Land protection Archives - BioDiversity Legacy

EcoGipps: Growing a Living Legacy in Central Gippsland

by BDL Team | Dec 8, 2025 | Land protection, Land stewardship

For the BioDiversity Legacy team, this story is deeply meaningful. It carries the seeds of our very existence and the first green shoots of a pioneering land-conservation movement – one that has the potential to safeguard hundreds of thousands of acres in the decade ahead.

At its heart is a 105-hectare (259-acre) property – North Paddock – in Maffra West Upper, Central Gippsland – land that the Phillipson family has generously donated to BioDiversity Legacy for permanent protection and long-term stewardship.

This remarkable act of generosity – one of three donations planned by Jim, Heather, David and Kate Phillipson – was years in the making, involving thoughtful conversations about succession, care, responsibility and what it truly means to leave a living legacy.

The Backstory

Jim and Heather Phillipson grew up on farms around Sale in Central Gippsland. Jim went on to become a highly respected business leader and Heather a dedicated community nurse. Wanting their children, David and Kate, to experience the same grounding in nature, Jim and Heather purchased a 36-ha (90-acre) property on the Wirn wirndook Yeerung (Macalister River). They began restoring the old grazing paddock by replanting trees, nurturing remnant grasslands and riparian woodlands and protecting regionally significant plant species.

Along the way, Jim and Heather encountered passionate ecologists, conservation groups and land managers who helped shape their understanding of landscape stewardship. Over time, they came to realise that real impact comes from thinking beyond a single property: habitat must connect, landscapes must link, and communities must act together.

With that in mind, the family purchased three additional properties – covering approximately 358 ha (884 acres) from Maffra West Upper to the rugged foothills of the Victorian Alps. For decades, the properties were used as grazing stops for cattle herded up to the high country for summer grazing, a practice now restricted due to its environmental impacts.

The Phillipsons saw another future for this land.

Heather and Jim surveying the EcoGipps properties. Photo by Marnie Hawson.

Establishing the EcoGipps Venture

Driven by their growing vision, the Phillipsons created EcoGipps – a venture dedicated to managing their properties and developing an on-site conservation and learning hub. Today, EcoGipps supports school groups, international volunteer workers (WWOOFers), hikers, field naturalists and birdwatchers – offering a place to learn, contribute and connect.

Immersed in this work, the family gained deep insights into the challenges faced by landowners seeking to protect, restore and share their property/ies for conservation. They also saw their local efforts against the larger backdrop of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Engaging with groups such as Land for Wildlife and Trust for Nature, the family progressively placed conservation covenants on the properties. While everything was progressing well, one persistent question remained: “What happens to the land when we can no longer care for it?”

The Phillipsons soon discovered this question echoed across the private land conservation sector – many landholders had the will and passion to restore their properties, but no clear pathway for ensuring those efforts would endure.

Enter BioDiversity Legacy

BioDiversity Legacy was established to provide a solution to this very problem – by creating clear, practical pathways for landholders, communities, partners, and donors to ensure enduring protection and stewardship of land for future generations. This unique approach places land in secure, not-for-profit ownership structures, backed by strong legal and governance safeguards that remove it from the property market, protect it from future sale or development and ensure it is responsibly stewarded over the long-term.

In 2025, the Phillipsons donated North Paddock on Gunaikurnai Country, to BioDiversity Legacy. This was a moment that crystallised what the Phillipsons had been looking for: a trusted, long-term partner to carry their legacy forward.

The Significance of North Paddock: Biodiversity values

North Paddock’s ecological significance is considerable – meeting four objectives of the Trust for Nature Statewide Conservation Plan and rated as ‘Very High’ conservation value. Several habitat types have also been identified as depleted or endangered by the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (EVC benchmarks).

Habitat includes lowland and herb-rich woodland forests, Swamp scrub, White and Red Stringybark and Blue/Red Box eucalypts and a rare tea-tree soak. Read more about the types of habitat found on the property, as well as rare plants, wildlife and birds (read more here).

More importantly, the property represents a key biolink within a vast core habitat area linking Coongalla Bushland Reserve with the Avon–Mt Hedrick Scenic Reserve and onward to the Victorian Alps.

Next Steps

With the transfer of North Paddock complete, the Phillipsons are now advancing plans to transfer their two additional properties, totalling 253 hectares, into BioDiversity Legacy’s safe ownership structure in the coming years.

BioDiversity Legacy is also working closely with the Phillipsons to further develop the EcoGipps venture into a stewardship entity that can take care of managing the properties into the future.

Heather Phillipson will continue leading restoration efforts at North Paddock, with Caroline Trevorrow joining as a dedicated Stewardship Coordinator to oversee the organisation’s activities. Thus, the initiative is creating local employment in conservation, as well as the education and community engagement opportunities that are at the core of the EcoGipps mission.

A Living Legacy for Future Generations

The transition of North Paddock into BioDiversity Legacy’s care marks a significant milestone for the private land conservation movement. It demonstrates a clear, practical pathway for landholders who want to permanently protect their land, ensure best-practice stewardship and contribute to something much bigger than themselves.

