Hi everybody. Welcome to the second webinar of the North Coast Living Carbon Webinar series.
I'd first like to acknowledge that hold this meeting's being hosted on gumbanga country, on the North Coast, and I pay my
respects to elders past, present and emerging.
We start the I'd like to first introduce.
Simon Holloway Simon is from the NSW Government Department delivering and assessing the living carbon grants and Simon
will provide a context of today's topics and that are that are relative in relation to the grants. So thanks Simon.
And thank you to everyone for your interest in the North Coast Living Carbon programme.
So the NSW Government has committed the state to be carbon neutral by 2050. Across NSW, we need to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions and increase the amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed from the atmosphere.
NSW has an ambitious interim target, including a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030, so emissions are broken down
into sectors such as electricity generation and transport and each major sector has a programme to support the
emission reduction activities in New South Wales. I work in the programme supporting farmers and other
land managers. We want farmers to understand how they can reduce their emissions, such as methane from livestock, and we
also want farmers and other land managers to understand how they may be able to increase the natural absorption of carbon
dioxide, such as by planting trees. So we're doing this by finding education and support programmes. We're also providing
grants to help kick start priority projects that can act as case studies and demonstration sites in areas
where there's potential to have a significant impact. Now, as you probably know, local land services provides a broad
range of support to farmers and other land managers. Starting this year, each local land service region now has a natural
capital advisor who can provide you with advice on natural capital topics including carbon farming. Steve Conrad is your
regional expert for the North Coast, and you'll hear from him today. To support Steve, our net zero programme has also funded a
specialist carbon planting officer position in the North Coast region that positioned is being job shared by Nikki Cooper
and John Nagel. They can provide extra support to help you to plan and start a
carbon planting project. In particular, they are providing the on ground support to help deliver the living carbon grants across the North
Coast region. In the first living carbon web and last month I gave an
overview of the grant rules. In summary, if you register your environmental planting project under the Australian
Government's Carbon Credit scheme and it meets the grant criteria such as minimum planting area of 10 hectares,
then you may be able to get a grant to help you fund the start of the project.
That includes money towards activities such as site preparation, fencing and planting.
The grant will also help you to set up an environmental account so you have a baseline for measuring the biodiversity
improvements from your planting project. Now, obviously you should see an increase in vegetation over time and that is
being monitored for the carbon project, but you'll probably also see more birds and mammals returning. And if you carefully
plan the tree and shrub species that you're planting, then your project should also help the recovery of particular species
or ecosystems that are currently threatened with extinction. Now, if you can prove that your carbon project also has
biodiversity benefits, and hopefully you'll be able to demonstrate that you've added extra value to your project, and
that's something that we're particularly interested in as an outcome of the living carbon grant programme.
So the first living carbon webinar for the North Coast included an introduction to the grant rules, the process of
registering an environmental planting project to earn carbon credits, and the information you would need to include in a
planting plan. If you want to apply for a grant. Today's webinar will help you take the next step towards
deciding whether you want to do a living carbon project. Firstly, it's important that you think about your options. You
should be comfortable with a tree planting project fits with how you want to manage your property in the long term,
there'll be presentations by local experts from DPI and LS on carbon farming options and some of the things that you should
consider. Then, assuming you're still interested in doing an environmental planting project, you'll hear a bit more about
environmental accounts and the survey methods that you could use to monitor and report on the improved biodiversity in your
planting project. And finishing up, you'll hear an interesting case study on what it's really like to do a revegetation planting project on
the North Coast. So thanks for attending today. I'll hand back to Nicky and get
the presentation started.
Hey, our next speaker is Alan Simmons, Aaron's from the Department of Primary Industry Regional Development Team is a.
He's a senior research scientist and Aaron's going to provide us the science behind carbon markets and a bit more context
there. Thanks, Aaron. I. Just shame on screen.
Afternoon everybody. So. I will briefly go through.
A bit about the science behind carbon sequestration and also thinking about meeting the market demands for low
greenhouse gas emissions commodity it's quite a an in depth topic. So this is kind of a you know a high level
overview. That will provide some background, but I guess as Simon
just mentioned, you know it takes a bit of thoughts so. To start with, I'll just give a brief background about climate
change and greenhouse gas emissions. You know that there is evidence that there are impacts of
greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, there's no doubt about that. People sometimes wonder, you know, how long this has been
around for, and they think it's a relatively new thing. However, that circumstance is affecting the heat of the sun's rays. Was
the first report about the effect of greenhouse gases trapping heat in the atmosphere, in the atmosphere? And that was
published 170 years ago. So we've got 170 years of knowledge behind the impacts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. When we look at what
the impacts of climate change are, it's not just about necessarily temperatures, but they're, you know, there is an
increase in temperatures, but it's also about climate variability or seasonal seasonal conditions and weather events.
So heat waves, cold snaps, rainfall events, that kind of thing. And then there's other impacts associated with
greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, such as ocean acidification and depletion of the ozone layer. So we're
talking about we're talking about a broad range of impacts here. It's not just global warming when we're looking at
greenhouse gas emissions emissions. And an increase in the cost increase in the concentration in the atmosphere.
Importantly, that you know the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions.
Are making the supply chain focus on what they can do to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and this is around
proving to investors that they're doing the right thing, but also to their customers that they're doing the right things.
