensure that 44 percent of terrestrial land is ecologically sound.  Considering that more than 60 percent of Australia is privately owned, it becomes clear that protecting public lands is not enough. The most recent IPBES report emphasizes that multilevel governance initiatives that incorporate private landholders are key in the fight to protect biodiversity. What we do in our backyards matters just as much as the management done in the national parks. We cannot create a conservation system that adequately protects biodiversity without working with private landholders. The report also outlines that economic pressures are one of the biggest indirect drivers of biodiversity loss. This site is an interesting case study of how economic development can fund biodiversity conservation