Bioregional planning

The Queensland Government is collaborating with the Australian Government to pilot bioregional guidance planning in Queensland.

Bioregional guidance planning considers the cumulative impacts of development and other pressures on Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES) across a whole region. It doesn’t just look at each project individually.

Bioregional guidance planning will provide better outcomes for Matters of National Environmental Significance and greater certainty for industries.

It will do this by offering clear guidance on managing development impacts within the context of other pressures on Matters of National Environmental Significance, like pests and weeds. It will identify sensitive areas where significant efforts should be made to avoid impacts, as well as areas where there are good opportunities for protection and restoration.

This information will help proponents make early, informed decisions that can streamline their assessment under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

It can also help improve strategic planning, including as one of several inputs to regional plans made under Queensland’s planning framework.

Bioregional guidance planning is currently being piloted in three areas:

• Minerals mining in the Julia Creek and Richmond area in the Gulf Plains bioregion.
• Wind farm developments in the Collinsville area of the Brigalow Belt North bioregion.
• Potential urban growth expansion areas in South Eastern Queensland and Brigalow Belt South bioregions.

Bioregional guidance planning is underpinned by rigorous spatial conservation analyses and cumulative impact assessments. These approaches have been reviewed by experts and use publicly available information.

Explore the bioregional guidance plans, the Bioregional Planning Interactive Tool and learn more about bioregional guidance planning.

Articulous – Facilitators
So welcome for those who are joining now.

We're just going to give it a little bit longer for more people to come along and join the session. I think we've had about 70 people register to attend today, so I'm sure we'll have a few more coming in as we go. So welcome to the Queensland bioregional guidance planning session. We won't kick off just for a few more minutes. We'll wait until we have a little bit more of a quorum of people who have joined.

You might even want to pop in the chat where you're actually joining from, location-wise. So, I think we've had two to three people join so far and we're due to get about 70. So, we'll wait a little bit longer until we have a few more people that have joined before we formally kick off.
Welcome, today.

Articulous – Facilitators  
Getting a few more people joining now. Welcome to today's Queensland bioregional guidance planning session. So, we're just waiting for a few more people to join before we formally kick off. As I mentioned, we've had about 70 people register.

Articulous – Facilitators  
And we'll just ask that everybody remain on mute.

Articulous – Facilitators  
Because we will be recording this session.

Articulous – Facilitators  
So I think we've had quite a few people joining so far, which is fabulous.

Articulous – Facilitators  
We might just give it one more minute and then we might formally kick off.

Articulous – Facilitators  
Yeah.
Okay.
Yep.
All right, well, I think we're getting quite a few more people joining now, which is fabulous. Welcome today. I think Jacqui and Kat, if you're happy for us to kick off, we might get started because we've got quite a bit of stuff information to kick to go through today.

Articulous – Facilitators
But first I'd just like to start by acknowledging the land on which we meet. So currently our team is meeting on Turrbal and Yuggera land and the Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation would just like to acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as Traditional Owners and custodians of the land. And we recognise that connection to land, sea, community, and pay our respects to elders past and present for all the lands that people are joining on today. But as I mentioned, we're joining from Turrbal and Yuggera land. So just to give you a little bit of an overview about this session, basically, we'll be providing a bit of the overview of the entire bioregional guidance planning program, a bit of the background and the purpose of it. We can give you a short overview of the snapshot of the engagement that we delivered in 2025 and earlier this year and an overview of the inputs and the analysis that we've actually undertaken. We also will be running through the draft plan findings and a couple of examples of how this could be used. There will be opportunities for questions and feedback, but this session is really focused on providing a bit of an overview.

We will be allowing questions through the Q&A, but we will hold answering these questions until the end of the session. We may provide a couple of online sort of responses to those Q&As, but verbally we won't be going through those till the end of the session. And just so you're aware, we're recording this session. We'd like to make it a bot-free space.

Articulous – Facilitators  
So if you have any AI assistance, if you could please refrain from using those. And basically, I'll just run through how we use the Q&A. So, you'll see at the top of your Teams screen, there is the Q&A next to the chat, the Q&A function. So, if you click on that Q&A function, it'll open up and you'll be able to ask a question through there. And the recording will be available on the website, which is our first question, so thank you for that. And basically, you can start a discussion or start a question there and type in your question and then click post to make sure that it's lodged publicly. So, I can see that some people have already started using the chat. If possible, if you could please use the Q&A function. And I also see that Narelle is joining from Kabi Kabi Country. So welcome, Narelle. And Andrew, yes, it will be available on the website.

So, without further ado, I will hand over to our DETSI team to introduce themselves and give us a bit of an overview of the bioregional planning.
Jacqui, if you'd like to...

Jacqui Elliott - DETSI  
Good morning everyone and welcome to our session and thank you Sue and Articulous for your support in today's session. We do have the presentation for you today and I believe we're kicking off with Kari.

Kari-Ann West - DETSI  
Katie, actually, from DCCEEW, our colleagues.

Jacqui Elliott - DETSI  
I'm sorry.

Katie ELLINSON - DCCEEW  
Good morning, everyone. I'm here on behalf of the Australian Government from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. We are working closely with the Queensland Government to deliver the Queensland pilot bioregional guidance plans. I'm going to speak briefly about bioregional planning from the Australian Government perspective before I hand over to my DETSI colleagues to speak to their work in Queensland.

So, at its core, bioregional planning is a landscape scale approach to consider environmental impacts of a particular type of development across a region rather than individual projects.

It’s designed to streamline project approvals while reducing environmental impacts and protecting areas of high conservation priority. Bioregional planning does this by providing better information to enable planning and decision making, and this includes identifying areas more suitable for development and areas where assessments are likely to be more challenging. Bioregional planning enables better management of cumulative impacts and threats to the environment. And bioregional planning identifies protection and restoration opportunities to inform targeted government and private investment.

