Development projects impact on native plants and animals and their habitats, within their operational footprint and surrounds, and in some cases, on the movement of animals across the landscape. In NSW these impacts are quantified through the Biodiversity Offset Scheme. If your project has triggered assessment under the biodiversity offset scheme, then an ecologist (the accredited assessor) will use the government-supplied tool (the Biodiversity Assessment Method) to determine the variety and scale of those impacts and will quantify the value to which they must be offset (generating a count of biodiversity credits of different types).  

Under NSW law, the impact your project will have on the environment, determined as a quantity and type of biodiversity credits to be retired, must be satisfied before the project can commence. If your project is in separately-determined stages, each stage will have a description of the biodiversity credits that need to be retired before that stage can commence. 

Biodiversity credits are created when a landholder accepts an obligation to manage their land for biodiversity outcomes forever. Biodiversity Stewardship Agreements are perpetual and written onto the title of the land to which they apply; they bind the landholder to undertake the specific management actions that are identified to occur on an annual basis, defined at the time the agreement is drafted. The credit consists of a measure of the effort required to improve the environmental conditions by a certain amount and therefore the habitat for the various native species that are found on or which use that land. 

The Management Action Plan that accompanies the Biodiversity Stewardship Agreement identifies the activities the landholder must implement and their frequency. These actions will include weed, feral pest and ecological fire management, management of grazing and human activity on the site, and any tasks that specifically aid any threatened species identified to use the site (including both ecosystem-credit and species-credit species). The actions can also include habitat enhancement; native vegetation and habitat management and augmentation; control of particularly troublesome weeds (termed High-threat Exotic Vegetation); and management of water flows on the land. In all cases, annual monitoring is also required with more intensive monitoring surveys every five years. If species credits have been generated, there is a more tailored monitoring regime to be implemented by expert ecologists. 

The price of biodiversity credits are set by the vendor who is generally the landholder. Different credit types can have different prices with species credits often having a price that reflects 1. the cost of finding the species in the first place; 2. the area the species occupies on site or how many of them there are; and 3. the management activities and monitoring required under the agreement in perpetuity. Ecosystem credits can reflect all of the other management actions that are required across the wide suite of species that occupy or use that habitat, as well as the ongoing costs of monitoring and reporting. 

Costs for credits can also include factors such as:  

• the cost of the land (or at the very least it’s rate-base valuation); 

• productivity returns were it still agricultural land; 

• the ecological values in terms of returns such as shelter, pollination, pest control and aesthetics; 

• annual holding costs such as insurance, rates to both council and Local Lands Services, and mortgage repayments if any; 

• fencing and track maintenance; 

• the implementation of the actions required under the Biodiversity Management Action Plan; and 

• A fair return to the landholder given this is the only time land will ever earn any money as income (unlike grazing or forestry that returns a value from the land regularly over time).  

Some others who supply biodiversity credits do not generate the credits themselves. They on-sell from other suppliers, with the added costs that incurs on buyers. We sell our credits direct and have direct involvement in our on-ground operations. Why pay the middleman? 

If a developer is in the business of biodiversity management then they could run it themselves. However, most developers do not have environmental management as their core business. We do. Our network of sites across NSW covers a huge diversity of vegetation classes, ecosystems and threatened species, offering our clients choice and benefits. Our cost sharing synergies mean we can provide a long-term management outcome for the land. We value the land, and the biodiversity it supports, as an asset that deserves to be the focus of our business. We are also in it for the long haul. We expect to hold on to and continue to manage our sites for the term of the agreement – that is, forever – and have set up our company structure and business processes to reflect this. 

The Management Action Plan that is the core of each Biodiversity Stewardship Agreement defines the obligations that come with managing a Biodiversity Stewardship Site. The annual payment from the Total Fund Deposit is made to the landholder to ensure that those actions can be undertaken to the extent and intensity required. If the Management Action Plan has not priced the activities at a level that accounts for the possibility of inflation, then the landholder will need to cover these costs from their own funds. For example, the costs of materials, chemicals, fuel, the replacement of equipment, the payment of professionals, fire management, weed and pest control, as well as any other defined actions. The costings applied to the actions when preparing the agreement at the outset need to be generous. However, any amount of the annual payment above and beyond these costs can be kept by the landholder as part of their annual income. 

Some species are only able to be seen or identified with confidence for a very brief period of time – in some cases only a week or so each year. This may also be affected by broader weather conditions at the time with some plants not flowering at all if conditions are not right. Add to that, some of the threatened species need to be determined by experts for that species, and their availability may also be limited. Development projects get it easy – they can just assume a species is present and then have it included in the array of credits they need to source. A biodiversity stewardship site must prove the presence of the species on the site before the credits can be created. This can entail many nights of survey in rough terrain, over tens or hundreds of kilometres of walking (depending on the size of the site and the species being sought) to determine the presence and extent of threatened species present. This work is carried out by expert ecologists, and can reasonably incur a high cost. 