And an example of a framework that does this. I'm not advocating this at all is the science based targets initiative
where corporations can set targets and then report against those targets in the future so that they can actually.
Demonstrate what they're doing to reduce the climate change impact of their business.
When we're talking about carbon sequestration, just to break that down a little bit.
Or come sequestration means is that the carbon that's in carbon dioxide is taken out of the atmosphere and stored somewhere,
or sequestered somewhere. So when we're talking about revegetation, as we are here for the environmental plantings,
pilot, what that means essentially is that trees breathe in CO2 so they don't breathe because they don't have
lungs, but they take the CO2 into their leaves and then they use energy. From sunlight. So this is photosynthesis and it splits the
carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen. Now they use the carbon as an energy source that's converted into carbohydrates, or
sugars that they use as an energy source. And then the oxygen is actually emitted back to the atmosphere,
so it doesn't actually produce more oxygen, it just converts the where the oxygen is bound. But that carbon is used during
the growth phase of the trees to produce timber and roots. And that's when you look at timber, it's about 50% carbon.
So that's where the carbon is sequestered and stored in that timber.
OK. So when we look at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
There are many strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There are actually two ways that you can look at greenhouse gas
emissions reductions. The first is avoided greenhouse gas emissions. So what that means is that if you used a diesel pump
to pump water and then you converted it to a solar pump, you're no longer emitting the greenhouse gases associated with
combusting diesel. So that's an avoided mission. And then we also have carbon sequestration, which is why I just spoke about
when it comes to trees. The important thing to note is that if you have an avoided
emission, that's never going to come back and actually show up on your carbon account, whereas there's the potential that
carbon sequestration will. The Australian Government has numerous methods under the ACU
scheme. Now the particular thing that we're talking about here is the environmental plantings pilot method, which is a
streamlined method of the existing environmental plantings method. But there are.
For the land sector, there are methods around reduced fertiliser use, carbon sequestration, herd efficiency
to reduce methane emissions. So there's a range of methods under the Australian government accu scheme that farmers can use to
reduce their emissions. One of the things that you need to think about when you're thinking about reducing your greenhouse
gas emissions is just to assess the potential strategies or what's being offered.
And just, you know the the thing that I would encourage is to think, well, is this too good to be true? Because if somebody is saying something that sounds too good
to be true, there's a good chance that it will be. You actually need to demonstrate a reduction in greenhouse gas
emissions you need on farm data, so you need to be able to report things like the number of animals that you're grazing, the
age of the animals, the weight of the animals and also the fertiliser use diesel use, that kind of thing. So collecting
data is an important process of demonstrating reducing a reduction in greenhouse greenhouse gas emissions and and
generating credits from that. And then we also need to think about greenhouse gas emissions
intensity versus total greenhouse gas emissions. So when we're talking about net zero and meeting net zero, we're
actually talking about the total greenhouse gas emissions. Total greenhouse gases that are that are emitted. However, the
supply chain is actually looking for lower greenhouse gas emissions intensity. So these two things don't always align.
For example, you can reduce your greenhouse gas emissions, intensity of livestock production by.
Having better feed quality, which reduces your emissions intensity. But in doing so, if you run more stock, your total
emissions will go up. So farmers just need to be aware of that. The difference, the key difference between total and
emissions and emissions intensity is hopefully demonstrated here. So total emissions is summing up all the
different all the emissions from all the different sources within your business. Enterprise. The emissions intensity is actually
looking at that on a unit. Or a a mass basis. So if you did, if you did a a greenhouse gas account for a
farm that ran 100 cows and it was 2000 tonnes per annum, then the emissions intensity per cow, because you've got 100 cows
would be have just made a mistake. So I was 200, it was 200 tonnes.
For 100 cows, the emissions intensity would be 2 tonnes per cow. Now if you you can do that on a live weight basis. So if
the cows 50 kilogrammes, 500 kilogrammes, you can do that division and you can do it on a live basis or a carcass weight
basis once. The animals have been killed and you know what the carcass weights are? That kind of thing. So it's just important to
recognise that the supply chains looking for emissions intensity, whereas government policies and what not focus more on total
emissions. Why is my button not working OK, so there are a couple of reasons
for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The first one, well, I've alluded to both actually, so.
If you're looking at this and you say, well, I want to actually maintain market access or try and gain access to
markets, I don't currently have because I've got low emissions commodities.
You just need to be aware that you don't actually necessarily need to generate carbon credits to do that. So if you plant
trees and they're done in a certain way. Then you don't actually have to have a project for carbon
credits to be able to say I've got low emissions intensities because when you do the greenhouse gas account and do
the calculations, you'll take into account the carbon that's being sequestered. You just need to be able to demonstrate that.
You know you did plant those trees and that they have been growing and they're they're they're still there, that kind
of thing. And one of the key things is because carbon credit projects cost money to run. Do you know there's administration costs
kind of things, so it can be around the 20 to 30% of your total credits that are generated. Now the environmental
plantings pilot that we're talking about is a pilot for a low cost approach to take away some of the administration costs
associated with running a project. And to make it.
Essentially easier so that there's a a greater uptake for these kind of methods.
And I believe I've just had a mental blank, but I believe the new or the updated environmental planning's pop method will
actually use this pilot methodology if it's successful. So the other.
