On December 5, 2024, the research team and partners of our project met for a half-day workshop to kick off the project. Ascelin, Kylie & Jasmine co-organised and facilitated the workshop which took place at RMIT University, Melbourne. The attendees consisted of the Chief Investigators (from RMIT, UNSW and Griffith University), Partner Investigator (The Nature Conservancy) and industry representatives from the Australian Land Conservation Alliance (ALCA), Bush Heritage and Trust for Nature.

The main objectives of the workshop were to: 1) present the initial development of our research approach including a ‘meta-framework’ for capturing the influences of conservation interventions; 2) discuss any new insights and developments that may affect the project; and 3) discuss potential case study sites. During the workshop, we received valuable feedback from our industry partners on how we can continue to develop and improve the meta-framework in terms of both terminology and overall approach. The engaging and fruitful discussions throughout the day also revealed important considerations for selecting case study sites including scope, conservation mechanism, and comparability between sites.

These meetings are critical for collaborating with our project partners, and for ensuring that we deliver research outcomes that are relevant, meaningful and feasible for practitioners and conservation actors to utilise. Moving forward, our next step is to submit the first academic paper for the project which outlines our meta-framework and to start planning fieldwork for our case study sites.