Project Description

AABR National Forum 2024 – The Rs of Restoration

COVRAM – a simple tool for better native vegetation management –Ian and Michael Davidson

Ian is an ecologist with over 30 years of experience in native vegetation assessments and providing land management advice. He’s the developer of COVRAM

Michael is the tech guy, with a background in engineering. Previous experience includes reviewing emissions calculations. He is the cofounder and CTO of an e-commerce company.

Ian’s Presentation

I started as a ranger, became an ecologist working for government and moved from that. I got to know a lot of farmers and land managers. Since 2002, I’ve run my own business working with land managers.

Land managers are an unlocked resource. They manage a lot of the native vegetation but generally are not in any of the conversations – experts tell them what their goal is. We do need experts, but there is expertise locked up in those people who live on the land. These include elders who walk country through to those who have been involved in forestry. I work on travelling stock reserves throughout NSW and Queensland for people who understand grazing effects, and individual landholders and councils.

We haven’t advanced the conversation with respect to land managers. There are awesome individual projects or groups of little projects, but making a difference across southern Australia is a much bigger thing, and we need to engage a lot more people.

Using my knowledge and experience, I have developed a system that people can use and build on. It uses inclusive language for those new to this game. It doesn’t go into things in infinite detail – it goes into what we have broadly got.

With this tool there are some problems to address.

Knowing the condition (not necessarily the type) of native vegetation at a site is important to ensure that the most appropriate and sustainable land management decisions are made e.g. weed control, revegetation, burning, etc.

There is no standard approach to easily determine the condition of native vegetation. What is available is time consuming, generally requires a high degree of botanical knowledge, and the results are not broadly comparable across sites.

Our solutionaerial view of regional properties

Covram stands for Condition of Vegetation Rapid Assessment.

The Covram mobile App empowers land managers and practitioners to complete self-assessments of their native vegetation in minutes, with suitable training and experience.

The Covram assessment can identify sites with a high potential to regenerate naturally or require active revegetation techniques and provide other land management recommendations.

We are all on the same page here i.e. to unlock nature. We are not going to treeplant our way out of this. The Covram assessment can identify sites with high potential to regenerate naturally or using other land management recommendations. With Covram there are five condition states. The highest state is to protect and maintain. The worst state means it’s really bad and you need to question why you’re doing anything there. You have three states in the middle – the upper (needs a slight tweak); middle (needs  a bit of assistance to stimulate and get those seeds, or what you require, back into the system plus other management techniques such as burning to be applied), the lower one (where you have to actively do it – decide what to do from a triage of what’s available).

Covram is a mobile App for field assessment and data collection. A smartphone is big and smart enough to collect the data needed. It automatically locates where you are and has an offline capability so an offline map can be downloaded.

This feeds into the Web App, and automatically syncs and uploads the data and photos to the Cloud as soon as you come back into connectivity.

The Methodology

You collect some basic data. For example, if it is a woodland, its information on the structural layers: Has it got large old trees? Are there woody weeds or vines and how weedy is it? We use language like: are the weeds sparse; are they common in parts or throughout; are they abundant?

  • A proven methodology developed over 30 years of experience, and currently used by government and industry.
  • Flexible – A standardised, repeatable approach that has been successfully applied to 1,000’s of diverse sites.It’s been used across Travelling Stock Reserves in New South Wales, which is in the thousands covering more than 500,000 hectares.
  • Applies a numeric score to characterise key vegetation values to determine condition rating which integrates with a modified state and transition model rating. This helps you understand the regenerative capacity of that land.
  • Ability to collect up to 20 data points, however only a handful are mandatory.

The Benefits

Improved decision making

  • Utilising a broader range of people e.g. volunteers, council staff, etc. The use of inclusive language increases the potential workforce able to contribute valuable information.
  • The standardised approach allows easy site benchmarking.
  • Detailed and comparable site data to enable improved priority setting.
  • Provides key data relating to the recovery wheel. Some of this data collected goes directly into that recovery wheel.

Improved coordination

  • A consistent framework enables clearer communication between land managers, researchers, and volunteers. You can all talk about the same thing. Have the land manager involved and be part of the conversation.
  • Tools to better analyse data at a site to landscape and statewide scale. Filter the data for various things, e.g. for threatened species. The landholder and you can look on the computer at the same site and talk about it.
  • Simplifies short and long-term monitoring to provide evidence of the benefits of grant activities. What has been achieved? We often have no evidence to show that we’re actually improving.

Simplified record keeping

  • Automatic syncing of photo and data records, which simplifies record keeping.

Who is using this

  • Local councils managing natural reserves and roadsides.
  • Local and statewide environmental groups e.g. bush regenerators, Landcare to maintain and improve their local environment (currently negotiating with NSW Landcare across the state).
  • Individual land managers looking to more sustainably manage their land.
  • Traditional owners to build capacity and foster ‘caring for country’ outcomes, e.g. The Nari Nari Tribal Council in the Riverina are using the program to monitor their 88,000 hectare property.
  • State government agencies to facilitate improvement in land management operations and outcomes.

Next Steps

  • Download the App – Search ‘Covram’ on the App Store or Google Play
  • Visit covram.com.au to view data collected.
  • Visit our stall to chat and view a demonstration.
  • Email us.

Cost is currently free. It is a legacy project.