The other reason for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Is that people will want to. Some people want to generate
carbon credits and use that as a revenue stream. The things that people need to be aware of or The thing is that you can't
double count. So you can't generate credits and sell them to a fossil fuel company and that fossil fuel then says,
well, our groundhouse gas emissions are lower. And then you also counted if you generate credits and you sell them to a
fossil fuel company, you're then selling, you know, normal commodity greenhouse gas emissions, intensity
commodities. So you can't do both. Some of the risks, particularly around plantations, is timing of
plantations. So what people need to see if we just focus here on the line with the white dots or the open open dots on it, that's
actually the the sequestration that occurs over time from planting and what we see here is that at around 7 to 8 years of
age is where you have your maximum sequestration. And so after that, the sequestration at the rate that you're taking.
And out of the atmosphere drops away out to 25 years, and then it'll keep going quite slowly. So what that means is if you
want to meet a target for 2050, you don't necessarily want to be planting trees now because by the time you get to 2050, the
sequestration that's occurring is going to be relatively low, whereas the maximum sequestration occurs in that 7
to 8 year period. And that 7 to 8 year period happens. You know, all of all the models that I've seen for tree growth in NSW,
it's consistently around that 7 to 8 year period. So that's going to apply to the the North Coast, so.
That's just something to think about. We've also got the risk of reversal, so if if you plant trees and a a fire happens to go through it, carbon's emitted as
well as other greenhouse gases and you can't generate more credits until.
The carbon or the greenhouse gases that were emitted in that reversal event. Re sequested by the vegetation. So.
That means, depending on the severity of the fire that your credit generation might go on hold for X number of years.
Until you get it back to where it was, so the the other risk around that is if that reversal event happens towards the end of
the crediting period, you may not actually you might be, you might be sitting on credits that no longer exists and the federal
government can actually compel you to repay those credits because.
You've had that reversal event occur. There's also a risk of implementing a strategy that's not supported by evidence, so
there are newer. Numerous products out there that are being marketed that don't
have a strong evidence base to say that you'll actually get the sequestration that is claimed. I won't mention those, but it's
just that is it too good to be true principle as well. And there's also a loss of of agricultural production or risk
of a loss of agricultural production that you can plant trees in a way that will increase agricultural
production. It may actually increase productivity because animals have shelter. They're healthier, you don't have.
Well, not necessarily. Lambs on the North Coast, but you know, if you're up on the table and you have better lamb survival
rates, that kind of thing. So it does. It doesn't always amount to a loss of agricultural production, but it's just
something that needs to be considered. If your your business is about agricultural production.
So just some take home messages. Carbon sequestration occurs because trees sequester carbon
via photosynthesis. They take the carbon dioxide, they strip the carbon off, use that they can use that to then lay into
wood and roots and whatnot, and then they re emit that oxygen. So that's how that sequestration process can be used. But
sequestered carbon can be lost, whether it's in soils, trees. It can be lost. And that's there's a risk around that.
The supply chains are starting to demand low greenhouse gas commodities I work with. Various corporations further down the supply chain, and
they're seeing pushback from, you know, the.
The the corporations that are actually selling to the customers. So that's well and truly starting and we're doing a
lot of work now with the grdc and crdc around skilling people up around that.
The supply chain is looking for low greenhouse gas emissions intensity, not total emissions. That's something that the
government's looking towards and looking to incentivise people to achieve.
You don't necessarily need to generate credits to maintain your market access or to to get access to premium markets.
That's not necessarily required and you need to assess the potential risks to your business when you're making a decision
around this kind of thing. So the final slide to give you an idea of the supply chain, these are just some of the
organisations that have actually signed up to the Sbti and many farmers out there will be well aware of who these organisations
are and where they fit in the supply chain. And interestingly, you'll see there that it also includes the
finance sector. So finance emissions get captured by this so.
Yeah, I'll leave it at that. That's great, Aaron. Thank you very much.
Our next speaker is Stephen Conrad Stevens, the local land service. There's natural capital advisor here in the North Coast.
So Stephen's going to cover some food for thought before committing to any carbon planting project. Thanks,
Steven. Hello. Give me one second.
I will take it away. This.
Sharing the screen. Hold on.
Everybody can hopefully see those slides.
Yeah. So I'm the natural capital advisor and. For the North Coast LLS, my job or I'm here today to just give
food for thoughts, as Nikki said about things to think about, especially when you're thinking about entering a carbon planting
project. Here is the carbon project road map from the clean energy
regulator. Basically says review if you're eligible and then register the project you know you do the project, you get some
accus and then you sell them. So that's the road map from the clean energy regulator. We've added this extra step. So find
out if you're eligible. Consider the opportunities and the benefits it may provide you.
Consider the risks it may pose to your business. Or financially, and then consider the management
commitments over 25 years that it may require and do that before you register. So we are here right now.
Very big thing to consider before doing any of these types of project is what is your motivation to plant these trees?
Do you want financial return from Accus? Do you want a carbon neutral operation?
Agricultural operation. Do you want to see the Bush regenerated and conserves for 25 years, or do you want a mix of these
things? So as this graph shows, the accuprise can fluctuate. At the
moment it's around $32. It's capped at $75.
So. Absolutely advise getting financial advice from someone
you trust, but you can use a tool like look see which is a calculator which will tell you how many tonnes of carbon your
planting might get. You can't estimate based off how many tonnes of carbon you're
planting might get. How many accus you might get based how many accus you get. Times this range of accu price. It can give
you a loose idea of how much money you, you, you you could make, if that's what you're considering.
