Background

Wherever you are in Victoria you’re never far from a biodiversity offset site represented by Vegetation Link.

We work with rural landowners all over Victoria to establish biodiversity offset sites. We help identify and secure offsets on their properties and support them to enter and work within the offset market by negotiating on their behalf with offset purchasers.

Our team is based in various rural centres with a head office in Castlemaine, Central Victoria.

We’re proud to be the largest native vegetation offset broker in Victoria. We have teams working in the State and Federal offset markets, tracking supply and demand and bringing new sites to market as opportunities arise.

We support our landowners as they wrestle with the challenges of offset site management and administration. And we work with the regulators and walk alongside offset site owners as they do the hard work on the ground of protecting and enhancing biodiversity.

We are a key partner in the Victorian Government’s BushBank project. We support the lead project delivery partner, Cassinia Environmental, on this ambitious project to restore and revegetate 20,000 hectares of freehold land over the next 5-7 years. Vegetation Link is screening expressions of interest, and participating in the landowner selection. The project is only in its infancy but already over 800 hectares have been direct-seeded and planted out with tube stock and as each year rolls on we’ll be building up to that ambitious total of 20,000 hectares.

About the Opportunity

We’re expanding our team, looking to grow capacity to meet current and future work streams. We’re open to full time or part time roles.

Working within the Federal Offset Team, this role will involve shepherding Federal biodiversity offset deals from start to finish. With long lead times and dependencies on approval milestones from the Federal regulator, we need to advocate for the landowners, walking alongside them on a negotiation that can take anything from 18 months to four years.

• Searching and finding the right offset sites to meet the needs of the approval holders – we aim to find sites that not only support the relevant Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES) but have the potential to make a significant contribution to their long term survival.
• Partnering with the right landowners. Our landowners are committing to an in-perpetuity obligation. For the offset sites to deliver on their promise and to be a meaningful compensation for loss elsewhere, we need our landowners to be going in with their eyes wide open and fully informed about the obligations they’re taking on. And we need to ensure the commercial terms are commensurate with the demands of the work and scale of the commitment.
• Understanding the onerous Federal approval process and the particular challenges the approval holders face in navigating through approvals.
• Match-making a marriage between strange bedfellows: rural landholders with a capacity for conservation management of native systems, and the approval holders who think in terms of cubic metres of concrete, project deadlines and profit margins.
• Liaison with the key regulators: DEECA, TFN, DCCEEW.
• Keeping all the parties at the table for as long as it’s possible to deliver mutually beneficial outcomes.
• Preparing and negotiating legal agreements or supporting landowners and their lawyers through the negotiations.
• Guiding approval holders through the many steps of third party offset site establishment.

Skills and Capabilities

The skills and capabilities that are useful in our operations include:

• GIS capability.
• Knowledge of Victoria’s natural systems and landscapes.
• Ecological expertise.
• Experience working in rural landscapes with rural people.
• Knowledge of the threats to natural remnants and how to manage them.

Less important but a bonus if you have it would be:

• Knowledge of the Victorian Native Vegetation Guidelines and the offset market in general.
• Knowledge of the Federal EPBC Act, and how the offset market works.

The sort of personal attributes we need include:

• Details oriented.
• Good negotiations skills.
• Good communicator – we value honesty and directness, and so do our clients.
• Some scope to travel including having a current driver’s licence.
• A sleeves-up and crack-on kind of attitude combined with flexibility. We’re a private sector business working in a changing market. Some of the work is easily scoped and regular, but a lot of it is shifting and responding to changing opportunities and demands. We support each other in this.

What we offer you includes:

• Participation in a challenging field that is delivering some real biodiversity protection on the ground.
• A flexible and ethical workplace.
• A chance to work with some great landowners.
• If you’re city-based… a chance to get out – you’re missing out on all the best bits.
• If you’re rural-based… a chance to stay here.

In terms of location, it works best for us if you’re in Central Victoria and can maintain a regular presence at our Castlemaine office. However, we’re open to other possibilities.