A new eye on nature
The importance of photography in protecting nature - opening the TLC's photography residency exhibition
More
King’s Birthday honours celebrate the Corbetts, two great conservationists
Everyone at the TLC congragulates Sib and Keith Corbett on receiving Medals of the Order of Australia for their service to conservation and the environment in this year's King's Birthday Honours.
More
Listen to Land for Wildlife
Land for Wildlife Coordinator Phil Wise catches up with the Driven by Nature podcast and tells a host of exciting Tassie nature stories.
More
Drains, ditches and dirt at Long Point Reserve
The last few months have seen exciting developments in the restoration of Long Point Reserve.
More
A funding lifeline for quolls
A significant grant is funding a large-scale TLC quoll research project.
More
Congratulations Dr Sally Bryant, AM
Congratulations to former Head of Science, Dr Sally Bryant, appointed a Member of the Order of Australia.
More
The bigger picture – ESA Conference 2022
Reflections on the 2022 Ecological Society of Australia Conference
More
Restoring the flow at Long Point Reserve
Investigating drainage history to give a salt marsh a fighting chance in a climate-changed future
More
Welcome back, WildTracker!
We are thrilled to announce that the redeveloped WildTracker website has been released into the wild at last and is ready to accept new participants.
More
Does individual action matter?
On 6 August, Beaker Street Festival hosted their great debate in Hobart. The topic was, 'Your Keep Cup won't save you!'. Are you deluding yourself by thinking your individual actions can save the planet? Isn't personal responsibility a con when corporations and governments are the biggest culprits and the biggest drivers of real change?
More
Coming together for land protection at Randall’s Bay
The Tasmanian Land Conservancy recently helped to establish a new conservation covenant at Randalls Bay, in Tasmania's far south. The 28.5 ha parcel of land, owned by the Friends of Randalls Bay Coastcare Group (FORB), is rich in biodiversity, including habitat for the critically endangered swift parrot and other nationally threatened species.
More
What are private reserves and why do they matter?
Public reserves like national parks are not the only way to protect nature. Over the last 20 years, private land conservation has become important; currently, Tasmania has 920 covenants protecting more than 110,000 hectares of private reserves. James Hattam, CEO of the TLC, explains how private reserves work and why they matter.
More
A home for people and nature
We talk to the new owner of Mitchelmores Creek to find out what it's like to own a conservation property
More
A day in the life of a reserves officer
You might have donated to our campaigns to raise funds to establish new reserves, and perhaps you’ve celebrated along with us when a new reserve is announced. But what happens following the establishment of a new reserve?
More
Counting flowers at the Vale of Belvoir
February is fieldwork time, when the science team heads to the Vale of Belvoir Reserve
More
Birding and bonding at the Prosser River Reserve
Freya McGregor makes a visit to the TLC reserve made possible by her Pa's bequest.
More
Getting your eye in
If thinking and writing about nature requires us to get our eye in, then I think this collection would be a tonic for anybody who had somehow got their eye out.
More
A dog, hard work and hope
What learning to love a kelpie can teach us about landscape restoration
More
Checking in on a critically endangered ecological community
Black gum–Brookers gum forests have declined by up to 90% since European settlement - how are they faring?
More
Walk-walk, map-map, bang-bang (the pickets)
The first task in monitoring and managing a reserve in the long-term is to select and establish a suite of diverse monitoring sites.
More
Catching up with quolls
An update from the TLC science team on progress in the Silver Plains Quoll Research Project
More
NAIDOC Week 2021: how we can help in healing country?
Building relationships between conservationists and the Tasmanian Aboriginal community.
More
Fire recovery at Five Rivers Reserve
Working across the Great Pine Tier fire scar on Five Rivers Reserve with support from a WIRES Landcare Wildlife Relief and Recovery Grant.
More
Well weeded!
It has been a monumental summer weeding effort across the TLC Central Highlands properties this year.
More
A brief history of Brockley Estate
'...All the hills are rocky, but considered good sheep pasture, and in hollows and nooks there are patches, where abundance of sound feed grows, and the shelter of eucalypti, sheoak, cherry tree, honeysuckle, and wattle, also adopts it for pastoral purposes. In many directions clearing is altering the faces of the hills, which in time bid fair to be clean parklike sheep runs.'
More
Close-up in the ferny forest
Looking at the world through the transparent frond of a filmy fern, I was once again impressed by the intimate knowledge that covenant landholders develop of their land. Erik Bierens has lived in his forest at Golden Valley for over 30 years and doesn’t just know the story of every tree, but has identified the tiniest ferns, and many of the mosses and liverworts too.
More
Restoring the balance at Little Swanport
Can active management restore habitat for critically endangered swift parrots within the next few decades, when they urgently need it?
More
Private landholders protect the places that make Tasmania unique
More than 600 landholders across Tasmania, from diverse backgrounds, communities and landholdings, are making the ultimate commitment to protect nature on their land by entering into a conservation covenant.
More
Being attentive at Tinderbox Hills
As you first approach Tinderbox, you may feel its apparent shyness. However, with given attention, the shyness falls away. Attentiveness comes with time spent in an environment, along with an affection for the biotic community built on the strong foundations of an intact environment.
More
‘Why do I climb the mountain?’
We sometimes have family members asking about making gifts to the TLC in memory of a loved one. Spencer Woolley was in touch earlier this year after his dad died, wanting to direct gifts in lieu of flowers to the Tinderbox campaign. After the funeral, we received some stories written by Spencer's late father, Ronald Gordon Woolley, and a poem, 'Why?'.
More
Tinderbox Hills conservation update
Nature needs our help now more than ever, and in 2020 we are determined to continue our work to conserve it.