Again, as Aaron said, you don't need accus to be carbon neutral. There's climate active, which is an Australian government agency.
They can do audits and they can certify businesses as carbon neutral, and it doesn't require the generating or the trading of
accus necessarily. And if you just want to see Bush regeneration and conservation
there, you know there's other opportunities in the future that may come along where they don't have these commitments to
generate carbon credits or such loan agreements. So there's. Many different ways you can achieve your motivations.
Just important to realise I think. The next thing to consider is who will be the project
proponent. This is basically who will be responsible for the administrative burden of your project.
Now there's that new planting method coming in. Not sure exactly what that will be like, but if you're thinking about
doing these projects, have you thought about engaging a carbon service provider to be that proponent to do that
administrative work on your behalf? If you were thinking about acsp, a carbon service provider, what business model do
they use? Do they take a fee for service? Do they take a cut of your accus? You should absolutely ask
them what business model they're using. If you are gonna use acsp, make sure they're a signatory to the
Australian Carbon Market Institute. That is the independent governing body of these carbon
service providers. Make sure they're a signatory to the industry code of conduct.
Check the websites and just make sure that they're a certified good operator. Looked at favourably by the industry.
Before you engage any carbon service provider to do these sorts of projects.
You or your company can also be the project proponent, and this comes with benefits and costs. So if you're the project
proponent, you will own the accu's outright that you can do with them once you please. However, you will then be
responsible for all the administration and reporting, so no right or wrong answer here, but these are things you should
definitely decide upon before you are entering a project.
Another big commitment with these projects is the maintenance of the plantings, so this deck you grant does not pay
for things like weed management, so you need to ask yourself, can
I achieve the planting maintenance for 25 years? You can think about again get financial advice, but think
about the cost that that maintenance might cost to do over 25 years and.
Get advice on what the income will be from those accus and ask yourself is that is that cost benefits a good fit for you?
Also think about things like do you have the skills and knowledge to identify weeds and control them? Do you have the
equipment necessary to go out and maintain those plantings? Ask yourself, are you able to do it yourself? Or perhaps you're
not willing to? Or are you willing to you know afford? Pay some money to do routine maintenance on your behalf.
Again, no right or wrong answer, but these are questions you should sort out and plan out before you do these sorts of
projects. As Simon mentioned, there's accounting for nature certification that goes along with.
Applying for this grant should really give good thought to what method you will choose. Counting for nature has different methods
that verify different outcomes, so I can verify I'm producing koala habitat or I can verify I'm producing good quality
native vegetation. Believe we'll hear from Amanda from accounting for Nature
later. She'll tell more about that, but essentially your AFN certification and watch method you choose will help you tell
the story of your plantings. So what kind of narrative am I trying to tell? What kind of habitat am I trying to prove I'm
rebuilding? Maybe you just want to do the accounting financial certification to fulfil the grant requirement.
However, you know the idea behind this project is that this accounting for nature habitat certification will give you that
premium carbon credit price. So if you're hoping to maintain and sustain that premium carbon
credit price, you may have to maintain that AFN certification for the 25 years of the project to keep achieving that premium
price. With some AFM methods, they require independent audits,
which will be an ongoing cost. You know beyond the life of this project. So you need to decide what method you'll use. Does it
need independent audits or you? Willing to pay these costs? I believe that some AFN methods
have self verification where you can do it yourself, but then that requires you to do the surveys and administrative work.
So decide what method you're going to use and what sort of reporting mechanism you are going to use.
Really want to stress that a project like this is not simply a Land Management decision. It's a very big financial decision.
So the things to do before starting. Ask your accountant or trusted financial advisor what are the
tax implications from accu, sales and accu income. How does changing your land use and diversifying your income fit
into your long term business plan or your farm succession plan?
I would go to your bank and if we're planting 10 hectares at my at least or more, you might be planting a large proportion of
your property. So go to your bank and ask you how does changing the land use on a large proportion of my property affect
the value of my property in the eye of your bank? Benefits you might be able to get telling your bank I'm doing
these sorts of projects. I might be able to get a green loan to do these types of projects, or I might be able to get a a lesser
interest rate on loans for doing these types of projects. So go and ask your bank. About those opportunities before you begin.
Ask your insurer again. You're planting a large proportion of your property.
With climate uncertainties and disasters we repeatedly see in the region, how might planting a large proportion of your
property affect your insurance policies? Go and get their take on that.
Some more things to do before starting. If you're an ag producer.
We definitely recommend you baseline your farms greenhouse gas emissions using an industry tool, a carbon calculator or a
greenhouse accounting framework tool which are available online.
This just gives you an idea of your operations emissions. As Aaron was talking about that will help you, you know, decide
the impacts of selling your accus and offsetting someone else's emissions or insetting your accus being able to count
your own sequestration. On your own books. So you need to really think about if you're
an ag producer, what future emissions reporting requirements you might have to face in the future. As Aaron said, I might
have to tell my supply chain what? What are my emissions intensity? What's my emissions from my
operations? So you should go and ask your buyers in your supply chains. Will I need to report my emissions? And if so, when? That
will ultimately help you decide what to do with your accu's. This question basically comes down to will I inset my own
sequestration or will I offset someone else's emissions?
