Tuesday 25 November 2025
University Club of WA, Crawley

Biodiversity offsetting is a critical conservation tool in Western Australia. With current approaches falling short, delivering the quantifiable conservation improvements is critical to protecting the state’s biodiversity assets. To achieve genuine conservation outcomes, WA’s offsetting framework requires meaningful reforms to policy design, governance structures, and implementation practices.

The current system operates across multiple regulatory pathways under the Environmental Protection Act 1986, with Part IV and Part V processes often operating independently with different policies and methodologies. This fragmentation undermines strategic, landscape-scale conservation planning and has resulted in inconsistent approaches that fail to maximise conservation outcomes.

EIANZ, supported by the WA Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER) invites you to a forum addressing the complexities and challenges of WA's current offsetting framework. Join practitioners, policymakers, and stakeholders to critically review the current offsetting framework and co-design a better and ideal biodiversity offsets framework as a way to influence policy and governance around and for offsetting in WA.

WA's biodiversity offsetting policies have been largely unchanged since 2011. Now is the time is right to ask, 'How do we make offsetting more effective in delivering improved biodiversity outcomes?'

Why you can't miss this event!

This forum is an opportunity to transform offsetting from a permitting exercise into an effective conservation tool by examining outcome-led policy design, governance structures, and implementation practices. It will harness the collective expertise of WA's community of practitioners to develop practical solutions and make firm policy reform recommendations to the WA Government.

What to expect

The forum will include a review of the current status of biodiversity offsetting in WA, drawing from existing insights and best practices, and workshop revisions to WA’s offsetting framework.

The forum will include four sessions:

• Session 1: Independent review of current policy framework; and Presentation from DWER (title TBD);
• Session 2: Panel discussion with diverse sectoral perspectives;
• Session 3: Lessons from other offsetting regimes;
• Session 4: Workshop a revised governance structure for offsetting in WA.

We are delighted to announce the workshop’s speakers and panellists:

• Michelle Cox | Manager, Biodiversity Assessment Method, NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water
• Mikalah Koch | Biodiversity Offsets Leader, City of Gold Coast
• Anita Loguidice | Director, Policy and Advocacy, The Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia
• Sarah Macaulay | Executive Director Strategy & Policy, Urban Development Institute of Australia
• Nicole Matthews | Executive Manager, Policy, Western Australian Local Government Association
• Luke Bayley | Chief Executive Officer, South Coast NRM
• Heidi Hardisty | Deputy Chairperson, Urban Bushland Council WA Inc

Who should attend?

This forum is designed for a broad range of stakeholders including professional from environmental consulting, the resource sector, planning authorities, community groups, Traditional Owner groups, land managers, conservation organisations and government agencies.

Whether you're a proponent developing offset proposals, an implementer managing offset sites, a regulator assessing applications, or a community member affected by offsetting outcomes, this forum is intended to be an inclusive opportunity to discuss possible reforms.

Registrations are now open!

The WA Biodiversity Offsets Forum will include a full day of technical presentations, panel discussions and participatory workshop. Attendees will be provided with lunch and light refreshments during morning and afternoon tea.

Registration rates

*This is an all inclusive price charged in AUD including GST. A subsidised rate of $150 is available to non-member students and non-for-profit organisations. Kindly get in touch with us to verify your eligibility: wa@eianz.org

Not an EIANZ member?

To receive the member rate for the forum, consider joining as an associate or full member of EIANZ! To take advantage of the reduced rate, be sure to join as a member before you register for the event. Join here →

CPD Points

Thank you to our event sponsor