St Mary’s, TAS

When it comes to protecting Australia’s iconic (and often elusive) wildlife, National Parks are often in the spotlight. But some of the most powerful conservation efforts are happening quietly—on farms, bush blocks, and other private properties across the country, where everyday Australians are stepping up to protect nature on their own land.

Private land conservation plays a vital yet often underestimated role in safeguarding Australia’s biodiversity. With around 60% of the country’s land privately owned or managed, it’s no surprise that we cannot achieve the federal government’s ambitious “30 by 30” target—protecting 30% of land by 2030—without the help of private landholders.

Across the country, more than 5,000 private landholders protect habitat on their own properties. Motivated by the knowledge that nature doesn’t stop at national park borders, these landholders are helping to give threatened and endangered species a fighting chance.

Two landholders protecting nature are Dr Gary Luck (an ecologist with decades of conservation experience) and his wife, Dr Gayle Smythe (a biomedical scientist). Their 77-hectare property near St Marys on Tasmania’s east coast is a quiet haven for some of the island’s rare and fascinating creatures—including a prehistoric oddity you’ve probably never heard of: the blind velvet worm.

Found only in a 152 km² area around St Marys, this worm is one of the most geographically restricted invertebrates in Australia. It belongs to a genus that has survived virtually unchanged for over 500 million years. These sightless creatures hunt with jets of slime and are more closely related to insects and crustaceans than your average earthworm. They rely entirely on undisturbed forest ecosystems to survive.

Gayle and Gary’s property is also home to the critically endangered Brooker’s gum ecosystem (Eucalyptus brookeriana), as well as endangered and vulnerable species including Tasmanian devils, swift parrots, wedge-tailed eagles, eastern-barred bandicoots, and the eastern quoll—now extinct on the mainland.

“To have animals like this on the property is special,” Gary says. “It drives home that we have a responsibility to make sure the land is looked after so they’re still here when we’re not.”

Their land is protected under a conservation covenant—one of more than 800 across Tasmania that together safeguard over 100,000 hectares of high conservation value land. That’s 3.5% of Tasmania’s total protected area. These covenants are legally binding agreements that ensure conservation values are protected forever.

“There’s a lot of land with high conservation values, and underrepresented ecosystems, in private hands,” Gary says. “We need to make it easier for landholders who want to protect the species they share their homes with. If covenanting programs were better supported by governments, and protection was better incentivised, think of the future we could have.

“Strong action to stop extinctions and protect nature is the most important thing the government could do—and they’re not doing nearly enough. I think we forget that nature is humanity’s life support system.”

Despite more ambitious pledges in recent years, decades of chronic government underfunding for biodiversity protection—and a lack of recognition for private land conservation as a national policy cornerstone opportunity mean that real progress remains slow.

Private land conservation faces significant barriers, including inconsistent government support and hard-to-access incentives. Conservation efforts grew during the time the National Reserve System Program was operating, but have slowed since.

Covenant programs exist across states and territories, but the quality and availability of support varies. Some jurisdictions lack strong frameworks, while others—particularly Western Australia and South Australia—face legal roadblocks to covenanting on pastoral leases. In the Northern Territory, there’s no standard covenanting system to enable permanent protection at all.

The reality is simple: Without strong private land conservation, Australia won’t hit its 30 by 30 target. It won’t protect the last strongholds of species and it won’t halt the extinction crisis.

Protecting the Blind Velvet Worm

The Blind Velvet Worm (Tasmanipatus anophthalmus) is one of Tasmania’s endangered residents—a rare, eyeless invertebrate that’s just a few centimeters long, glides through the dark heart of decaying eucalypt logs, using jets of sticky slime to snare its prey. But its secretive lifestyle offers little protection from modern threats: land clearing, intense fires, and even firewood collection are rapidly erasing the moist, rotting logs it depends on. With a distribution limited to just a sliver of forest near St Marys in northeast Tasmania, any loss of habitat could be catastrophic.

Photo by Shahan Derkarabetian, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0