So I can sell my accus on the Australian government market. That is, I'm receiving money to offset.
And I'm giving those accus to offset someone else's emissions could sell your accus on the secondary market to overseas
buyers. You're offsetting those buyers emissions. If you are a producer, you should consider whether to inset
your accuse and that's basically. Keeping that sequestration on your books.
And that basically stems from, as Aaron was saying, the buyers are starting to want to know the emissions.
Of the AG products, so if I insert I'm keeping that carbon sequestration on my books so I can demonstrate the low
emissions product and I'll just try to explain that. That basically means let's say you know my operation is
emitting 200 tonnes of CO2 per year, but I'm recording in my
tree sequestration 100 tonnes of sequestration per year. That
means my within my farm gates, my. Net my overall net emissions are only 100 tonnes per year. Now
let's say I'm still emitting 200 tonnes from my production per year, but now those 100 tonnes of sequestration I've sold to
the market, I can't claim those. So when my.
Supply chain comes and asks now instead of 100 tonnes of net emission, I've got 200 tonnes of net emission. So if you sell
your accu's, you're not able to inset, you're not able to keep that sequestration on your books.
And when you're reporting that. Those production emissions to your supply chain, you'll have
higher emissions and your product may not be able to. It may not be as desirable to those buyers in the supply chain.
And you want to be carbon neutral or do you want to have a low emissions product? You don't need accus, you can just record
the data with carbon calculators and greenhouse accounting framework tools and save that data and demonstrate to your
supply chains with that data that. I've got my own sequestration that's counteracting my own
emissions. I know that that's probably complicated and a bit rushed
through. But I'm happy to take any questions about this stuff and
just have a conversation so there's my contact details, which I'll leave up for a SEC. Can also contact Don Nagel and
Nikki as the. Project officers for this project and I'm sure we can all
have a discussion. Thank you.
Right, Steven, thank you so much. So there's been a lot of information come through from both Steven and Aaron then and I
didn't mention that the Q&A function is live. So up on the top title bar, you see the Q&A icon. If you've got any
questions, you can click on that icon and submit your questions. Whether or not we can get back your answers during this webinar
or we can send them through after the webinar on your registered e-mail address.
OK, great. So next we have a case study of a revegetation project in the cough on the Arara River here near Coffs
Harbour, and then Jason Page is going to deliver this for us. So Jason works for an invite environment and Jason has
managed this large scale revegetation project from design to through to the planting stage. So are you available
there, Jason? I can't quite see you on the screen. Yep. No, I'm here. Thank you, Nikki.
OK. Oh, there you are. Thank you very much, Nikki.
Are this?
OK. So yeah, thank you very much for this opportunity. Look, I'm Jason page. I work for environment as you mentioned on
the mid North Coast of NSW. Just introducing you to this case study. So this is a site
that we recently completed planting in Upper Arra NSW in North Coast. It's bordering state forest and as you can see
in the image has been recently planted. So all those little dots that you can see.
There will need plantings and the cut outs in the bushland. There is is the property boundary so that area in there.
The site's about 28 hectares in total, 22 of those hectares are under restoration, with 18 hectares planted.
Site name Brett and Lisa Berkow, the land holders. They kindly let me do this case study for them. They have. They've named
the place nalu. So Nalu was previously pasture grazed for for cattle and was void of all vegetation by a few riparian
like river trees and paddock trees mostly blank. What their plan was or their their vision for the property was to return
it to a vegetated state full of canopy species by and hopefully reintroduce wildlife as well.
So we weren't the first person to do people to do a case study, so a number of years ago, a friend of Brett and Lisa, Nathan
Littins, had done a two-part series, which you can find on YouTube, and he's an ecologist who's done numerous surveys on
the flora and fauna of the property. And if you'd like to know more about how that journey started, then go to YouTube and
and just type in that search rewilding nalu.
Yeah. So some of the early considerations we had on the property, you can see actually in that little map image,
there's, there's no plants left and that yellow outline is the property lot boundary. There's no plants there, no trees. So it
was a blank canvas as far as they're concerned. There were there were livestock, there were cattle that were
removed and access to a lot of the property was by just grass tracks that were poorly maintained or just weren't used
frequently. So access across the site was limited. They also just had to decide whether they wanted to plant the
whole site or choose a combination of rehabilitation in that planting and what they've done. You can see just slightly
in that orange little zone there. That's like a little Creek area that was full of campfire, that's an exotic
vegetation mapping. And they decided to rehabilitate that instead. So just.
A brief rehabilitation is the process of restoring a degraded or damaged ecosystem to a more natural.
And functional state by re introducing native species and improving habitat Commission. So that's like staged way control.
Well notice species generated. They did a section of the Aurora River which borders the north of the property property as well.
Other considerations they had were was to choose the right species. They wanted to plant with, and they did this by first
establishing a nursery on the property and then collecting the seed from neighbouring properties with permission. If
you intend to do that. As and then. Select the right species based on their growing weights, so
pioneering species typically grow faster and are favoured in initial rehabilitation projects. Maintenance is also an early
consideration. I mentioned the tracks were poorly on not used as often, so getting throughout the zone required some work and
and after removing cattle that the grazing intensity was removed and that.
Where you had to be slashed, so another consideration to think about after that change of land use type.
