An interview with Jacqui Gamack
You’ve made the move from field ecology to biodiversity offsets – how did that happen?
I realised I didn’t want to be in the field as much as I was anymore. I’d done 4.5 years before I realised I wanted my career to head in a different direction, the field work just wasn’t for me anymore. So I talked to our Chief Science Officer, @Brad Dreis, who needed support in Biodiversity offsets, which was an area I was keen to jump into as it was something I had done a lot of work on in the last year – and it’s largely an office based role.
I had been working on a really challenging job with a big coal mine expansion project to deliver their offsets, so it’s taken me right into the detail of the biodiversity process and associated technology.
So what’s the process?
The first step in the process is to work out how many hectares of habitat will be impacted by a project for both State and Commonwealth matters. These impacts are determined through a combination of field surveys and desktop assessments, supported by our GIS team.
Once we have worked out the impacts of the project, we then need to calculate their offset obligations. These obligations are determined by using calculators which have been guided and/or set by theState and the Commonwealth (as these are scored differently).
Some of the criteria that are set for the calculators are ambiguous and are often up to the discretion of the consultant to determine the correct application. We found the need here at E2M to come up with some centralised methods for consistency across projects. Luckily, we have some really talented excel minds at E2M who have put a lot of work into this and have created some easy to use calculators. Recently this has been amalgamated further so that we have just one central calculator which can be used for determining State and Commonwealth offset obligations. It’s certainly simplified the process, and that delivers efficiencies for our clients.
Are you being mentored and coached?
Yes, @Brad Dreis, and also @Chays Ogston and @Peter Wagner understand the issues and opportunities really well. @John Van Osta is also the aforementioned ‘talented excel mind’. It’s an impressive team of skills in Biodiversity offsets and we’re working on some amazing projects.What has your offsets site experiences been like?
Really great. With Biodiversity offsets, we are involved in every aspect of ecology. It’s the whole package which I find really appealing.
Once we’ve done the calculations, looked at the data, found a suitable location, and determined how much land you need to offset the impact, you go and see the location. Sometimes it’s 100% acquittal, and other times it will only provide a proportion of what’s needed. Once we find the sites, its 5, 15 and 20 years of monitoring to make sure the requirements for offsetting have been met.
How do you think legislation will impact biodiversity offsets in the near future?
Even just project to project, we’re seeing different trends when the reports come back from the Commonwealth and State Governments. Which is why it’s important to engage a professional who’s dealing with these aspects of regulatory demands i all of the time.
I think regulators will get more strict in some aspects of offsets, and more realistic in others. We still challenge some of the guidelines by formulating a response to send to The Department on behalf of our clients where expectations are loose or undefined, providing clear evidence to warrant our position. We consider this our role as professional to do whatever is needed to get a balanced environmental outcome within the parameters set.
Finally, Jacqui, any fun facts to report ?
We recently had a landholder whose property was being used as an offset who wanted to come and see the Greater Glider, so, after following stringent safety procedures, he came spotlighting with us!