Show Your Support for Nature

To the Prime Minister,

We, as landholders, recognise our contribution to the restoration and protection of Australia’s wildlife, habitats, forests and diverse landscapes on private lands. Many of us are already working to protect nature and we know we can play an important role, along with the other sectors of Australian society, towards a nature positive future.

We congratulate your Government for releasing the Nature Positive Plan in December 2022, which included a commitment to much needed reform of Australia’s environmental laws. We reiterate the need for your government to clearly recognise the inexorable link between a nature positive future and combating climate change.

This country is a place of incredible landscapes and unique wildlife, but we also have one of the highest rates of extinction and lead the world in the extinction of mammals. This is one area where Australia shouldn’t be a world leader.

As landholders, we are on the frontlines, responding to bushfires, other natural disasters and the outbreak of invasive species, to protect the long-term survival of nature and our unique wildlife. However, we can’t do it alone!

We accept the need for shared responsibility in this area between farmers, landholders and governments. To achieve this, we need to recognise that to protect the long-term survival of our unique wildlife requires both direct actions, via nature positive policy, and indirect action, via action on global warming.

We need the backing of strong national nature laws.

As we play our part in delivering a nature positive future, we urgently need your Government to deliver on your promise of strong laws for nature.

We, the landholders signed here, urge the Government to:

• Stop unacceptable impacts and enact strong, enforceable National Environmental Standards that set clear goals for protecting nature.
• Create an independent national Environment Protection Australia agency to apply, monitor and enforce these laws.
• Properly fund conservation, including supporting landholder restoration projects that help us restore habitat for threatened species.
• Recognise that ‘biodiversity offsets’ are rarely effective in stopping nature decline and restrict them to an absolute last resort that is regularly monitored, reviewed and reported on.

We are caretakers of Australia’s nature on behalf of all Australians.

We are proud of our tireless efforts dedicated to sustainable land management and on-ground conservation in our role as farmers and landholders. We do this work on our lands for the benefit of current and future generations of Australians.

We urge your Government to support this work by urgently introducing strong laws to build a healthy and resilient natural world for all generations to come.