Yeah. So billion planning, so I won't cover planning too much, but early in planning and thank you to local land services, the
koala koala habitat Restoration Project was able to fund the initial planting of manage management zone one which is
green shaded and they produce this map which shows some of those exclusion zones I mentioned, which is part of
their own property management plan but also has. But.
Has been altered into bite sized chunks or manageable zones about four to five hectares, and also based on the plant community
type. So previous slide showed you that there was a mix of rain forest in West Clara fall and repairing corridors in that
area. So a plan had to include which which species to include in which area.
Sorry, NZ. What management's earned one is planted first. Now what we did here. So in the foreground you can see a hill
which appears to have contour lines. That's that they were ripped. So tractor was used to rip lines along the contours.
And this method was deployed to disturb the soil enough to make planting easier. It also made for the catching of water. That
was like rainfall. Running down the hill, catching that and keeping soil water
retention quite high. This works really well in the initial stages.
However, what we what we did notice after a after a time, was because that soil was disturbed so much. But actually we found
that the weed density of invasive weeds that weren't occurring there before to to pop up and and this increased the
maintenance expectations on the property. We used plastic Tree guards 600 mil high, which is the standard
and weed mats with one part. Utilise that plants. We were lucky enough to have. Oh, sorry.
So watering is always post, post planting and other maintenance period as needed. We were lucky to have sufficient rainfall
following the planting so that reallocation of labour from from watering that to weed control was was able was able to happen.
So after management signed, one was planted about a year past and with the help of from funding on another koala habitat
project and we were able to continue works and this included management Zone 2, which was previously inaccessible.
Remember those trails I I mentioned that were poorly maintained? Well, we couldn't get access to MZ. Two before.
However, with help of the neighbour and Breton Lisa, they reopened a fire trail fire trail through the neighbouring
property. But as they preferred, Brett and Lisa preferred to do a cultural
gun instead, and this was done with the help of local land services again.
Urunga Aboriginal Corporation and RFS. So thank you very much to those guys, though that only happened a couple of weeks ago,
so the result is still in and still coming in on how that area will be restored. It's a bit of an interest area as well. Also
good to know that by improving. Access to management zones makes protection against fire are a
lot easier, especially for this area. Management zone three and four were split further after looking
at some of our our updated revegetation plan. It was split based on proximity to existing vegetation slope.
Plant community types and and also considering the power lines and access trails. So with power lines it's good to remember that
canopy species should not be planted underneath. Depending on the size of the power line, lower storage species or ground
covers, maybe not ground colours for your project, but perhaps lower storage species would be used instead. Management zone
five they decided to put in a. The force arena. So that's that little cut out. You can see
there. So a little update. But important for the for the process. Planting in these areas, the method used changed from ripping
that we we'd load increased from MZ one. Tended us towards a different method, which is essentially
slashing the area. Leave it a few weeks for the grass to regrow. Spraying small
diameter circles, leaving that to die off, which makes for longering or using a spade.
In those areas much easier. We then deployed spy degradable tree guards over those plastic triggers. There's corkle guards.
This was done because of the time it took and the potential for pollution from plastic guards was was too high and if
you consider that biodegradable tree guards are slightly higher unit cost, the cost of labour to remove plastic guards and store
them as well. If they can't be reused makes them worthwhile. And and I found them quite useful today.
So this is a photo looking over management zone three and four towards the road and the property to the north you can
see we started well, this is half the area slashed when the photo was taken and you can see the the work involved in in
keeping that grass loaded down after cattle had been removed and you noticed there's a small line slashed through a patch of
grass that had been left. This was done because that area was just deemed too wet for a tractor. Too risky so.
Brett slashed in lines instead, and these were then followed up with plants as an option. The hillslope to the left was used
to cluster plantings, as were some other portions of the area, and a cluster planting is denser spacing than than typical in a
method used to promote vigorous competition in tree growth for various species, mostly rainforests and subtropical
rainforest species that typically grow faster and their native habitat.
Not often deployed in wet sclerophil or other areas, so we limited that management. All that planting technique to those
areas.
And finally NZ 50. My photos sort of cut out half the zone there, but I'll explain it anyway, so we've got management.
Zone five was riparian sort of. The flood prone area of lowland subtropical rainforest.
Plant community type cluster plantings were again done along the fringes and the edges of the river with those biodegradable
tree guards and the method used there was was to slash and then spray and then and then plant with other augers or spades.
We did remember that trees shouldn't be planted on power lines which occurred through this zone as well, and just in
the photo there you can see the the horse arena, which is well maintained.
OK, so just finally, here's a drone image I took shortly after planting or video. I'll play that for you.
The spacings you can see here about one per seven square metres and the trail used to access the planting area was
maintained and and ensured not to be overused during wet weather, which can make it hazardous, slippery, muddy, wet,
that sort of thing. So we kept vehicles away during those those periods.
Trees are growing really well. Maintenance is achievable by keeping spacings between the rows and between plantings, so
that they can be slashed. That's how weed management strategy for the land holder.
You can say some clustering. On the left there and through the gulleys. And down the hill on the rights there is those rows where it was
a little bit wet at the time that we planted by hand anyway.
