When Stuart Inchley and his partner Victoria Johnson bought their property in Turtons Creek - on  land under a conservation covenant - they thought it would be a pleasant bush block on which to sit back and enjoy. They didn’t realise how invested in caring for the land they would become.

A conservation covenant permanently protects a patch of private land (not necessarily the whole property) that has natural, cultural or scientific value.

Walking through their hilly, rainforest-dense property along the Tarwin River, it feels as if you have stepped back in time. Then when you learn about all the restorative work Inchley and Johnson have undertaken, maybe stepping back in time isn’t just hyperbole.

Inchley first had to learn how to clear feral goats from his land with a rifle. Once he learned how to cull them he noticed native wildlife returning to his property. He then spied the return of endangered species including Gang-gang cockatoos, Powerful owls, pilotbird and platypus.

In conversation with the Gippsland Monitor Inchley said: “ I think gradually over time, as we learn more about the property and what species were here, the land changes you and teaches you when you're on it. You have to adapt to fit in with that place”.

Soon enough he became “a bit addicted to finding new species”.

“I really wanted to make sure I documented them all and put them online so there was a record of them,” he said.

A grant from Wettenhall Environmental Trust allowed them to undertake a rainforest survey which found 489 Slender tree ferns in the Turtons Creek area, 130 of which are on Inchley and Johnson’s property. This is the largest pocket of the critically endangered fern in Australia.

It can be difficult to start covenanting on your own, so Stuart and Victoria joined Land Covenantors Victoria (LCV).

What is a conservation covenant?

In Victoria, a conservation covenant requires a legal agreement between a private landowner and the organisation Trust for Nature (TFN). 

When a landowner enters into a conservation covenant under the Victorian Conservation Trust Act 1972 the covenants are registered on title, which makes the agreement legally binding in perpetuity, even if the property is sold.

Land Covenantors Victoria (LCV)

There are over 1,700 covenanted properties dotted all over Victoria and some are quite isolated. This is where Land Covenantors Victoria comes in.

The organisation was founded in 2021 and has grown into a community across Victoria for landholders with covenants to connect, learn and grow their knowledge about how to care for and develop the biodiversity on their land. It now has over 120 members.

President of LCV Peter Mulherin has had a covenant on his property north of Wonthaggi for 18 years.  

“We're a membership organisation, and we build a network of land covenantors and share knowledge, share news, share events,” he said. “People from all walks of life can come to us and ask for assistance or ask for knowledge and we are happy to share and learn and grow.”

LCV member Louise Nicholas - who lives with her partner on a 168-acre bush block in Patchewollock - said “you can always learn something, especially when it's in a different part of the state than you”.

“It’s nice to hear what people are doing in different areas, because it kind of makes you feel that your part of a little gang, whereas when you are on your own bush block, kind of in the middle of nowhere, you can sometimes feel a bit isolated, especially me, for instance, up here, it's all big agriculture.”

LCV provides members with in-depth webinars on a variety of covenanting topics from gadgets and technology to pest control. It also offers virtual tours of covenantor properties that allow people to observe the nuances and biodiversity of a covenanted piece of land digitally.

What is Trust for Nature?

TFN is the only organisation in Victoria empowered to place conservation covenants on private land. It works with each covenantor to help them make the right decision for their property.

TFN was established in the 1970s to assist in purchasing reserves and turning them into national parks or conservation areas. The organisation facilitated the purchase of the Edith Vale-Seaford wetlands and Greens Bush on the Mornington Peninsula.

In the 1980s the organisation continued to purchase reserves to expand conservation land. It set up and cared for national parks but as more reserves were purchased it became clear that if TFN wanted to advance conservation land in Victoria it had to start thinking about private land. 

Currently 64 percent of Victorian land is held privately. The CEO of TFN, Corinne Proske, says that “some of the most important remnant ecosystems sit on private land, and that's still the case. If we really want to protect Victoria's natural wonders, we have to work with private land”.

Part of TFN’s role is to assess a property’s ecological value and then work with the landholder on how much of it will be used for domestic use and how much will be protected. 

Around 70 percent of TFN’s covenants are held by farmers. “This is because farmers have an existing relationship with conservation, they're at the coalface of it. They're passionate, but they may not be into the politics of it,” says Proske.

Some covenantors are concerned about climate change or protecting a particular species, while others want to ensure their wishes for the land are honoured by those who inherit it. It can take years of discussions between TFN and a landowner before a decision is made.

Every covenant is bespoke - the land, the layout - which is a challenge for TFN.

Inchley and Johnson’s property is one of four connected TFN covenants, the whole Tarwin River forest is over 750 acres that is now protected forever.

Inchley says he and Victoria have lived in remote Arnhem Land, where they “learned quite a lot about getting out and living in the bush, hunting, fishing”.

“The people out there, they're part of the landscape, and the land needs people,” Inchley says. “I'm starting to sort of learn that this land needs people on it to manage it.”

If you’d like to know more about their conservation efforts you can visit their Tarwin River Forest website here: https://tarwinriverforest.com.au/