The Phillipson family’s vision – and their courage to act on it – has created a model that others can follow.

It reminds us that conservation is not only about restoring landscapes. It’s about restoring connection: to Country, to community and to the future. Their story shows what becomes possible when people choose to give back to the land that has given them so much. And it lights the way for others who wish to leave a living legacy for future generations.

Protecting our coastal saltmarshes

by BDL Team | Nov 23, 2024 | Land protection, Threatened species

Of mud and mangroves

Through necessity, the early settlers viewed the Australian landscape through an economic lens, assessing the natural value of the land in terms of what they could extract from it.

Now, as we shift our focus to natural capital – the air, water, soil, plants and animals that essentially keep us alive – we are beginning to value more diverse landscapes. But not all get the attention they deserve.

A case in point are the muddy, mucky landscapes known as coastal saltmarsh. Despite providing an astonishing array of ecosystem services, they remain greatly undervalued. But why?

Blue carbon landscapes

Broadly defined as a mosaic of coastal ecosystems, saltmarsh is one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth, likened to kidneys or lungs in terms of its ability to filter pollution and intercept nitrogen run-off from farms.

In South Gippsland, Victoria, this lung effect can be seen from above as we look down at the 67,186-hectare site of Corner Inlet. Adjacent to Wilsons Promontory and the Nooramunga Marine and Coastal Park, Corner Inlet is one of 64 wetland areas listed as a Wetland of International Importance under Ramsar Convention.

Fringing the Inlet and the 40 plus sandy barrier islands within the inlet are some of the most floristically diverse coastal saltmarshes in the country; marshes that not only reduce farm run-off and provide a nursery for young fish, but capture and store carbon at rates 30-50 times higher than the equivalent area of soil in terrestrial forests – a process known as blue carbon.

Listen to Nooramunga Land & Sea Botanist, Karl Just, talk about key saltmarsh species.

Reframing notions of value

According to Melbourne University wetland ecologist, Paul L. Boon, Australians have always undervalued saltmarsh. He uses the folktale of Cinderella to describe how they are perceived as the ugly or poor stepsister of inland wetlands – wastelands standing between us and our desire to live on the coast and extract resources from it.

Viewed through European eyes, saltmarshes certainly ain’t pretty; in Cinderella’s words, “When they look at me, they see a mess”.

But if you look closer you can see the jewels in the landscape, like the samphire or glasswort whose jointed branches look like strings of coloured beads. Or the red seablite that mixes with the samphire to create rivers of red marsh.

A population at risk

While Corner Inlet retains 80% of its saltmarshes, a salutary lesson can be learned if we look west to Anderson Inlet, where 60% of the marshes have been lost. Or further north to Botany Bay – ironically named for its biodiversity – where losses in some areas are reported as 100%.

However, some plants within the Corner Inlet, including the iconic grey or white mangrove, are endangered. Perversely, if the saltmarshes are not managed well, the system gets out of balance and mangroves take over. So these systems need to be managed carefully.

An island of hope

In 2022, leading Victorian botanists Tim D’Ombrain and Karl Just got wind of a potential sale of Little Dog Island off the coast of Hedley within Corner Inlet.

*Little Dog Island photo with thanks to Andrew Wallace.*

Formerly owned by a group of developers who attempted to build an eco-resort on the island – complete with 9-hole golf course – the 62-hectare island was abandoned when the project failed. It lay idle for 14 years until Tim and Karl invited Federation University paleoecologist Professor Peter Gell, Rendere Environmental Trust Strategic Director Jim Phillipson and Carbon Landscapes co-director Dr Steve Enticott to collaborate on a new conservation project.

Together they formed a not-for-profit organisation called Nooramunga Land & Sea to hold the island in trust for future generations with provisions to enable community engagement and collective land stewardship.

The ‘saltmarsh crew’ are now repairing damage caused by the development and eradicating feral animals and weeds. They’re also investigating opportunities to secure other private properties in the area.

“We see these landscapes as ecological gems in the jewel that is Corner Inlet,” says Jim Phillipson. “They are beautiful and highly productive landscapes that support human health and wellbeing. But they are fragile and easy to disrupt. To protect them, we need to value them and promote their intrinsic value – just by being left alone.”

Like other areas within the Inlet, Little Dog Island attracts a wide range of migratory birds. It may also provide habitat for the critically endangered Orange-bellied Parrot, which feeds on plants that grow in salty or alkaline conditions, such as saltmarshes.

Expectations are high that the Parrot will be spotted on Little Dog Island, with members of the conservation crew participating in BirdLife Australia’s Winter Surveys. The crew are also exploring opportunities to secure other properties in the Inlet to build biolinks and connections for plants, animals and people.

*Story and most photos by Robyn Gower. Story Published in Wildlife Australia magazine, Spring 2023.

With thanks to Professor Paul Boon, whose research on saltmarsh is published in the CSIRO journal Marine & Freshwater Research and Royal Botanic Garden Sydney journal, Cunninghami