I'm just flying over another little hill, so there's management zone one, the first planting in the background, most
of those plastic tree guards have been removed by now, but it was quite labour intensive and also you just notice between the
rows there, that's a mower width. So that Brett was able to do one pass in each Rd so to maintenance and just there is
the management zone 2 that was burnt about a month after this video was taken.
Lovely. OK. Thank you very much. I'll leave it there. Thanks, Nikki. Thanks, Jason. That drone image was very, very good at the end.
It's good to get that, that vigil of what it's actually going to look like.
Thank you. So our next speaker is Amanda Hanson from accounting for
Nature. Amanda's going to cover. The selection of the environmental monitoring method
that would be best suited to the options that were best suited to the North Coast.
So are you right to go, Amanda? Thanks. Absolutely. Thank you, Nikki.
So I'm with accounting for nature and I'm gonna start off with giving a brief introduction to what, what accounting
furniture is and then I'll start talking more about the specific methods that have been pre approved in this programme to
measure change in biodiversity outcomes. So accounting for nature is a voluntary certification standard
of something called environmental account and environmental accounts in its essence, is a collection of data
relating to the state of nature. So it's all about measuring environmental condition and trends in environmental
condition over time. And having that data independently verified and that
creates comfort in markets or behind green claims.
And if you're familiar with the Wentworth group of Concerned Scientists, they spent about 15 years of research before
accounting for nature was turned into the non for profit company we are today.
The account informative framework is all based around an index called the ECON. So the econ stands for the
Environmental Condition Index and it's taking really complex information about the environment and turning it into
a score from zero to 100 and this can be done from many different environmental assets and how we calculate the score
is all based on the reference benchmark. So a reference benchmark represents the intact or undergraded state of the
environment. So for vegetation. A reference benchmark might be a vegetation that hasn't been
cleared. That's in best possible condition. Mug for fauna specie might be based on its past distribution
before heavy degradation occurred, or it could be based on the population size, depending on what you're
measuring and communicating. And I wanted to quickly show what an environmental account
is. So what you see on the left hand side with all the numbers is the snapshot. And I'm going to walk you through this. So we
have environmental condition measured for vegetation, for soil and for woodland birds, which is a component of fauna.
You can see that the condition has been measured across different proportion of the property. So vegetation has been
measured across all the property. Soils have been measured across parts of the property.
Fauna has been measured across an even smaller proportion of the property. And they've all generated ECON score and based out of 100, this
is representing what the current state of the environment is like compared to that undergraded benchmark.
Next to that you can also see that they've set their targets, so this is just communicating where they want to go with their
management practises or potential restoration of efforts that they're implementing. And then lastly, next to that, you
can see the accuracy level that the method was implemented at. And I'm going to talk more about those accuracy levels shortly.
So next to that snapshot data you can see what we call a technical report. So along with this summary data you get a big
disclosure report outlining exactly how environmental condition was measured, how that ECON score was calculated, any
limitations associated with the implementation of the method. It's also that people can go in and query the outputs of an
environmental account. Get a better understanding of how the account was created and
implemented. We have a five step process to develop an environmental account
and you can find details about this process on our website. We also have an online training course with a free preview.
That's a really great resource if you're thinking of building an environmental account because it takes you through the
overarching steps and information that's really good to know before you get started on this journey.
But in its essence, you first need to design your environmental account, and that's where you really consider
that storytelling and the purpose of the account so. Is it just to comply with this grant? Is there someone else you
want to communicate environmental condition data with? This might be your insurance company. This might be
your bank and you need to understand what their requirements are. So what data did they need from you to be
able to support any investment decisions etcetera. Once you've designed the account, you come to us to
register the environmental account, we will make sure that we think you've selected an appropriate method based on the
purpose of the account. Make sure that you're data collected collection plan is looking right.
Once you've registered, that's when you go out and actually collect the field data, and so that can be collected by
yourself or by experts in the field. It all depends on the method you're choosing, what type of expertise and skill set
is needed. Once you've built the environmental account, you need
to submit it to us for certification. And as Ellie mentioned, there are different pathways and options when it
comes to certification. It's going to talk you through briefly what those two options are.
And lastly, to maintain an environmental account, you need to go out and collect field data at least every five years to
calculate an UE cont. To show that trend over time.
So we have a lot of different methods available under the framework and that all classified according to the
broad asset class that they belong to. So you can see our six different asset classes here on the screen. Now there's a
subset of methods that have been pre approved for this specific grant. However, if your purpose of setting up an environmental
account is broader than just working towards this grant, you can add on additional methods if you want to. If you want to
demonstrate improvement in condition across multiple. Different environmental assets and perhaps other environmental
assets that aren't included as a part of this particular grant.
Yeah. So all methods are slightly different in how they're applied
and what's the score that they generate represents. And one of the key differences between them is the accuracy level. So the
lowest accuracy level of method that we have are 80% and the highest are 95%.
Usually an 80% accuracy method is easier to implement and often cheaper to implement. Not always the case, but most of the time
and so the accuracy simply relates to how confident are we in the ECON score that the method generates. So higher
accuracy often requires you to collect data about more different indicators as well as establishing more sample sites.
So there can be more labour intensive. And so I'm going to talk about the different methods that have
been pre approved as a part of this programme. So starting off, we have a mammal condition method and
that's measuring the absence or presence of various mammal species.
It can really help to understand what species exists within your property or your project area, and that can then help
prioritise any restoration activities and any priority areas to protect on your property.
