Protecting revegetation

Revegetation is generally not protected by the Native Vegetation Act 1991 and may be cleared without seeking approval of the Native Vegetation Council. However, there are a few instances where revegetation will have the same level of protection as an area of native vegetation.

Revegetation is automatically considered native vegetation and protected by the Act if the vegetation was established:

• as a condition of consent in relation to clearance application (i.e. an SEB area)
• in relation to a Court Order under the Act.

How to secure legal protection for revegetation?

There are two main options for protecting revegetation.

1. Apply to the Native Vegetation Council to have your revegetation noted on the Title of the land as native vegetation. Once noted on the Title, the revegetation will be protected to the same extent as any naturally occurring native vegetation.

Revegetation may be already established or it may be a proposed project. However, the Native Vegetation Council will generally not consider proposed project or revegetation that is less than five years old due to variability of success.

The revegetation will be assessed against a set of criteria to determine if it is of a standard to warrant protection as native vegetation.

2. Apply to have the revegetation protected through a Heritage Agreement. This provides a higher level of protection compared to noting the revegetation on the land title, as the area will be permanently dedicated for conservation.

The revegetation will be assessed against the Heritage Agreement Policy to determine if it’s of an acceptable standard to be protected by a Heritage Agreement.

Apply to protect revegetation (including within Heritage Agreements).

Benefits of legally protecting revegetation

• Secure the investment of time and money from private landholders, local councils, government agencies, volunteer groups and NGOs.
• If the revegetation is proposed for clearance, the applicant will need to address the requirements of the Native Vegetation Act and Regulations, including the mitigation hierarchy and is likely to require a SEB to offset the loss of vegetation.
• Provides acknowledgement and potentially support (via the Heritage Agreement program) for revegetation projects of a high standard.

Related links

• Protection of existing planted native species (information sheet 49)
• Protection of proposed revegetation (information sheet 50)
• Protection of existing and proposed revegetation within a Heritage Agreement (information sheet 51)
• Criteria for assessing applications to protect revegetation