Located on Bundjalung Country, home to the Nyangbal People, Forest Farm is located in the Ballina Shire on the NSW north coast. For decades, the 112-hectare (ha) property has been managed as a mixed-use timber and cattle grazing enterprise before its acquisition by the Account Holder in 2016.

Forest types across the property are diverse and consist of rainforest, wet sclerophyll and forested wetland communities displaying varied levels of degradation (from remnant through to completely cleared) due to historical agricultural activities. The property also has a remnant forestry plantation consisting of stands of Flooded Gum (Eucalyptus grandis), Blackbutt (Eucalyptus pilularis) and Hoop Pine (Araucaria cunninghamii).

Forest Farm is now being managed principally for conservation stewardship. The primary goal for the landowners is to undertake activities and projects that improve and enhance the highly valuable environmental assets and natural capital of the property. This will help to ensure the region’s special and unique flora and fauna – which remain highly threatened in the landscape – can have a safe place to live and thrive into the future.

Koalas are one such highly threatened species, and this region provides large areas of core habitat. Since 2016, landowners have witnessed koalas increasingly become drawn to the habitat provided on Forest Farm within the eucalyptus plantations, as well as the climate refugia offered by the other forest types on the property.

In an initial step to ensure long-term protection of the habitat and support ongoing landscape restoration efforts, the timber plantation has been registered as an eligible carbon offsets project under the Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme. This provides conservation of existing habitat, and the opportunity to strategically enhance the ecological condition of the land and transition to resilient forests. With the goal to provide a high-quality sanctuary for the endangered koalas, primary food and habitat trees will be strategically added over time.

The purpose of this Environmental Account is to provide regular, standardised, scientifically based and reliable information on the condition and trends of koala populations and habitat over time. This report establishes the baseline condition of the asset at Forest Farm – both within the carbon project areas and across the property more broadly – leveraging the Accounting for Nature® framework to verify the initial condition and facilitate data-informed decision-making at Forest Farm.