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Farmers are helping endangered ecosystems
There a many reasons to be unhappy about the state of the environment. But we’ve recently found some good news: a conservation program that works.
You probably haven’t heard of the Environmental Stewardship Program (ESP). It was a market-based agri-environment program that ran between 2007 and 2012, which funded farmers to conserve threatened ecosystems on their property. Land managers were given contracts for up to 15 years to deliver results.
Overall, 297 land managers will receive about A$152 million over roughly 18 years to implement their conservation management plans. The last of these contracts will end in 2027. No new funding rounds are expected.
There’s been a variety of market-based programs for conservation on farmland in Australia, but we don’t know what the total investment is to date. And we are not aware of scientific monitoring that demonstrates their impact.