Biodiversity Offsets Program Outcomes

Landholders wishing to generate and sell biodiversity credits can apply to the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust to enter a biodiversity stewardship agreement (BSA).

As of 30 June 2023, 270 landholders have entered BSAs, creating biodiversity stewardship sites across 59,186 hectares. This includes biobanking agreements established under former legislation and new BSAs. 

As a result, many threatened ecosystems and habitats for NSW’s threatened native plant and animal species are being protected and managed by private landholders. This will maintain and improve the biodiversity conservation values at these sites, in the long term.

The NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust manages all active biodiversity stewardship agreements by reviewing annual reports, undertaking annual site inspections and, if management actions have been completed, making annual management payments to the landholder.

A central component of the Biodiversity Offsets Scheme is the requirement that, upon the sale of credits, a landholder deposit a specified amount of money into the Biodiversity Stewardship Payments Fund (also known as the total fund deposit). The BCT invests these funds and draws on the proceeds of investment of these funds, to make annual management payments to owners of active biodiversity stewardship sites. Sites go into active management when landholders have sold enough credits to meet their total fund deposit in full.

As of 30 June 2023, the BCT held total assets of $280 million in the Biodiversity Stewardship Payments Fund. The NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust has made $13.9 million in annual management payments to the holders of active biodiversity stewardship sites in the past 12 months.

The BCT is the appointed Fund Manager for the Biodiversity Stewardship Payments Fund. The BCT manages the Fund in accordance with a comprehensive Funds and Investment Management Framework approved by the BCT Board. Among other things, the Framework requires the BCT to seek regular actuarial and investment management advice to support investment management decisions. The BCT’s investment adviser and manager is NSW Treasury Corporation, one of the biggest investment managers in Australia. You can find out more about our investment management performance by reading our annual reports.

Under the NSW Biodiversity Offsets Scheme, developers can choose to meet an offset obligation by making a payment into the Biodiversity Conservation Fund. Once that payment is made, the legal obligation to secure the offsets transfers to the BCT. The BCT must secure offsets in line with legislated offset rules (set out in the Biodiversity Conservation Regulation 2017).

The BCT's report on acquitted obligations provides information on the obligations that have been fully acquitted to date.

The BCT aims to acquit all offset obligations transferred from developers to the BCT within five years and a median of offset obligations by dollar value within three years.

All BCT credit purchases are recorded on the Biobanking and Biodiversity Offset Scheme public registers by the Department of Planning and Environment.

The BCT can be funded by the Australian and/or NSW governments to secure offsets under place-based biodiversity offsets schemes. Since 2017-18, the NSW Government has commissioned the BCT to deliver offsets under the Growth Centres Biodiversity Offset Program, which operates in Western Sydney.

Targets under this program are expressed in hectares, and from 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2022, the BCT protected approximately 213 hectares of Commonwealth-listed Cumberland Plain Woodland (against a long-term program target of 2,400 hectares) by purchasing credits from eleven biodiversity stewardship sites.

During this period, the BCT also protected approximately 42 hectares of Shale Sandstone Transition Forest (against a program target of 132 hectares) and a population of threatened Spiked Rice-flower (Pimelia spicata) from two biodiversity stewardship sites.