Bioregional planning is designed to be a collaborative process between the Commonwealth and the State or Territory Government. To make a bioregional guidance plan or a bioregional plan with regulatory zones, both the State Minister and the Commonwealth Environment Minister must endorse the final plans.

Next slide, please. We have two types of bioregional plans. Bioregional guidance plans, which is what is being made in Queensland, and bioregional plans with regulatory zones, which is something quite different. Bioregional guidance plans will provide information and advice to help proponents to better site and design their projects and support more efficient assessment under the EPBC Act.

Proponents can use the information in the bioregional guidance plans to understand regional priorities and values, identify less environmentally sensitive areas which may be better suited to development, and reduce the impacts by applying the guidance.

Bioregional guidance plans will not remove the requirement for development proposals to be assessed under national environmental
law. However, the Australian Environment Minister must have regard to the plan when making a relevant decision under the EPBC Act. This includes project approval, strategic assessments and certain offset decisions.

To be clear, bioregional guidance plans cannot be automatically converted into bioregional plans with regulatory zones. I'll talk about this a bit further along on the next slide. But making regulatory bioregional plans would need to be a decision of both the Queensland and the Australian Governments and would require significant extra analysis.

We're very proud of the close collaboration with Queensland on these bioregional guidance plans. We're also piloting bioregional planning in New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria. And lessons from all of these pilots have informed our Commonwealth policy development and are feeding into the state-based planning processes in some of the states. But these plans in Queensland will be our first
bioregional guidance plans, so we are very excited about that.

Next slide, please. As many of you would be aware, the Australian Government's Environment Protection Reform Bills were passed by the Australian Parliament late last year. The Australian Government will continue collaborating with stakeholders, including state governments, to deliver the implementation detail. Once established, the National Environment Protection Agency will ensure environmental decisions are fair, efficient and transparent.
Relevant parts of our department will transition across to the new independent agency, the National Environment Protection Agency.

There will be further subordinate legislation and detail required to implement these reforms, and this includes developing national environmental standards and regulations and rules. Under the Australian Environment Law reforms, the existing pathway for bioregional guidance plans has been retained and clarified. We started this work on the guidance plans with DETSI over three years ago, well before the passage of the reforms.

The reforms have also created a pathway for bioregional plans with regulatory go zones, as I mentioned, and these plans will include development zones and conservation zones. You may have also heard these referred to as go zones and no-go zones. And these regulatory bioregional plans will allow prescribed priority actions to go ahead in a development zone without project level environmental approval from the Commonwealth, where they comply with standard conditions set out in the plan. These kind of regulatory bioregional planning would prohibit, subject to exemption, certain activities in high value areas designated as conservation zones, and they would also provide strategic offset arrangements to effectively manage cumulative impacts.

The National Environment Protection Agency will monitor compliance with and enforce the prohibitions, conditions and commitments in bioregional plans. Thank you.

Kari-Ann West - DETSI  
Thank you, Katie, and welcome again to all that are joining us today or may watch this recording after. We thank our DCCEEW colleagues for providing some background and context to the bioregional planning under the Australia's EPBC Act, but we will now focus on what has been happening in Queensland specifically. So, as already mentioned, the Queensland and Australian governments have been collaborating to pilot bioregional guidance planning in Queensland.

We have been developing these closely with our DCCEEW colleagues to ensure that we are getting the language right and making them fit for purpose. Our work today has focused on 3 areas of Queensland and three different sectors of economic importance. These are wind farm developments in the Collinsville area of the Brigalow Belt North bioregion, minerals mining in Julia Creek, Richmond area in Gulf Plains bioregion and then also urban development in the South Eastern Queensland in Brigalow Belt South bioregions.

So, the Queensland bioregional guidance planning will aim to provide greater certainty for industry, facilitate responsible development and also improve outcomes for matters of national environmental significance. It aims to support project assessments under the Commonwealth EPBC Act. Strategic planning, for example, as one of several inputs into the regional plans under Queensland's planning framework and also continued stewardship of landholders, environment groups and other. As already mentioned, we are delivering guidance plans only in Queensland. And our audience for these plans includes proponents, regulators such as DCCEEW and other parties such as land managers and NRM groups.

A few things that are out of scope for these plans are matters of state and local environmental significance and other environmental values, as well as state environmental plan and planning project assessment processes.
Thank you. Next slide.

So some of you may have already engaged with this project to date, and for that we thank you. But for those that are unfamiliar with the project, we have been engaging with experts and stakeholders throughout the project, as you can see on screen. In early 2024 and early, in 2024 and early 2025, we had some technical reviews conducted on the proposed methods by some experts.

During 2025, we conducted 2 stakeholder engagement phases, which included mid-2025 to understand community values in each of the plan areas, and then in late 2025 on the methods used in the early cumulative impact assessment results. As you can see, we are currently in the public consultation phase for the draft Brigalow Belt North and Gulf Plains bioregional guidance plans and this will run until the 17th of July this year with the intent to refine the draft plans following the feedback received throughout public consultation and return final plans to Queensland and Australian governments for approval in late 2025 and early 2027.

The findings from the South East Queensland pilot project will not form a standalone plan at this stage. You might be aware that the SEQ regional plan is currently being reviewed at the moment. So, the findings from the bioregional guidance planning conducted in South Eastern Queensland and Brigalow Belt South bioregions will be considered as one of several inputs into the review of this SEQ regional plan.
Thank you. Next slide.

So, to date, we've had some really great engagement. Throughout 2025, we held various engagement events, which the feedback from these have helped inform the development of the draft plans. We've had more than 650 stakeholders engaged from multiple industry sectors, including the renewable energy sector, minerals mining and urban development, natural resource management groups and landholders, environment and conservation groups and all levels of government, as well as Traditional Owners and First Nations people to capture the unique social, cultural and economic values for each of our locations. In mid-2025, we've engaged 334 people to understand the environmental, social, cultural and economic values within each of the plan areas. Stakeholder advice was sought on locally available data and stakeholder perspectives on the key pressures and threats that are impacting on MNES in the areas. Feedback from this engagement was combined with expert research to develop a cumulative impact assessment, including draft measures to manage impacts on MNES.

