Proven restoration and protection, at scale.
Western Australia's regional NRM network delivers the restoration and protection that approval conditions require, and has already identified opportunities for the values most in demand.
Already in assessment, or holding a condition you have not acquitted? Start here: those opportunities can be matched to your impact, on your timetable.
delivered in regional projects
recorded actions on a public dashboard
Delivered by WA's community-based, not-for-profit regional Natural Resource Management (NRM) network: local people, local priorities, local delivery.
Connecting those who must meet the standard to the network that delivers real, measurable gain.
Coordinated through the Bank, WA's regional NRM organisations bring forward restoration and protection opportunities from across the State. The Bank screens, designs and secures them at landscape scale, assessing environmental values, delivery requirements and regulatory considerations to ensure each opportunity is robust, investable and capable of delivering enduring outcomes.
Originate
Every opportunity starts with a partnership. The regional NRM organisations partner with landholders and Traditional Owners property by property, working with each owner's circumstances, tenure and plans for the land. Those partnerships run back almost three decades, and they are why the relationships behind each opportunity are already in place.
Screen
Screened against the Commonwealth's National Environmental Standards and Western Australia's environmental offsets framework, and tested at qualification against the recovery plan, conservation advice and regulator-published priorities for the values it carries.
Secure
Each opportunity is structured to deliver net gain. Once matched and funded it is re-cut to the impact: the area, the required gain, the security instrument and the timetable.
Coordinate
The network assembles the whole package: the site, the security instrument, the management plan, the delivery contracts with the regional organisations, and one consolidated report that feeds compliance reporting.
Every opportunity is surveyed, scoped and qualified before it is matched to a defined impact and pathway.
The regional network is the Commonwealth's Regional Delivery Partner network under the Natural Heritage Trust, and holds relationships with landholders, Traditional Owners, local communities, all levels of government, industry, research institutions and philanthropy.
The proponent holds the approval and lodges the package; the network delivers it; NRMWA coordinates.
Roads, rail, water, power and ports
Corridor and estate obligations matched to sites in the same bioregions, coordinated as one package.
Resources
Habitat offsets matched to the values a project affects, secured and under management before ground is broken.
Land development and local government
Many small conditions brought together into packages a council or developer can deliver.
Public obligations delivered by community organisations, with the jobs and the stewardship in regional WA and Traditional Owner rangers on Country.
The Commonwealth has rebuilt the rules to protect and restore the environment: net gain, secured before impact.
Secured before impact
Under the reformed EPBC Act the offset is secured, registered and under management before the impact occurs. That puts the offset on the project's critical path.
The bar is net gain
A measurable improvement, maintained and reported for as long as the condition runs. Gain is measured against a baseline, at a site that is secured and managed.
Delivery at landscape scale
Meeting that standard takes landscape-scale delivery. Governments already contract this network to deliver, and the results are on the public record.
The offset now comes before the impact, and the land, seed and crews to deliver it are finite.
Every obligation, existing and future, whether met by a proponent directly, through its consultants or through the Restoration Contributions Holder, draws on the same pool of land, seed and delivery capacity. The obligations coordinated earliest have the widest range of options.
A compliant package is more than land: the right environmental value, a landholder whose own aspirations for the property are honoured, the actions that produce the gain, security that lasts, and delivery by a local community organisation the district already knows and trusts.
Approvals under the reformed Act must meet the net-gain standard.
The streamlined pathway is built for proponents who can show, upfront, how they will leave the environment better off.
Feasibility
The offset is scoped alongside the project, while the choices on value, site and timing are all still open.
Referral and assessment
A screened opportunity is matched to the impact and goes into your documentation, so the offset is defined when the project is assessed.
Decision and conditions
The package is adjusted to the conditions as they are set, and is ready to lodge when the approval is.
Before impact
The offset is in place before ground is broken, and delivery and reporting run for the life of the condition.
The streamlined pathway rewards proponents who arrive with a compliant net-gain package. On any pathway the result is certainty: a defined package at assessment, a known commitment at approval, and a delivery network with a public record behind it.
Where a condition is written to an outcome, an offset that underperforms keeps costing until it succeeds. The delivery record is the risk control.
Hectares are the input; gain is the measure.
Intact habitat
Weed, feral animal and fire management holds the condition already achieved. The gain is averted decline: measured against the decline those pressures would bring without the package, secured from year one.
Partially degraded habitat
Weed and pest control, stock exclusion and infill planting lift the site from its surveyed starting condition toward its target. Usually the largest share of a package's gain, arriving as the site recovers.
Highly degraded ground
Replanting with provenance seed toward reference condition. New habitat is counted as it reaches the target, with the time to establish and the risk of failure taken into account.
Each site's gain is counted from its surveyed starting condition against what would happen without the package, with time and risk taken into account and only the increment above work already funded counted. The package is sized so that the gain across its sites exceeds the loss at the impact: the difference is the net gain. The mix makes the package feasible, additional and affordable.
Secured for the full maintenance period, State or Commonwealth.
The land interest is locked first: a covenant registered on title, vesting in the conservation estate, or conditions and management orders on Crown tenure, each holding through a change of owner or manager. The covenant restrains use; the works, monitoring and reporting are carried in the approval condition and the delivery contracts with the regional organisations. Registration ahead of impact completes the set.
Environmental values with opportunities already identified
- Carnaby's black cockatoo
- Baudin's black cockatoo
- Forest red-tailed black cockatoo
- Western ringtail possum
- Brush-tailed phascogale
- Malleefowl
- Banksia Woodlands of the Swan Coastal Plain
- Eucalypt Woodlands of the Western Australian Wheatbelt
- Tuart woodlands and forests
- Proteaceae kwongkan shrublands
- Threatened and priority ecological communities
- Significant fauna habitat
- High-diversity vegetation
- Significant remnant vegetation
- Ecological linkage and conservation estate buffers
- Wetlands and waterways
Securing a site is the start. Sustained management of threatening processes (feral cats, rabbits and other feral animals, weeds, dieback, fire and grazing pressure) across the site and its buffers is what produces the measurable gain.
Where a site is culturally significant, Traditional Owner co-design starts at concept, not at contract.
The delivery layer for landscape-scale protection and restoration in Western Australia.
Partnerships on the ground
Landholders and Traditional Owners already work with their regional NRM organisation. That is where opportunities come from.
A record you can check
Delivery recorded action by action, on the public record.
The whole job, one coordinator
Site, security, management plan, delivery contracts and one consolidated report, anywhere in the State.
The delivery network and its relationships are in place. What remains for each opportunity is survey, qualification, security and the match to a defined obligation.
See where the network already holds opportunities, by value and bioregion.
Register below to open the opportunity explorer: the environmental values with opportunities identified in each bioregion, how a package is built to net gain, and a short form to ask for a match to your project.
The earlier the engagement, the more opportunities to deliver net gain.
Bring the affected value, the project geography and the timetable. We will identify the opportunities that fit, and the security, delivery and stewardship pathway for each.
If you carry a current or emerging obligation
Engage NRMWA at feasibility with the impacted value, the project geography and the assessment timetable. The offset is scoped while the options are still open.
If you manage land or Country with restoration or protection potential
Start with NRMWA or your regional NRM organisation. Screening starts with a conversation.
The network's projects can meet an obligation under any route, State or Commonwealth, direct or contribution-based.
Planning for real, measurable gain, or offering land or a project?
Start on the Enquiries page, or contact the Chief Executive Officer directly.