More
Farming for the future
On a farm in the Tasmanian Midlands, Simon Cameron is proving that conservation and superfine wool production can go hand-in-hand.
More
Movie night with the TLC
We at the TLC know how tough it can be when you can't get out into nature. So while Australia is staying home, we thought we'd suggest some movies that will take your mind to wilder places.
More
COVID-19 and the TLC
Along with everybody else, the TLC has had its activities affected by the COVID-19 virus. We are taking steps to help keep our staff, volunteers, landholders and the broader community safe.
More
Hello Hollows!
Forty-two Tasmanian vertebrates and a vastly greater number of invertebrates rely on hollows for survival. Sadly hollow-bearing trees are under threat and good hollows are now rare in the landscape. Tree hollows take a long time to form, usually more than 150 years. Many species that use tree hollows have now been listed as threatened.
More
Silver Plains tops list for alpine research
Silver Plains is one of the sites for a new alpine research infrastructure project that spans Australia.
More
Botanic buffs approve of newest reserve, without reservation
TLC's Little Swanport Reserve recently received rave reviews from visiting Australian Plant Society Tasmania members
More
From the Field: Cider Gum Recovery
The Cider Gum (Eucalyptus gunnii) is a true Tasmanian. Like the hardy Tasmanian primary school kids refusing to change from shorts to long pants in the middle of winter, this endemic eucalypt is specially adapted to living in cold and wet conditions.
More
Naturalists rewarded with fascinating species discoveries at coastal woodlands and wetlands reserve they helped protect
A spectacular spiky black and white spiny spider (Austracantha minax) clinging in its a web caused some excitement
More
Something meaningful. Something greater. Something together.
At the Tasmanian Land Conservancy (TLC), our volunteers are ever-present in all that we do to protect nature. Volunteers are active across every program, in every team and at every reserve. Every campaign letter, every remote-sensor fauna camera, every pair of loppers, every office computer keyboard and every profit and loss statement have volunteer’s fingerprints all over them.
More
A Never Ending Journey
We always regarded our land at Little Swanport on Tasmania’s east coast as special, it was a playground for some of our children and grandchildren, where they explored the natural world, rode their horses, built cubby houses and helped gather the sheep that grazed there.
More
Pedalling Forwards
I was following a series of white posts along a barely discernible trail through the forest, often losing my way. A fine drizzle was making everything wet, and my shoes were sodden. Spider webs strung with droplets of water crisscrossed my route, and mist obscured the surrounding hills. Everywhere the sound of dripping water and the rustling of my wet weather gear.
More
sounds of nature
Environmental conservation organisations often place a heavy emphasis on what can be seen. In Tasmania we need only look at how a single photograph by Peter Dombrowskis mobilised an entire generation to stand up for the Franklin River. Or how iconic images from Olagas Truchanas helped raise the public awareness of Tasmania’s south-west wilderness areas.
More
From the field: monitoring the ptunarra brown butterfly
The life of a zoologist (that’s someone who studies animals, not someone who studies zoos!) isn’t all selfies with cute and fluffy critters. Picking zoology as your career typically means you’ve signed up for working antisocial hours while being bitten, stung, scratched, weed on (or worse: much, much worse) and parasitised by all sorts of creepy crawlies while trying to find your animal of interest.
More
An unplanned tree change
When Rob McKay and Brenda Joliffe moved to take up jobs in Tasmania, their friend (a financial planner by profession) said, “Don’t go buying the first property that you lay your eyes on”.
More
Balance is Better
The 2019 theme for International Women's Day this year is ‘Balance is Better’. More and more, we are seeing that gender equality is expected in our workplaces - across business and government, on boards and in politics.
More
Attending to what matters
It seems to start with a problem that needs solving: voracious weeds, injured wildlife, crumbling cultural heritage.
More
bushfires: now a preternatural reality
Since December 2018, over 100,000 hectares of land has been burnt across Tasmania by bushfires caused from thousands of dry lightning strikes.
More
Tree Change Dolls
Sonia Singh was working as a scientist and science communicator for the CSRIO in Hobart before her talent as an artist and penchant for recycling went viral on the internet.
More
Monitoring and Musings from Egg Islands Reserve
Human legacies linger amidst a thriving sanctuary for threatened plant and animal species at the Tasmanian Land Conservancy's (TLC) Egg Island Reserve, located midstream in the Huon River.
More
Stories from Silver Plains
I was on a search for the stillness that comes from being in a landscape like Silver Plains. This is where my story began.
More
Burning to Plan
For many landholders, the question of how to burn their property for risk reduction and biodiversity conservation can be a paralysing one.
More
Protecting the Tasmanian Devil
Providing essential habitat and security to some of Tasmania's most endangered animals is just one of the reasons the Tasmanian Land Conservancy (TLC) believes passionately in securing long-term protected reserves.
More
The landscape value of protected areas on private land
Since European settlement, land clearing, grazing, urban development, changed fire regimes, agriculture and irrigation have all impacted Tasmania’s ecosystems. Human activity has reduced and fragmented the habitats of our native plants and animals.
More
Conservation through citizen science
Our ancestors have carefully examined nature and its intricacies for thousands of years. The desire to understand the environment around us is innate – the effects and infiltration of it into our lives undeniable.
More
Liffey’s legacy
Few places have had as much of an influence on the global conservation movement with as little recognition as the Liffey Valley, located in Tasmania’s central north.
More
Skullbone Plains Discovery Weekend
Warm laughter and song rises, mingled with soaring sparks fleeing a scattering of fire pits. Festoon lights swing in the breeze, animating long shadows to dance against an illuminated forest backdrop. Children wildly run in and out of the brightly coloured marquee and crowd, who reactively reel, cradling their drinks and plates of food-truck fare closer. Sounds more celebration than conservation but it is assuredly both.
More