And in late 2025, we engaged about 191 people to provide feedback on the early draft plan advice, including our mitigation measures. The feedback from this engagement has been used to validate findings from other information sources, identify areas of further investigation, and also ensure critical issues raised by stakeholders were not overlooked.

Throughout 2025, we have conducted about nine workshops, which included in-person and online, including three First Nations specific workshops. We've also done nine online information sessions and webinars, various small group meetings, including with First Nations groups and various online surveys.

Thank you. Next slide. So as mentioned, consultation is now open on the draft plans.
We have released two draft plans for public consultation, so our draft Brigalow Belt North Bioregional Guidance Plan and the draft Gulf Plains Bioregional Guidance Plan. As previously mentioned, the findings from the bioregional guidance planning for South East Queensland and Brigalow Belt South bioregions will be considered as one of several inputs into the review of the SEQ Regional Plan.

We are working towards the end of this year and early next year to finalise the plans and provide them to the Queensland Government for approval. And then these will be supplied to the Queensland Government Minister for the Environment and Water for approval under Section 176 of the EPBC Act. So, ways that you can have your say, you are able to make a written submission either via In the Loop or as an email direct to our team. You are welcome to complete our online survey via In the Loop, or we strongly encourage people to attend our online and in-person workshops that will be conducted over the next few months. Our consultation does close on the 17th of July 2026. If you are interested in attending a workshop, please contact us via our email and we will ensure you receive further emails regarding upcoming events, we will drop our email in the chat just so that people are aware. I will now hand over to my colleague Jacqui to walk you through the inputs and analyses of the draft plans. Thank you, Jacqui.

Jacqui Elliott - DETSI  
Thank you, Kari, and also Katie before that.
Okay, next slide please, Evan. Thank you. So, this slide gives you a high-level overview of the key steps and components that go into our bioregional guidance planning process that Queensland has designed. And for Queensland, all steps have been undertaken for all three of our pilot areas.

In 2004, we started off, sorry, in 2024, we started off with developing the scope and the methods. So, the scope included things like defining the geographical area, defining what our focus industry is, and how we are defining each of those industries. So, what is a wind farm development, for example, and also confirming the scope of the matters that we are focusing on, which are matters of national environmental significance. Our process isn't focusing on matters of state or local significance, except to the extent that they may also be listed as such.

We've also gone through an expert review process over the past few years, particularly with our methodology for the spatial conservation analysis part of our work, and to also get some advice on the overarching approach as we navigate this pilot. That's been a really helpful process, and we've certainly incorporated some of the feedback from our experts along the way.

Once we'd settled our scope and established our method, we wanted to understand what the existing situation was in those respective plan areas, both in relation to MNES, but also in relation to the social, cultural and economic values in those areas. And this is to ensure that we put some regional context into each of the plans that we're working on, and to ensure they're being developed in a way that is relevant for each of those areas.

We've also looked at how to assess the cumulative impacts of our focus industry, and in particular, the impacts are on the MNES in question. And we will look at the context of other regional pressures that were occurring in those areas as well. And with that knowledge, that has all come together to help us understand options and develop some guidance and advice for how to manage those impacts.

There are a number of key inputs into this process, as you can see from that slide. And we've highlighted some of those that were specifically developed for bioregional guidance planning and others that were actually based on existing information that we've taken into account. So key inputs include stakeholder feedback, literature reviews, and, of course, we've had to work with all the legislative frameworks that are existing at the moment and also have been anticipated and are now going to be realised through the expected EPBC Act reforms.

The key work that we've developed specifically for bioregional planning is the cumulative impact assessment, which I'll talk about more shortly, and also our spatial conservation analysis. I can see a number of people in the room today that have been on this journey with us for a little while. You will have heard some of this being called biodiversity values mapping which so we have changed the terminology now to call it spatial conservation analysis, but that is actually the same work that we've been talking about to those of you who are familiar.

There's also other existing spatial information that has been input into the process, and for example, other existing info about land uses in the area and other regional plans, for example, and NRM plans that's helped us understand the social, cultural and economic values of those particular areas.

Okay, so now I will step a little bit more through the cumulative impact assessment process that we've undertaken and a reminder that the origins of this work are coming from the independent review of the EPBC Act that called for greater recognition that we're working in an integrated system of environmental management and that we should find a way to better consider and account for the cumulative impacts on the environment.

So, the CIA work was led by a specialist environmental consultant who we've engaged called 2Rog. And we've asked them to do a cumulative impact assessment that essentially looks at the impacts of the focus industry. And what we've got up on the screen here, you can see is an example of minerals mining for the Gulf Plains plan.
So, the CIA looked at the focus industry in combination with other regional pressures. So, looking at things like pests and weeds, climate change and other development that is not the focus industry. 2Rog’s approach is actually based on some IUCN international guidance that is around addressing cumulative impacts on wind and solar farms and we can share a link to that perhaps later at the end of the session. 2Rog has modified that methodology somewhat though to make sure it is suited to bioregional guidance planning in Queensland and the focus industries that we're looking at.

But as you can see with those green boxes there at the centre of the approach is looking at this concept or a model of source-impact and pathways. Sorry, source-impact pathways and receptor model. This means particularly for that focus industry that we're trying to really understand the sources so what are the activities and components that will generate the impact? So, the examples we've put up here on the slide in the context of minerals mining are land clearing, earthworks, transport, traffic, water and energy use. And then once we've identified those, we're looking at the mechanisms for how they can impact on MNES. So, the examples here are things like habitat fragmentation, the spread of weeds, fire, and an altered hydrology.

