community stewardship Archives - BioDiversity Legacy

Beyond Grassroots: How Hyperlocal Networks Are Transforming Conservation

by BDL Team | Mar 11, 2026 | Community engagement

Change often begins with a conversation over a cup of tea.

At BioDiversity Legacy, we’re often described as working at the “grassroots” of conservation.

To most people, the term grassroots means community-led action, which we support and champion, but we also see conservation unfolding on an even more intimate, fluid scale through what we call hyperlocal networks.

These networks form when neighbours, landholders or individuals with a deep connection to a species or landscape begin sharing knowledge, concerns and ideas about protecting the places they love. Often centred on a single ecosystem, they represent a decentralised, community-driven approach to environmental care and stewardship.

In fact, these place-based relationships have helped lay the foundations for several BioDiversity Legacy projects, including Nooramunga Land & Sea and Connecting Wildlife.

Hyperlocal networks hold enormous potential, but they often need the right connectors to bring people, knowledge and opportunities together. That’s where BioDiversity Legacy’s Biolink Coordinators come in.

Turning care into action

Residing in regions around Australia, our Biolink Coordinators are embedded in the community and empowered to translate local care for nature into practical conservation outcomes by:

Building trusted relationships within and across communities and regions
Facilitating regional biolinks that connect habitats and landscapes
Identifying conservation opportunities that might otherwise be overlooked.
Guiding landholders through pathways to protect their land

These coordinators don’t impose solutions. Instead, they guide, facilitate and catalyse conservation in ways that are locally appropriate, practical and enduring.

The power of a conversation

Much of this work begins in simple, human ways – a discussion at a local event, a shared interest in wildlife, or a landholder wondering what might happen to their property in the future.

We jokingly refer to this engagement as a ‘Cuppa Conservation’ — the idea that meaningful conservation often begins by sitting down, listening and building trust.

Not every conversation leads immediately to land protection. But every conversation strengthens the relationships that make conservation possible. Over time, those conversations begin to connect.

From small conversations to lasting impact

Research increasingly shows our instincts about hyperlocal networks are correct.

As Professor Ashley Dawson writes in Environmentalism from Below (2024), “Conservation succeeds when it is embedded in community values; when the voices and profiles of individuals and groups who inspire others are amplified, and when the natural power of social networks is leveraged to spread the message that local people can change the world.”

A model for the future

The future of conservation will not be led by government alone. It will be built by people who care deeply about place, supported by trusted local leaders who can help turn intention into action.

BioDiversity Legacy’s Biolink Coordinators are helping lead that shift by acting as connectors and facilitators, turning conversations into collaborations – and collaborations into protected landscapes.

Turning the Tide for Our Coastal Saltmarsh

by BDL Team | Jan 21, 2026 | Land protection, Stewardship

In our element, experiencing the joy and adventure of a wild ecosystem

Visiting Bullock Island on a gusty high tide is not for the faint-hearted. But for a small group of committed volunteers, the challenge is more than worth it. A bit of cold, wet and mud is a small price to pay for an up-close encounter with one of Victoria’s most remarkable saltmarsh environments.

Getting there is part of the adventure. Bullock Island sits within the iconic Corner Inlet in South Gippsland, a site of international importance under the Ramsar Convention. Reaching it requires a capable 4WD and a 30-minute drive along sandy, rutted tracks flanked by Manna Gums, Stringybarks, Grass trees and century-old Banksias. Wet weather gear, food, water and a good camera are essential - especially if you’re lucky enough to spot one of the inlet’s rare birds along the way.

Jewels in the landscape

Once on the island, you’re rewarded with a sweeping ecological tapestry. Beaded and Shrubby Glassworts, Pigface, Austral Seablite, Swamp Paperbark, Austral Brooklime, native grasses and White Mangrove forests paint the landscape in shifting tones of green, red, silver and gold.

On this particular visit, the volunteers have a mission - to retrieve remote-sensing cameras placed around a freshwater hole on the 72-hectare island to monitor fauna. As they cross the long causeway, a mob of kangaroos bounds across the tidal flats - a fitting welcome to this wild and beautiful place framed by the dramatic hills of Wilsons Promontory to the south.

Protecting Nooramunga Land & Sea

Bullock Island is the second island to be secured by Nooramunga Land & Sea (NL&S), a not-for-profit Local Landholding Entity supported by BioDiversity Legacy and dedicated to protecting and restoring these fragile coastal landscapes for future generations.

Along with neighbouring 60-hectare Little Dog Island, Bullock Island bears the scars of past farming and recreational use. Now, however, these islands are being carefully managed to heal. Rising sea levels due to climate change pose a challenge - but also an unexpected opportunity. Storm surges bring salty water that can kill off invasive weeds such as pasture grasses, helping native saltmarsh species reclaim their ground.

The islands are also blue carbon powerhouses. Their muddy soils lock away vast amounts of carbon, making them critical allies in the fight against climate change while nurturing biodiversity.

Watching Over a Global Bird Haven

Remote cameras are one of the tools that the NL&S stewardship team uses to watch over Bullock and Little Dog Islands. Carefully placed in the landscape, they support the detection of native fauna and help to identify potential threats - such as feral deer and foxes - to these internationally significant places.

Bullock Island is a vital stopover for migratory shorebirds and local beach-nesting birds alike. Visitors include the Critically Endangered Far Eastern Curlew, Curlew Sandpiper, Great Knot, Endangered Lesser Sand Plover, Red Knot and the Vulnerable Hooded Plover.

The island may even provide habitat for Australia’s most threatened bird, the Orange-bellied Parrot, which travels from Tasmania each year to feed on Victoria’s saltmarshes. With historic sightings in South Gippsland, the NL&S team remains hopeful of a future encounter.

A Wild Place Worth Protecting

Despite the long day, wet clothes and muddy boots, the volunteers leave Bullock Island with hearts full. They speak of the thrill of standing in a landscape where tidal creeks carve graphic patterns through the saltmarsh, where the texture of grasses and rushes shifts with the light and where each visit reveals something new.

They also carry with them a renewed commitment to the NL&S stewardship plan - a long-term vision to protect these living carbon sinks, strengthen habitat for endangered species and give the next generation the chance to witness the magic of this wild place.

EcoGipps: Growing a Living Legacy in Central Gippsland

by BDL Team | Dec 8, 2025 | Land protection, Media releases, 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.

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.

Heather and Jim Phillipson out in the field surveying EcoGipps properties.

Map showing EcoGipps properties within the wider landscape. North Paddock is circled in the photo second from bottom. Photo by Marnie Hawson.

Replanting on EcoGipps property with view to strengthening biolinks.

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.

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.