Planning & measuring our impact

Across Bush Heritage reserves our scientists, field staff, planners and data specialists follow our Conservation Management Process (CMP). The CMP draws heavily on the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation, and global best practice. 

Whenever we acquire a reserve, we identify our main ‘targets’ and ‘threats’ to their health, which helps prioritise the most effective management strategies.

We measure our progress at three levels:

1. Outputs (Strategy implementation) – are we implementing our strategies effectively?
2. Outcomes (Threats) – are threats to country reducing?
3. Impacts (Targets) – is target health improving?

Protecting our targets

‘Targets’ are the ecological, social or cultural features we’re protecting. About half of our targets are ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’ and another 43% are ‘Fair’ with more work needed.

From the time we started managing these landscapes, we’ve improved the health of 48% of our targets with another 41% holding their condition in the face of threats.

Some targets have declined, partly due to extreme weather events. We’re working hard to understand and mitigate these threats.

Managing threats

We’re always working to manage, reduce or eliminate threats such as feral animals, weeds and erosion. Threats are rated based on: scope, severity and reversibility.

Our assessments show we’ve reduced 25% of identified threats with 48% holding steady. But another 27% of our threats have increased. This reflects threats across some of our new reserves, impacts of extreme weather and an analysis of risks posed by climate change in the future.