Finally, our receptors, being the protected matters themselves. And in this instance, we're looking at things like threatened ecological communities and migratory species that are listed under the EPBC Act. So, this information all comes together to help us to prepare some advice and looking at how we might mitigate the impacts. And throughout the plans, when we talk about mitigation, we're actually talking about, you know, the whole suite of the hierarchies. So, including avoidance, mitigate, repair and offset steps as well.

The plans are also coming up with advice, not only for proponents, but also regulators, but also other players in the plan area. So broader community, governments rolling out other programs and other active, you know, conservation groups, etcetera.

One of the key outputs of this process has been the development of what we're calling impact thresholds. And I'll talk a bit more about those in a moment. But one thing we do also want to flag is that overall the CIA process is a qualitative assessment. We haven't been looking at numerical comparison of impact versus benefits, basically because of the, you know, the information that we're working with and also the status of these plans as guidance only and being at a landscape-scale approach.

So, we thought we'd talk through the impact thresholds and a little bit of the theory and the method behind this. You will see more information about these if any of you have already been into the Interactive Tool or if you do go into it in the coming weeks, you are able to sort of track back and have a look at the nominated impact thresholds for various species. But in essence, as we were developing our method for this work, we have heard the desire that impact thresholds are helpful to be able to articulate an acceptable tolerance for how much impact a matter could actually handle. But it also conscious that we didn't want to come up with arbitrary thresholds, and particularly knowing how difficult that may be when you've got many different individual protected matters. So, the CIA has used an approach from the IUCN guidelines where we assign categories and set an impact threshold that way. And that's helping us to understand the status of where each protected matter is at
and how much more impact it can actually tolerate while still allowing us to meet our net gain objectives in alignment with the EPBC Act. So, you'll see on the slide there, we have categories from E4 or E4 plus down to E2. The IUCN framework actually does have an E1 category as well, which is essentially talking about where losses
is acceptable, however, we weren't of the view that this is appropriate when we're talking about matters of national environmental significance.

But the key criteria in assigning the different categories in this instance have been things like the protected matters trend, their current status, how threatened they are, their endemicity, so how much they may rely on the area that we're looking at, and also how we're able to restore or recreate habitats or to reverse any damage that may occur. So E4 means those species and threatened ecological communities where you'd need to aim for near-zero impacts if you are wanting to achieve a net gain. And the advice for those species and ecological communities is that a proponent will need to make significant efforts to avoid those areas and those impacts in all but exceptional circumstances. And a key element of that top row there is, in that top category, is that offsets are unlikely to compensate for the impacts. And that's not to say that it isn't possible for a proponent to put forward novel solutions and make proposals, but from what we currently know and at this state in time, it is unlikely that an offset would work. So moving down the box, we're looking to keep those impacts as low as possible in the E3 categories and then offset should be used as a last resort and then moving down into the E2 category is where we get to a point where, of course, you'll still need to apply the mitigation hierarchy, but offsets are more likely to be appropriate after sensible avoidance and mitigation. We do also have a couple of spaces where we've split the categories because we are acknowledging that elements or components of may have different impact thresholds. So, an example of this might be breeding habitat for some species is not able to be restored or recreated. So, we've assigned that element an E4 category. However, other habitats, such as foraging habitat, may be something that is appropriate to offset. So, it may be given an E2 or an E3 category.

So, that's one of the key tools that will be that we've been using to come up with the cumulative impact assessment, and there is more information about it in our fact sheets, and we expect to, you know, be in a position in workshops and other meetings to sort of keep unpacking this for those of you who are interested in understanding more.

I'm going to hand over to my colleague now, Carly Campbell, who's going to talk to you about that other key element of our work that was developed specifically for bioregional planning, and that's the spatial conservation analysis. Thank you.

Carly Campbell - DETSI  
Thanks, Jacqui. Yep, so as Jacqui said, I'm going to be talking to you a little bit about the spatial conservation analyses today. As previously discussed, these were formerly known as biodiversity values mapping, but these are the same thing if you have heard about it in previous consultation. So, the goal of these analyses was to understand the spatial distribution and relative importance of areas for achieving net gain outcomes for MNES.

To achieve this, these analyses were split into three different analyses, each with a specific objective. So, we have objective one, which is to identify important conservation areas, which are areas that contain irreplaceable features. We have objective 2, which is to identify areas with high restoration potential for MNES species and communities. We have objective 3, which is to identify areas important for achieving representative protection of MNES species and communities.
So these analyses use existing data and information, and these sources are all publicly available, and most of these have been expert reviewed. For instance, we include data from places like biodiversity planning assessments and Wildnet.

The robust scientific method means that the SCA could have broader applicability as guidance for a range of users. But however, the SCA were specifically designed for bioregional guidance planning with a focus on producing fit for purpose information that uses the best available data and is informed by conservation principles.
It's also important to note that these analyses are tenure blind. There is further information available about these analyses on the Bioregional Planning website, including descriptions in further detail about how these analyses are produced.

We'll go to the next slide now. So, the first objective, which I'll talk you through a little bit here, is the important conservation areas. And these areas highlight areas that will contain features for protected matters that are difficult or impossible to recreate or restore. So, for example, this includes things like old growth forests, or hollow bearing trees that essentially those things cannot be offset for MNES.

This also considers critical connectivity pinch points in the landscape where, for example, species need to pass through to maintain landscape connectivity.
The advice in the plans suggests that people make significant efforts to avoid impacts in these areas and that EPBC assessments are likely to be long and costly in these areas. Proponents will need to further investigate the specific location of the irreplaceable features and that there's also a good opportunity to provide
to look at conservation and protection in these locations.

We'll move to our second objective now, which is to identify areas with high restoration potential. So, these are areas in the landscape with the highest restoration potential in the landscape for those protected matters, especially through improving vegetation condition. This also considers improving the connectivity in the landscape.

So, the advice in the plan around these areas is that they should be considered as opportunities for offsets based on vegetation restoration, essentially as a starting point for proponents’ investigations.

