Across Australia, a quiet but powerful movement is taking shape.
Ordinary people, farmers, retirees, and lifelong nature lovers are choosing to leave portions of their estates, and in some cases their entire properties, to conservation organisations.
They are writing wildlife sanctuaries into their wills.
They are signing legal agreements that permanently protect the bush behind their homes.
And they are doing it because they understand something that government policy alone has not been able to fix: Australia has the worst mammal extinction rate of any country on Earth.
According to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, approximately 10 percent of Australia’s terrestrial mammal species have been wiped out since European colonisation.
More than 1,800 animal and plant species are currently on the brink of disappearing forever.
And in 2023 alone, 144 plants, animals, and ecological communities were added to the threatened species list, according to Bush Heritage Australia.
These are not distant statistics.
They represent animals that were once common, widespread, and thriving on the very land Australians now call home.
The response from everyday citizens has been extraordinary, and it is growing.
How the Movement Works
The simplest way to understand this movement is through two main channels: bequests in wills and conservation covenants on private land.
A bequest is a gift left through a will.
It might be a sum of money, a share of an estate, or a parcel of land itself.
When someone leaves a bequest to an organisation like the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) or the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife (FNPW), that gift funds everything from feral predator removal to species reintroduction programs.
A conservation covenant works differently.
It is a voluntary, permanent legal agreement between a private landholder and a conservation body.
The landholder keeps owning their property.
But the covenant, which is registered on the property title, legally prevents future owners from clearing native vegetation, subdividing the land, building extensively, or interfering with the natural habitat.
The protection lasts forever, even when the property changes hands.
Trust for Nature, which operates in Victoria, describes a conservation covenant as one of the strongest legal instruments available for permanently protecting private land.
In Victoria, from 1 January 2024, land protected by a conservation covenant became exempt from land tax, making the financial case for covenanting even more compelling.
The Scale of What Is Already Happening
The scale of this effort is visible right now, tracked in real time through conservation reporting, government data, and on-the-ground results.
In 2024 and 2025, several major organisations published numbers that paint a detailed picture of how far private conservation has come, and how far it still needs to go.
Trust for Nature’s 2024 to 2025 Annual Report found that the organisation protected 2,706 hectares of private land permanently during that financial year alone.
Conservation covenants contributed to 44 percent of all new protected areas in Victoria between 2022 and 2024.
Meanwhile, Australia’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water reported that, as of late 2025, approximately 24.88 percent of Australia’s land is now protected, including through the recognition of new Indigenous Protected Areas.
To reach the international goal of protecting 30 percent of land by 2030, Australia still needs to protect or conserve around 39 million more hectares.
That is roughly the equivalent of protecting an area larger than Germany.
The Pew Charitable Trusts reported in 2024 that Australia has already created more than 6,000 protected areas on private land, representing the largest area of privately protected land in the world.
These private protected areas conserve some of Australia’s most threatened ecosystems and, crucially, connect public reserves to one another, allowing species to move across the landscape to safer grounds.
What the Numbers Actually Show
Several important truths are emerging from what is happening on the ground right now.
Private land fills critical gaps that public reserves cannot.
Two-thirds of Victoria, for example, is private land.
Much of the remaining native vegetation across the country sits on privately owned properties, not inside national parks.
Without individual landholders choosing to protect their land, many species would lose the habitat they depend on entirely.
The NSW Government’s biodiversity work confirmed this pattern in 2024, when it announced that the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust had committed ongoing funding to 16 new landholders to manage more than 91,000 hectares of protected land in a single financial year.
Of those agreements, the 55,000-hectare Gayini Conservation Area became the largest single funded conservation agreement the Trust had entered into.
Bequests are funding conservation at a scale that donations alone cannot match.
The AWC notes that gifts in wills represent the most meaningful long-term commitment a supporter can make.
They fund reintroductions of species like the Numbat, the Greater Bilby, and the Bridled Nailtail Wallaby into feral predator-free sanctuaries.
The philanthropic model is attracting match funding from government.
Research published in 2025 in the journal Conservation Science and Practice documented how a dedicated land purchase fund approach attracted philanthropic dollars into conservation programs.
One initiative, the AU $10 million David Thomas Challenge from The Thomas Foundation, attracted a further AU $18.1 million in grants for biodiversity conservation projects, resulting in the acquisition of six properties totaling more than 900,000 hectares of under-represented and threatened habitats.
Real people are behind every protected hectare.
One of the most tangible examples comes from FNPW donor Ivan Saleta, who gifted 20,000 hectares of bushland to the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
That land became the Lachlan Valley State Conservation Area and now protects habitat for the endangered Malleefowl, the vulnerable Superb Parrot, Major Mitchell’s Cockatoo, and several other threatened species.
These animals exist today, in that landscape, because one person decided to leave something behind.
What Most People Get Wrong About Wildlife Conservation
Here is where the conversation tends to go sideways.
Most people assume that protecting nature is primarily a government job.
They picture national parks, rangers, federal budgets, and green policies.
And while government investment matters enormously, the data tells a more complicated story.
