What does success look like? Factors resulting in positive outcomes for Landcare and threatened-species recovery-team projects

Project start date: 01/04/2024
Project end date: 31/12/2026
NESP funding: $258,000 (GST-exclusive)

Community-based natural resource management groups are the foundation of restoration and conservation action across Australia.

More than 30 years of research has generated a wealth of information about factors that contribute to, or detract from, the success of community-based natural resource management (NRM) programs. There are numerous confounding and interacting elements that determine the ecological, social and/or economic outcomes of NRM activities, making it difficult to identify key factors and compare outcomes.

A woman and child plant tube stock as part of a revegetation project (Image: Janelle / AdobeStock)

Key research areas

To identify the factors resulting in positive outcomes for Landcare and threatened-species recovery-team programs, this project is:

• synthesising insights from previous research about factors that contribute to the ecological, social and/or economic outcomes of community based NRM projects
• developing a conceptual model for success to guide data collection and analysis
• incorporating newly collected data within an existing database to create 2 national-scale databases of NMR activities
• assessing the extent to which survey respondents’ perceived indicators of an activity’s outcomes (successes) correlate with observable indicators that are in the existing, publicly available database.

Pathway to impact

This project will support better conservation projects by:

• identifying what makes recovery projects successful
• helping groups show the benefits of their work
• supporting project design and reporting
• informing future conservation programs across Australia.