By JAMES WOODFORD

Rob Dunn, CEO of the Nature Conservation Trust of NSW, is an unlikely real estate magnate.

He is a Board member of Birds Australia, co-founder of a landcare group, a former executive with Landcare Australia and a chartered accountant with a masters in environmental management.

But he will soon have responsibility for a property portfolio worth nearly $20 million and is at the forefront of a treechange revolution that has the potential to radically alter the rural property market.

If you have always wanted to be a ranger or are sick of the crowds and smelly dunnies at camp sites or always wanted to change the world without joining a green group then Dunn is the real estate broker for you.

And the entry point for a “priceless” piece of high conservation land with a building entitlement, within a few hours drive of Sydney, is less than $200,000.

His pitch strikes at the core of work-life balance – trade in your semi in the city for your own private national park.

The Nature Conservation Trust’s goal is simple – identify land that has a high conservation value, buy it, develop a plan of management that is enforced with a covenant on the title and then on-sell.

Therefore each sale allows another ecologically important property to be bought.

Two large, exquisitely beautiful properties have already been sold successfully by the Trust.

“Our covenants are an agreement between the landowner and Trust to conserve the environmental integrity and biodiversity of a property,” says a statement by the Trust. “As the covenant is placed on the property title it ensures protection in perpetuity. Through our stewardship program, we also assist landowners to comply with a negotiated plan of management, covering such issues as fencing, re-vegetation and weed and feral species control.”

If the marketing and purchasing is astute the fund to buy land will grow or at least be maintained.

Dunn’s staff are working around the state to find suitable land to bring into the portfolio.

The Act requires the Trust to act independently of government but is still dependant on funds from both federal and state authorities.

Already the Trust, which was established by the Nature Conservation Trust Act 2001, owns nine properties and four are currently for sale.

Two are massive, rugged wild areas and are being marketed as private wilderness.

One, Kewilpa, half an hour from Casino, was a working farm and comes with a house, large machinery and sheds. It is 800 hectares – equivalent to some 8,000 quarter acre blocks. Nearly 40 hectares has been cleared for cultivation but the remainder is wild enough to get easily lost in.

Kewilpa is as spectacular as almost any publicly owned nature reserve in the state, containing floodplains creek frontages and wetland lagoons that could have been lifted from a Kakadu tourist brochure.

A protected population of north coast emus is also found on the property. The cost? $1.2 million.

Rockview is one hour from both Tamworth and Armidale and is nearly 2,000 hectares, taking in gorges, creeks and mountain ranges.

Rockview, contains at least 300 plant species and 164 known animal species. “The property is one of the largest and most intact remnants of the nationally threatened Box-Gum Woodland in the state, which has been reduced to 1% of its pre – European extent,” says the sales brochure for the land. The Nature Conservation Trust’s sales pitch on Rockview is no exaggeration: “Make a real contribution to conservation: buy your own national park.”

The price of $560,000 makes it hard to understand how McMansions in Sydney’s suburbs have hit similar prices. This perception is exactly what Dunn plans to change. He wants city residents to realise that, beyond the suburbs, Sydney money buys a lot of environment. “No two properties are alike,” Dunn says. “They range in size from 50 to 2000 hectares – they are located close to Casino, Grafton, Tamworth, Young, Albury, Braidwood – some are pristine wilderness properties; ‘national parks’ in their own right – others are major farming enterprises with intact woodlands and native pasture – some are pristine old growth, some have more regrowth with greater regeneration issues.”

“We do not prevent houses to be built on the properties,” says Dunn. “They simply have to comply with normal approval processes and be located outside the conservation area. Our Rockview property has amazing views looking into your own wilderness. One potential buyer said he would not build a house, but would only ever camp there.”

The remaining two on the market at the moment are near Braidwood between Canberra and the coast and target a niche conservation market – endangered grasslands and wildflowers. In rural terms these two are quite small – around 48 hectares – but still as big as some Sydney suburbs and less than $200,000 each.

“Our Fernhill property between Young and Cowra will be on sale in the spring,” says Dunn. “It is a classic farming property of the area with a beautiful homestead, shearing shed and farm infrastructure. After sale a third of the property will be available for agriculture, a third for periodic grazing,to allow conservation of the native grasslands, and a third under conservation.

“Our conservation areas are not truly “locked” up. Our plan of management require management of feral species and sometimes allow passive recreation and periodic grazing for education or land management purposes.”

Until now private landowners wanting to ensure the high conservation values of their land are protected forever have had to approach the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. The NPWS then researches the land to determine whether it meets environmental criteria before beginning the lengthy process of putting in place a covenant. So far in NSW around 230 landowners have taken the step of enacting a Voluntary Conservation Agreement. Once in place no-one except the state environment minister can revoke the agreement. The covenant and the associated management plan are then binding on any future owner. Typically the covenants prevent such things as clearing sub-division or inappropriate grazing.

It is widely perceived that enacting a voluntary conservation agreement significantly reduces a property’s value. That is especially the case for production land but even the Valuer General marks down the value of land locked up for conservation. Because of this some land with voluntary conservation agreements has proven difficult to sell. Some buyers see the conditions that are associated with conservation agreements as onerous. Also it is a corner of the real estate market where it is hard for buyers and sellers of conservation land to find each other.

Leonie Gale, the Chief Executive Officer of the Foundation for National Parks has taken a long-standing interest in covenanted properties and is currently in the middle of a study looking at ways to improve their marketability.

She says estate agents need to establish a special category for these kinds of properties and there needs to be one place nationally where all covenanted properties are listed for sale so buyers can go directly there. She also says it is critical that existing covenanted properties are given increased management support. Her research has revealed that many people who sign covenants feel that the follow up is inadequate. She, the Paddy Pallin Foundation, Department of Environment and Climate Change and the Humane Society International are soon to launch a small grants scheme to help support landowners with conservation covenants on their land. “There needs to be a raft of management support,” Gale says.

A common criticism of conservation agreements with the National Parks and Wildlife Service is that a landowner makes one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives by signing over a significant proportion of their property to conservation. But then they never see a representative of the Department of the Environment and Climate Change again.

Although there are plans to address this problem, agreement areas have until recently been a management black hole. People sign up and consider their covenant to be badge of honour but can quickly become disenchanted with the disinterest authorities show once the ink is dry.

Another major issue is that the incentives to establish a conservation agreement are negligible.

One of the main ones was that those who sign an agreement with the National Parks and Wildlife Service are entitled to rate relief. But recently the government has changed the formula for this rate exemption – in some cases landholders with agreements have seen their rates increase by thousands of dollars. Again this is being addressed by government. But dozens of landholders who signed up with the National parks program were bitterly disappointed at being significantly out of pocket.

The Nature Conservation Trust currently cannot offer any rate exemptions but an amendment to legislation is being sought to rectify this. Dunn’s organisation also guarantees extensive follow-up and advice on how protected lands should be managed.

“Effectively we have to sell the Nature Conservation Trust,” says Dunn, “the benefits of the conservation agreement, the value of our stewardship progam, where we support the new owner with guidance on the management of their property under the agreed plan of management, and the property itself, with all the normal issues of price, access and utilities. We refer to this as a quadruple sale.”

First Published Sydney Morning Herald 25/4/08