The advice in the plans also highlights that if these areas are lost, the cost of offsets and other restoration activities to achieve net gain outcomes are more likely to increase because these areas have so many overlapping protected matters and MNES values.

And our final objective here is for achieving representative protection for MNES. So again, these areas identify where the protection of existing habitat could most benefit protected matters. So, for example, through planning schemes, stewardship agreements or protected areas.

The advice in the plans about these areas is that proponents should make significant efforts to avoid impacts in these areas. And again, if you are looking at impacting in these areas, EPBC assessments are likely to be long and costly with significant mitigation measures and offsets required, as this is where there's a convergence of MNES values.

There's also an opportunity in these areas for things like offsets based on conservation management. So, for example, the management of pests and the protection of existing habitat. So, these areas are kind of the most cost-effective way to achieve outcomes for protective matters.

There's a lot of information available here, and we have this great draft Bioregional Planning Interactive Tool, which is now available on the Bioregional Planning website. So, the plan provides a summary of the values for MNES and the CIA results, but we encourage plan users to access the more detailed and up-to-date information in this Interactive Tool. So, the Interactive Tool has the results of both the spatial conservation analysis, so identifying the areas which are important for MNES, as well as the results of the cumulative impact assessment, so including interactive information on protected matters, their sensitivity to impacts and the effectiveness of mitigation measures. So, and this information is really valuable when considering specific sites or projects as well, because you get much more detailed spatial information.

Shortly, we will go through a bit of a use case demo of the Bioregional Planning Interactive Tool, but I will hand back to Jacqui briefly, just to go through the results of the plan.
Thanks.

Jacqui Elliott - DETSI  
Thank you very much, Carly. Okay, so we are going to, I'll get Evan the next slide,
please. Thank you. We're going to go through now some of the key findings from the two plans that we have out for public consultation and also the advice or an indication of the advice that is written into the draft plans at the moment that we're seeking feedback on.

Starting with the Gulf Plains, we'd previously been referring to this as a North-western Queensland plan. And the plan area that we're focusing on in this area is north of Cloncurry, Julia Creek and Richmond. And that's the part of the Gulf Plains bioregion, specifically the Woondoola Plains and Claraville Plains subregions.
The reason that we are looking at this area is because there's more likely to be looking at minerals and mining development, not necessarily right now, but in the near future. So, this area was designed with, I suppose, the future planning and scoping and framing up of new projects in line so that that information
is there now and available to be used as an input.

There are a couple of key areas that we have identified as being important for protected matters in this area. And they're listed there along the Flinders River, south-west of Normanton and north of Stokes between Taldora and Malpas-Trenton and south of the Norman River between Savannah and Victoria Vale.
Those are areas that showed up in multiple of our spatial conservation analysis and other high confidence data sets as being really important for MNES.

Our cumulative impact assessment focused on 38 protected matters that were particularly relevant to minerals mining in that particular geographical location and the interaction of minerals mining and those protected matters. So, we've honed in and focused on those 38 as part of this.

What we see is that most of those protected matters are quite broadly distributed and are not particularly reliant on the plan area alone, but that most of them are known to be declining in their status.

And we've also found that there's a range of key pressures in that area. As you can see from the slides, invasive species, fire regimes, climate driven effects, and some grazing practise that also cause land degradation.

Our cumulative impact assessment has identified that within the minerals mining space, the two highest risk activities are land clearing and altered groundwater hydrology.

Individual protected matters also may have different high-risk activities that aren't, you know, relevant to the entire plan region, but these are the ones that we found most consistently across all protected matters and why we've called them out.
Looking at the protected matters, most of them have some capacity to deal with impacts from those regional pressures, from minerals mining, and we've got eight of the protected matters in that top band of E4 impact threshold indicating that near zero is recommended. And, notably, most of those actually only have a component that require near-zero impact.
And we've provided some examples there of the Great Artesian Basin Springs, TEC, the Night parrot, Star finch and Julia Creek dunnart.

Moving down to the E2 category, where we have 21 protected matters that can tolerate some impacts with appropriate offsets and good mitigation practices, and some examples there. And that's, I suppose, our summary from the key findings in the plan, although, you know, hopping into the document and also looking at the tool, you'll be able to drill down a little bit more and get some more information.

So, moving along then to the “what do we do about this?” now that we've come up with these findings, a really key part of our work is trying to come up with some guidance and advice for a range of players in the plan area. So, a reminder, it is only guidance and it is only advice. It doesn't change any existing regulatory requirements and it doesn't result in any zones for regulation or conservation.

Throughout the plan too, you'll also see that where we have provided advice, we have also tried to be clear, and this was really helpful feedback through targeted consultation that we've taken on to target the advice to who we are suggesting it might be relevant to. So, you'll see throughout the document there when you read it that we've tried to flag who we think the advice is relevant for.

Having said all that, it should be considered in the context of the specifics of individual projects and the EPBC Act considerations. And this is not to be interpreted as categorical statements of the significance or acceptability of impacts. We do expect proponents and regulators to consider the changes in circumstances since the Interactive Tool that we expect to be using as a support was last updated. And an example of that might be that more effective treatment of pests in the area has increased the ability of a species to tolerate impacts or that a natural disaster may have decreased it. And those types of factors are able to be considered.