So this specific method requires at least 100 hectares to be implemented, and it uses wildlife cameras to spot the
absence presence of foreigner species. And so it's looking both at ground dwelling mammals as well as their boreal mammals.
And one of the greatest time consuming tasks of implementing this method is usually to review the photos.
There's great AI tools that can be used to help automatically map fauna species, and they're mentioned in this method as
well. But often, most of the time won't be collected, won't be spent out in the field setting up cameras, but it will spend
afterwards reviewing the photographs. There's also a woodland bird method and birds can be really
great to monitor because they're usually a good indicator of the health of the vegetation, both within the actual restoration
site, but also in the area at large. So it requires at least two hectares to implement this method, and you need to be in a
woodland, which means an ecosystem that have trees that are relatively widely spaced, so you don't have a closed canopy
cover. And so to implement this method you need someone who is familiar
with a bad data collection approach called the two hectare 20 Minute Survey method.
This particular method is under licence fee so licence fee is set by the author of the method. So in this instance it's a
company called kilter rule and so if you want to use this method you need to reach out to them to see what fee they would
charge you to use the method and we have contact details on our website if you want to enquire about this.
And then the last fauna method is the koala population and habitat method. It can be implemented in Queensland and
Northern NSW because we do have decent benchmarks there on koala population condition, but it can be implemented outside of these
areas as well, as long as local benchmarks are available for what we think an undergraded koala population would look
like. So with method you can measure both the actual habitat quality
and you can measure the condition of the koala population so you can measure either of those or both of them.
It's up to you. Get this method requires you to have at least 100 hectares so
you can apply the method across an area that is greater than your carbon planting area. If you want to. Should that area be
less than 100 hectares? If you want to measure the koala? Habitat. Oh, sorry. The koala presents. So the condition of
the koala population, you need to have someone who's familiar with the spot assessment techniques to assess koalas.
There's a range of pre approved methods for vegetation and so I've listed them here on the screen. So to run through them
quickly the easiest to implement is what's called the AFN and land care native vegetation method. So NVO 6 it's got an 80%
accuracy and it's it's the method that's most suited for landholders to implement themselves. As long as you've
got a good species idea and know what should grow in the ecosystems that are on your property.
The ones that's more standardised for NSW is the NV13, which is the method developed by the BCT, so that's
the method that they use to measure the vegetation condition across all of NSW, and it relies on NSW based benchmarks. It's
got a high accuracy so you don't need an ecologist to come out and help you with this method.
One of these methods are under a licence fee, meaning the method author will likely charge you to use the method, and that's NV
07, so that's developed by Bush Heritage. And so they're the ones charging a licence fee. So selecting a
method can be somewhat complex. So really recommend you reach out to your local land services to have a chat about it, talk
about your purpose and you can also contact us and we can help you navigate the method selection.
So a few things before I wrap this up. One is the condition target that I showed in the environmental account slide. You
can if you want to put a target associated with your environmental account just to communicate where you are trying
to head with your restoration project or whatever it might be and that can help put the econ into a context and the target
can be either a static targets or where you hope to be after you know 10 or 20 years etcetera or it can be a moving target
showing improvements across. Every five years, or however often you go. Remember the condition.
Mentioned the different certification pathways earlier, so we have the independent audit pathway which is required for
any account that seeks to generate Co benefits to carbon credits. So if you're hoping to sell your carbon credits with
demonstrated improvement in environmental condition that environmental data needs to have been independently audited, that
can often be done by the same auditor that audits your carbon project. So from a cost saving perspective.
It's great to get these audits done at the same time by the same auditor whenever possible.
We also have AFN verified, which can be used by anyone who just wants to showcase improvements in environmental conditional
communicate about the environmental condition. The restriction on this option is that it can't be used officially
for to generate Co benefits to carbon projects. So if your account has multiple purposes where one of them is to generate
carbon credits, but one might just be to for your own information, see what the soil condition is like from an
environmental and productive condition. You can have. The vegetation component independently audited and then
have the soil component verified by us to save money where you're not intending to link it to common credits.
Again, we can help navigate this process as well. And lastly, there is resources and help available for you
throughout this process. The best starting point is your local LLS stuff, so they have been trained as something called
accredited experts. So these are professionals, professionals who are qualified, who are qualified, qualified to help you
navigate the environmental account journey. But often they can help you with the implementation of methods as
well if they have the right skill set. And then lastly, we have a list of accredited auditors on our website, so
these are the ones who can conduct independent audits of environmental account. If you're wishing to officially generate
Co benefits from those environmental accounts, and if you have any questions, you can contact us at
info@accountingfornature.org. Thank you so much, Nicolai.
Thanks, Amanda. Well, that completes our speakers today for the 2nd
webinar now we have. Some contact details.
Yeah, there's AQR code. If somebody would like to check the eligibility out for the programme, you can express your
interest via the QR code and you can always ring the local LAN services line on the phone number on the screen and we'll
we can explain in more detail. Thank you very much for all the questions that you've posted. We haven't got around to answering
all of them, but we will get a response back to you via e-mail and please reach out.
To us, fire the phone number and if you have any other questions or you would like us to have a look at your property.
To consider the eligibility for this living carbon grant. Thanks everybody for your attendance and we'll talk to you
soon. Thank you for the speak. The presenters too. It was a great job. Thanks everybody.