Sourcing and securing credits in a timely manner is crucial. We understand that large projects can be severely delayed if biodiversity obligations have not been satisfied. Given finance and timing are critical success factors in most development project, any delay has a high impact. If you have your financing ready to go and are being charged interest then this should factor into the cost at which offsets can be obtained. As most stewardship sites will take longer than a year to establish to ‘credits available’ stage, this delay can be costly. 

If you have a project approval you want to on-sell for development, the buyer should look to see if you have arranged a credible and exclusive supply of those biodiversity credits to ensure that the project costs are fully disclosed. Credit pricing is volatile and depends on a number of factors including the diversity of supply, the volume available and even the capacity to generate the credits in the first place. Don’t forget to also consider what your competitors might need for their project which will affect both supply and credit prices. 

There are options called ‘variations’ allowed for in the law. However, these variations are limited in scope and need to be strongly justified to the consent authority. In the case of an impact to a threatened species or community listed under Commonwealth law, if your project has been deemed to be a controlled action, it can only be offset with that species. If you work with us, the time involved in seeking and securing the credits you need will be minimised and the consent authority and your financiers are less likely to see biodiversity as a project stopper. 

The biggest delays are usually in the discovery and quantification of threatened species on a site. Much of the ecosystem assessment can be done at any time of the year – though the main growing season for native groundcovers is the ideal season for assessment (summer in northern NSW, winter in southern NSW). Other external delays result from things such as securing the site in the first place (if the land needs to be bought – and it needs to be land with the right vegetation and species combinations), from dealing with the department while they are undertaking the review process of the site application, and finally, in getting the agreement written onto title. 

If you come to Thesium, it is guaranteed the credits you receive are backed with an adequate level of funding to implement the on-ground management actions required and to pay the landholder a living wage to do so, verified and overseen by expert ecologists. Our sites will be inscribed on title as offset sites even before your project gets approval and therefore you are buying true improvement in the habitats for those species your project has impacted. You will receive an annual report on the offset sites from which your credits have been supplied that you can include in your documentation to stakeholders and for use in your promotional materials. For a more detailed answer, we suggest you can spend time with our staff.

Thesium strives to ensure that the credits we create on our Biodiversity Stewardship Sites are at the highest possible condition and are overseen by expert ecologists. We will undertake all of the actions identified in the management action plan to the standard identified in the assessment tool as a priority. We undertake a full range of actions to improve habitat conditions in ways the tools don’t always consider. The funds we assign to the TFD allow for the implementation of contingency actions – using the available funds to unlock actions that are going to make a difference sooner, rather than waiting for a potential windfall. 

We aim to have our agreements operating and recorded on the land title before your project is needing the credits. We also welcome first-right pre-purchase agreements from you to secure your supply and satisfy your financiers. As many of our sites are large, we generally supply a diverse array of credits from each site. With more than one buyer, these sites may be in active management by the time you buy your credits, providing a truly ‘in advance’ credit supply.  

For us, Gold Standard offsets means we work to ensure that the biodiversity credits we supply are scientifically sound, socially responsible and deliver real and measurable conservation outcomes whilst being fiscally and economically responsible to future land managers and their needs. We recognise that we are setting up a site that has to be managed forever, and there needs to be sufficient funding to cover unexpected circumstances such as natural disasters, inflation rises, affecting materials and chemical costs, as well as labour rates, specialists involved in undertaking the monitoring and reporting, administrative costs and a fair living payment for the person who is managing the land. We support our local communities with the policy of ‘buy local’ and our employment and contracting policies require us to consider indigenous and local enterprises first in getting contract work implemented on our sites. 

To assist you in making reports back to your stakeholders and investors, we commit to inform you about the sites and on-site actions you have funded via buying our credits. This will include an annual report for each source site, access to images and information, as well as the opportunity to visit the sites and see your investment in action. 

We have sold credits to developments that include Part 4 and Major Project developments, and we primarily target our work towards larger developers where we can provide efficiencies of scale. We are more than happy to work with you on your project and explore how we can satisfy your needs with the credits we already hold, or through sourcing new sites to ensure your project can commence as quickly as possible. We have worked with linear infrastructure, solar and wind farms as well as projects with a more local focus such as airports and urbanisation. 

We also entertain the idea of working with philanthropists on funding our sites. Some of our threatened species credits are unlikely to ever be needed by industry, but should not be considered worthless. If you are a philanthropist, come talk with us about how some of our species may be valuable as flagships for your interests. 

We are happy to talk with you confidentially at any stage in your project development – but we preface this statement with a proviso: the earlier the better. As the identification and quantification of credits from the development and stewardship sites both take a similar timeframe, the earlier you talk to us in your project development phases, the more likely we will be able to source the credits you need when your project breaks ground.  

Our credit holdings are shown on this page. You can see them shown both in a map and also by a list. If your project is in (or touches) one of the areas shaded in green or gold on the map, we would like to help you.