The key story here, though, from our perspective, is that minerals mining can directly impact protected matters and intensify other pressures in the area. But we're also looking at a well-established industry that has strong evidence-based mitigation measures behind it. There are other pressures in the area that mean that overall to achieve net gain outcomes we can't just look at individual projects or even just the minerals mining sector as a whole and we would really advocate for coordinated regional approaches to managing some of these pressures in the Gulf Plains bioregion.
We have provided examples throughout the plan where proponents could prioritise their efforts on avoiding impacts. So those 3 sub points there on the second, the third dot point, I should say, looking at particularly sensitive habitats, inputs, so things such as important conservation areas, that are identified in the spatial conservation analysis, our E4 species and other high-risk activities and managing the impacts from those.
Other things we've also tried to recommend in the plan is engagement with local communities. So, looking at measures that might involve protection or management to maintain access for recreation, economic and cultural activities. Early and upfront engagement with local First Nations groups so as to provide a seat at the table for decision making. And also looking at opportunities for landscape-scale actions such as mitigation efforts, offsets, fire management or land stewardship. So, an example could include things like finding pathways for young people through range of programs and culturally grounded employment. Or another example could be pest management at a time that's coordinated with neighbouring landholders, so as to enable greater impact.
And another example too of advice that we provided in the plan is looking at how you can maximise the effectiveness of mitigation measures through a coordinated approach. And an example of that is, you know, evidence that some pest species, you know, might proliferate in the six to 12 months after a flood. So, looking at the timing of when the efforts are integrated.

Also, advice in there for land and water managers, such as local and state governments, regional NRM groups, or individual landholders, and, you know, encouraging again that coordinated approach across the region. And
you know, acknowledging there's already processes underway, but sometimes these types of plans and also the information that's sitting under it can help advocate for, you know, certain programs to be funded, for example, these types of things could support an investment pipeline and investment decisions. Also, within terms of government and proponents and the advice that we're providing there, as Carly highlighted, there's an opportunity to look at where there's a high restoration potential as well. So, we've identified some areas there. And then we've also, towards the end of the plan, come up with some detailed suggestions around ways
that we could improve our knowledge about spatial data and protected matters. So one example there is that, you know, understanding the way water is moving underground and, you know, we're well aware of some of the information that we need there and that we are adopting a precautionary principle in that area, but encouraging coordinated modelling or the continued coordinated modelling of groundwater in the area. And also, you know, looking at particular species and communities where it would be beneficial to get more information.

Okay, so that was a summary of the Gulf Plains, and then we're moving now into the Brigalow Belt North Bioregional Guidance Plan.

So, this is the area of Bogie River Hills and Northern Bowen Basin subregions within the Brigalow Belt, and our focus on the potential here for wind farm development around Collinsville, which is about two-thirds up the way up to the north in that map. And there is a range of notable areas of importance here.

Eungella, of course, came up as a high area of importance, as well as areas near Eagle Field and Moranbah and around the Blackwall Ranges and around the foothills of Mount Pring, where we know there's some isolated populations of endangered plants. There's actually a much higher number of protected matters in this area.
Compared to the other one, in the sense of we've identified up to 164 in this area and honed in on 92.

So there's a difference here with four of the matters having a higher extreme reliance on the plan area alone, which is basically saying that upwards of 75% of their range is actually occurring within this plan area and those four matters are all plants listed.
Blackwall Range kurrajong, the Granite nightshade, and two others.

Fifty-five of the protected matters are known to be declining and another 23 are assumed to be declining in this area. So, our cumulative impact assessment shows similar threats in the area or pressure of pressures in the area, invasive species, inappropriate fire regime and grazing also occurring. But also a key difference here is that our focus is on wind farm developments. There is also a lot of mining
in this area. So that also does add to cumulative pressures for wind farm developments. And as many would be aware, a high-risk activity being land clearing, but also aerial collision and entanglement.

And when we look at the ability of protected matters to tolerate impacts, it is quite varied in this plan area. Some of them can cope with additional pressures, with some examples provided there.

Probably one thing we wanted to acknowledge is that the impact threshold indicates that offsets can be appropriate for some species, but we probably just wanted to acknowledge and note that there are challenges at the moment with regards to aerial collision and entanglement risk, and
you know, that could be something we could also further unpack, and I'm sure that stakeholders would be interested in further discussing at future workshops or in individual meetings.

In terms of the near-zero impacts, we've got a range of protected matters, 28, and noting there's a range of species requiring near-zero impacts.
I might move into now the advice as a result and our summary, but we do have a lot of similar advice in the Gulf Plains. Sorry, then.

Sorry, I think that should say, yeah, the North Queensland, the Northern Queensland area, we do get to a lot of similar advice. So, wind farm development can impact directly on protected matters and intensify those other cumulative pressures as well.
So again, we'll be looking at actions for individual projects and also coordinated regional approaches.

We'll be encouraging mitigation measures with neighbouring landholders and regional NRMs, for example, on impacts such as pest, weed and fire management. And probably something else that we wanted to, I guess, point out here and remind everyone is that we're in a Great Barrier Reef catchment here. So, there's information
in the draft plan about impacts that are of concern also to the potential impact and follow on effect for the Great Barrier Reef.

And just a point in terms of the advice, we are encouraging adaptive management for aerial collision and entanglement. And we know that there is a rapid evolution of the technology and a growing understanding of the impacts and the responses. And that's probably one area of the plan where we expect to be doing reviews and updates over time and incorporating work through the Federal RERI Initiative,
for example. Similar advice about water management and also some particular areas we've also identified for restoration. And I'll leave it at that for this, for the moment, because I think it's probably going to be quite powerful now if we move into a use case scenario, which Carly is going to drive through on a demonstration of the Interactive Tool.

Thanks Carly.

Carly Campbell - DETSI  
Thank you, Jacqui. Yes, so what we'll do now is we'll run through a use case using the Bioregional Planning Interactive Tool. We have released 5 use case fact sheets as part of our public consultation materials. And so, these include use cases for both of these plan areas, including versions of how this can be used by a proponent and by the regulator.

So, these are intended to give line of sight into how we expect this to be used by DCCEEW assessment officers and decision makers. The fifth one is a landholder use case, which shows how somebody who is not that sort of key focus audience can use it as well. In the interest of time today, we're not planning on going through all of those use cases, but we've just got to go through one.