The most significant gains in Australian wildlife conservation are increasingly coming from private land and private giving.
Government-managed parks cover important ground, but they are fixed in location, often isolated from one another, and constrained by political cycles and funding limitations.
Private conservation land, by contrast, can be placed precisely where biodiversity needs it most, connecting fragmented habitats and filling gaps that the public reserve system simply cannot reach.
A 2024 study published in Frontiers in Conservation Science noted that Australia has one of the highest uptakes of conservation covenants globally, second only to the United States, where they are known as conservation easements.
In the US, the use of conservation easements has seen private land trusts protect approximately 25 million hectares, an area that actually exceeds the total land area of all US national parks combined.
Australia is following a similar path, and the individuals who choose to covenant their land or leave bequests are not outliers.
They are the foundation.
The Threats Driving People to Act
Understanding why Australians are choosing private conservation requires understanding what they are fighting against.
The primary threats to Australia’s wildlife are invasive species, particularly feral cats and foxes, changed fire patterns, habitat loss, and the compounding pressure of climate change.
Feral cats alone are estimated to kill billions of native animals across Australia every year.
The AWC manages more than 6.8 million hectares of ecologically significant land, running feral predator-free fencing and controlled land management programs that protect animals which would otherwise face near-certain local extinction.
That scale of work only happens because private donors, bequestors, and covenanting landholders are continuously contributing to the effort.
It is also worth noting that Queensland, which has the largest private protected area network in Australia, counted 574 nature refuges and one special wildlife reserve as of June 2024, covering more than 14.88 million hectares of the state’s total land area.
These are not government-owned parks.
They are privately held properties whose owners chose protection.
How This Applies to Real Life
The question most people ask at this point is a practical one: what does this actually look like for an ordinary Australian?
The answer is more accessible than most people imagine.
For landholders, a conservation covenant does not mean giving up ownership.
It means making a permanent commitment to the land’s ecological values while continuing to live on, farm, or simply enjoy the property.
Many landholders describe the covenant process as clarifying.
It turns a private intention into a legal reality that outlasts any single generation.
For people without land, a bequest to an organisation like AWC, Bush Heritage Australia, FNPW, or Trust for Nature can be as simple as a percentage of an estate.
No property required.
Legal fees are often minimal.
And the tax implications can work in favour of the donor’s estate, since the Income Tax Assessment Act allows deductions for property donations over $5,000 and provides capital gains tax exemptions for testamentary gifts of property made through a will.
For those who want to act now, organisations like Land for Wildlife, now managed by Trust for Nature after a 2025 government transfer, support private landholders to protect, restore, and enhance native vegetation voluntarily and at no financial cost to the landholder.
The program builds what conservationists call a resilient, connected landscape, where corridors of habitat allow animals to move, breed, and recover across generations.
The Bigger Picture
Australia is a country of extraordinary biological richness.
It is one of only 17 nations classified as “megadiverse” on Earth, home to more species than any other developed country.
Between 600,000 and 700,000 native species exist in Australia’s land and waters, the vast majority of them found nowhere else on the planet.
And yet the record of loss is undeniable.
More than 67 native animals are now officially listed as extinct.
In 2023 alone, 144 new species and ecological communities were added to the threatened list.
The Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that once lived on a reef island off Queensland, holds the tragic distinction of being the first mammal on Earth confirmed to have gone extinct due to climate change.
These losses are not inevitable.
They are the result of specific pressures that can, with enough protected land and sustained effort, be managed and reversed.
That is exactly what the bequest and covenant movement is trying to do.
Not through protest or politics, but through permanent, legal, on-the-ground protection.
What the Future Looks Like
Australia’s commitment to protect 30 percent of its land by 2030 will not be achieved by government investment alone.
The government’s own roadmap, published and agreed to by state and territory environment ministers in 2024, acknowledges this.
It calls for expanded private land conservation, more support for Indigenous Protected Areas, and deeper philanthropic investment to close the gap.
The gap is significant.
Around 39 million more hectares need to come under protection in the next few years.
For context, that is roughly the size of Germany.
But there is real momentum.
The privately protected area network in Australia already covers more than 10 million hectares across more than 6,000 sites.
Bequests fund the purchase and management of new sanctuaries every year.
Landholders across every state are choosing covenants that will outlast their own lifetimes.
And new financial incentives, including land tax exemptions in Victoria from 2024 and federal tax deductions for property donations, are making it easier to participate.
A Legacy That Outlasts a Lifetime
There is something quietly remarkable about this movement.
It asks people to think beyond their own lives.
It asks them to consider what a Numbat, a Bilby, a Malleefowl, or a Glossy Black-Cockatoo might need from the land long after any single person is gone.
And thousands of Australians, from farmers in Queensland to retirees in Victoria to families with a bush block in NSW, are answering that question in the most permanent way available to them.
They are writing nature into their plans for the future.
They are choosing, while they still can, to be the reason something survives.
That is not a small thing.
It might, in the end, be the most important thing.
References and Further Reading
Australian Wildlife Conservancy: Gifts in Wills
Trust for Nature: Conservation Covenants