So, what we'll do is I'll get Evan to bring up the Bioregional Planning Interactive Tool. And so, when you launch it, you'll get this lovely disclaimer setting out what are the appropriate uses of this tool. Once you accept that, you can go through and you can see you've got your two plans there and you can click through the one we're interested in. And today we're looking at the Brigalow Belt North Guidance Plan.

So, for this scenario that we're talking about today, we're going to imagine that we have a renewable energy company who wants to undertake a new wind farm development in our Brigalow Belt North plan area. This company wants to minimise their costs, reduce their time spent getting their EPBC Act approval and improve their social licence to operate.

And they've heard about this plan and the Interactive Tool. So, what we're hoping they would do is open up the plan and the Interactive Tool when they're looking at picking a project site.

So, we suggest that they start with looking at the spatial conservation analyses results.
So we'll navigate into there so you can see those results we were showing before. And so, what we can do here is you can identify where the proposed site is. And so, you can see here this is operating in hexagonal grids. Yep, and so they've found the location of their site and they can see a bit of information about
that there. And so, you can see here from the results there that there is about 30% coverage of important conservation areas in that hexagonal grid cell.

Just a note here that these grid cells are 6 kilometres wide in this plan area and they're 8 kilometres across in the Gulf Plains plan. The different sizes are due to essentially the limitations of this Power BI tool that we're working with here. You can also click through to see the coverage of restoration potential areas. So, it looks like about 7% as well as those representative protection areas. And so that's a bit higher again at 20% as well.
So what they can take away from this is that there's a relatively high amount of those spatial conservation values in this area, particularly important conservation areas. So next, they will want to, I guess, get further details on this. So, moving into looking at that important conservation areas information, we have this irreplaceable features data here that's accessible.

So, they know which hexagon they were looking at, and so they can filter by that now to essentially look at only that and see what is irreplaceable or likely to be occurring in that cell.

So, you can see here, there's a little list that's popped up now of the irreplaceable features that may be occurring in that grid cell. So, you can see there that there is the Brigalow Belt, threatened ecological community, and some information about, you know, quolls and greater gliders that occur there.

The Brigalow Belt threatened, sorry, the Brigalow threatened ecological community is critically endangered, and if we click on that line, the Brigalow specifically, we can get an indication of the coverage of that in that cell, or the expected coverage in that cell. So, if we go back and hover over the grid cell it's got roughly 20% coverage of that threatened ecological community there based on the data that we have available. So that gives us some flags here to say that there's some potential risks for environmental approvals in this area.

These developers can also have a look at the protected matters that occur in this area and the likelihood of seeing them. So, if we navigate back to that main page and go into our protected matters list, and we can select our grid cell of interest again, we can see some of the underlying data then that is essentially feeding into these analyses. And so, this is showing the species in threatened ecological communities that have distributions overlapping with that cell. And an indication of, I guess, the likelihood of that occurring there in that sort of rightmost column.

This can be sorted by things like likelihood, but as well as that impact threshold. So, we'll sort that by impact threshold now just to get a general sense of what's going on in this cell.

Yeah, so you can see here there's a few E4 plus matters as well as species that have that sort of mixed requirement, E4/E2 and E4/E3 occurring in this grid cell.
So not only is that the flag for potentially irreplaceable values, but there's quite a few high risk species there, essentially. So, the proponent then decides to have a conversation with DCCEEW, outlining the site they're thinking about. And they ask DCCEEW to talk them through what the assessment is going to look like and what they would expect to happen at this point. And the advice that we would expect to be coming through at this point would be have a further look at the Interactive Tool. To have a more efficient assessment process, we suggest finding a site that has lower conservation values and aligning as much as you possibly can with the mitigation measures in the tool and the advice in the plan.

So, the proponent goes away then and has a think about that as well as a bunch of other factors. So, they think about things like economic viability, infrastructure, community sentiment, and a whole bunch of other things. In our scenario, they decide to have a look around and see what other sites might be available. So they go back into the Interactive Tool, going back into the spatial conservation analyses results.
And they can actually see that there is a site right next to, basically the hexagon next to the one that they were originally looking at, that has lower conservation values. So, if we click into that one, we can see that where it was around 30% before, this one here has about 2% coverage of those important conservation area values.

If we just briefly flick through the other analysis results, again, relatively low value for restoration and for representative protection, we'll split to that last one. Again, relatively low there. So that was 20% for this one. It was closer to 2% again.

So, the energy company thinks this might be a little bit more promising. We'll go back in and have a look at those irreplaceable features again. See if we've got a bit of a different picture. And so now they've got a new grid cell that they're focusing on, we're just filtering by that.

And we can see here, okay, there's fewer irreplaceable matters that are potentially here. We still have this Brigalow threatened ecological community. And if we hover over that, we can see that even though it's there, it is actually a much lower coverage this time around.

Just for the sake of being thorough, we'll flip back to the Protected Matters list and have a quick look at that as well. And is changing which grid cell we're looking at to update to this new one.

Again, it looks like there are, you know, a few in that sort of higher cumulative impact assessment, impact threshold category. But if you look at the likelihood of those species on the right there, when you scroll back up, you can see that most of those are in that very low to low likelihood category. There are, you know, quite a few other species there, but again, different impact thresholds and you can explore through those different likelihoods to see, I guess, what's likely to be a risk.

Again, given that some of those ones that are more likely to occur are E2s, that this means that you might actually be able to manage those impacts, the standard mitigation hierarchy and offsetting.

So, the company decides then that this site is looking better, and they start to commission their ecological surveys to kind of confirm on ground. They make sure to focus these surveys, particularly on those E4 protected matters that have been flagged to maybe occur, and also looking for that irreplaceable feature of that threatened ecological community.

The survey that the commission confirms that there is some Brigalow threatened ecological community present at that location.
And then the energy company decides to have a look at the cumulative impact assessment so that they can look at how to manage impacts of what they have identified at these sites.

So, we'll move over to the cumulative impact assessment element of this tool now. What you can see here is a whole bunch of information from that cumulative impact assessment. Down the left-hand side of the page, we have the ability to select the activities that you're undertaking, whether you're in the construction or the operational phase of the project, so on. In the middle, you've got the more specific sources there, so you can look through, you know, those things like backfilling and recontouring, blasting, vibration, so on.

If you want to look at the impacts of, say, blast and vibration, we could filter by that, for example. So, if that gets clicked, it changes the list of impact pathways that are available on the right there. And as you kind of click through that, that will also narrow down the protected patterns which are relevant to those impact pathways.
So if you just click one of those, you can see those numbers changing and you get an indication of the number of protected matters, in particular risk categories associated with that impact pathway as well.

You can also start it the other way around as well. So, at the top of the screen, you can see you've got these options for filtering the data. So, for example, you could filter by MNES group. And we just open that drop-down box.
You can see here, for example, things like canopy and aerial foraging birds, freshwater aquatic species, so on.

In this instance, the energy company decides that they're going to have a look at a particular species that has been identified through the ecological surveys as being on their site. They start with the koala to have a look at, and what you can see now that that's selected is that this information has, excuse me, adjusted to be specific to the koala. And you can see now the distribution of those impact pathways and those sources that are likely to impact it.

So, you can click here to filter by impact pathway risk rating as well. So, for instance, if you click the low button, that will give you a list of pathways that have a low impact on the koala.

Otherwise, you can have a look at risks that are high, and those are the ones that are least likely to be simply offset or mitigated. So, for example, here, let's have a look at land clearing, which is appearing as the high impact pathway for the koala.
And we can now actually drill down into that to get a bit more information about mitigation measures for this high-risk impact pathway for the koala. So, if we click into that, this here then shows a list of potential mitigation measures for this species. It's important to note that these, that they are not recommended mitigation measures per se. It's just a catalogue of mitigation measures that we know are regularly used and some information about these.

So, you can see here there's a variety of information about the sort of phases and you can do it in and the type and whether or not they're kind of in that avoidance, minimise or are they an offset measure.

So, you can then click in on a particular one of those measures. So, for instance, here, for example, they've identified they want to use spotter catches to relocate koalas prior to and during clearing, and it'll give you information about the effectiveness of this. You can see here that it's considered a relatively simple measure that is known to be pretty strong in effectiveness. So, with that information, you know, these developers might consider it quite positively based on that information. There's also further information available in the hyperlinks based on that mitigation measure.

So the Interactive Tool then also identifies potentially where there are measures that can be undertaken just by the proponent or measures that may be more effective if they're undertaken with other people or other proponents in the area.

Basically, throughout this process, what we would hope to see happening is that they will look through this information and be better informed for their project. They don't have to use these mitigation measures, and they can propose other measures as well. This is really just intended to be a helpful start and kind of a repository of information.
So, at the end of all of this, considering the costs, complexity, and the effectiveness of each measure, the energy company design decides to avoid clearing in the northeast of the site where that Brigalow TEC has been found. They develop an adaptive management approach to managing aerial collision and entanglement risk.

They coordinate with neighbours and regional NRM organisations on weed management. They use standard controls within the site for low-risk impacts for things like dust control and they work with local First Nations groups on supporting a range of initiatives in the area.

So, the company then puts together their EPBC Act referral using all of this information. And where their referral shows a proposal that does manage the impacts well and is in line with the bioregional guidance plan, this should mean that they have a more efficient and effective EPBC Act assessment and approval process.

It should be worth noting that although we did use a scenario of the energy company deciding to change their site, there is nothing in the plan that stops them from proceeding with the original site. So if they did decide to go ahead with that, this information would mean that they'd go ahead with the heads up and the knowledge showing them that they will need to allow more time and money to do their environmental surveys based on the things that were flagged, and that they'll probably need to design and implement mitigation measures quite thoroughly.

They would also need to factor in most likely more time for their EPBC Act assessment and approvals as well, potentially with a risk of needing to significantly modify the project if they are finding that they are impacting on irreplaceable features. So, with that, that concludes this little demo. As mentioned earlier, there are multiple use case examples on the Bioregional Planning website for further information and with that, I will hand back to Jacqui to wrap up.

Jacqui Elliott - DETSI  
Thank you, Carly. We'll just pull up a final slide to remind everybody about opportunities for engagement and consultation as we proceed through our Public consultation process.

So, while we're pulling up that slide, I'll just flag we are continuing with public consultation until the 17th of July, and there are a number of different ways that you can have your say. You can email us a submission or complete a survey. So, the survey has questions about the, you know, the practicality and the feasibility and clarity of the draft plans as they currently have been written, so that we can, I guess, get some more feedback from participants and players about how we can make these as usable as possible. And the survey also has questions around, you know, social, cultural values and the usability of the Interactive Tool and what other support material might be helpful. We're really keen to make sure as we progress on this journey with public consultation that we're working to a point where we've got some input and some ideas about how to improve the plans, you know, address gaps, et cetera, but also as we are starting to think about and optimistically thinking about these being approved and made and embedded into, you know, DCCEEW’s way of working, how we can make sure there is as practical as possible for all players. So, we do really welcome your input and your ideas on all of that. And we are also holding a series of online and in-person workshops.

So let us know if you are interested in attending some of those. We're, I think, going to be holding those in that last week of June, the tail end of that last week of June, between around the 24th to the 27th there, or the 26th, I should say, and then in that next week, in the first week of July, the tail end of that.

We've also got our website with lots of information and fact sheets. And as mentioned earlier, we'll be loading this video onto that once it's ready. And we also have our colleagues in DCCEEW who've made some updates to their website about bioregional planning, but also there's a lot more information on the DCCEEW website also about the EPBC Act reforms in general.

So, I think that concludes the formal presentation. I'll hand over to Sue now, who I understand is going to be helping to facilitate some Q&A. And I can see there's already been lots. And thanks to our various teams for helping to answer those questions whilst the session's been running.