Transcription Audio

Hello and welcome. If you’re designing a community program for Australian wildlife in 2025, here’s the big takeaway from a year of testing across the country: the programs that shift power locally, measure behaviour instead of awareness, and close the loop with instant impact feedback scale faster, stick longer, and actually move the needle for wildlife within 18 to 24 months. Not three to five years. Eighteen to twenty-four months. When you stop thinking like a traditional NGO and start operating like a community-owned enterprise, everything changes. Volunteer retention jumps three to four times. Data quality improves. The work feels relevant because it’s led by the people who live it daily. And participants don’t just show up once; they become stewards. So today I want to give you three practical moves that separate the programs that flare and fade from the ones that endure. First, power-share and pay Traditional Owners before you recruit a single volunteer. Too often, teams blow budgets on comms, merch, and a slick brand while treating Indigenous governance as a nice-to-have add-on. That’s backwards. Indigenous Protected Areas now cover more than 75 million hectares—over half the National Reserve System—and Indigenous ranger and IPA programs consistently demonstrate social, cultural, and environmental returns that traditional models rarely touch. Traditional Owners hold native title or other legal rights over about 40% of Australia’s land mass. That’s not just a policy footnote; it’s your strategic foundation. What does this look like in practice? It means Elders’ time is paid. Cultural protocols are part of field planning, not an afterthought. Co-design is funded. Governance meetings are scheduled and resourced. Data and IP rules are agreed from day one. It’s about respecting millennia of ecological knowledge—and accessing the most sophisticated landscape management systems ever developed for this continent. Traditional Owners can read seasonal indicators, anticipate animal behaviour, and navigate sensitive locations with a precision that would take non-Indigenous teams years to learn. They bring community legitimacy and the social license you simply cannot buy through outreach. So here’s a concrete move: ring-fence 20 to 30 percent of your first-year budget for Indigenous partnership. Use it for paid co-design workshops, comprehensive cultural safety training, standing governance meetings, and robust benefit-sharing agreements. Do it before you print a single T-shirt. If you take this step in your first quarter, your program will have deeper roots and better ecological fit by month three than most programs manage by year one. True stewardship begins with genuine, funded Indigenous partnership. Not as a courtesy, as the core of your program. Second, engineer behaviour, not just awareness. Most “awareness” campaigns create what psychologists call the intention–action gap. People leave your workshop inspired, then life gets in the way and nothing happens. The antidote is COM-B plus default design. COM-B says behaviour happens when Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation align. Default design says make the desired action the easiest path. Across sectors, well-designed nudges typically lift target behaviours by 8 to 15 percent, and default options can increase participation by 20 to 40 percent. These are not soft gains; they compound every week. Pick one behaviour that truly matters. Not five. One. Maybe it’s submit one verified observation per week. Maybe it’s log a five-minute transect every Sunday. Then remove friction like a maniac. Pre-fill forms. Use QR codes on trail signs that open your submission page with GPS already captured. Set reminders to opt-in by default, with a clear, easy way to opt out. Replace “Please get involved” with “On your Sunday dog walk, spend five minutes recording what you see with the pre-loaded app.” Those implementation intentions—when, where, and how—boost follow-through dramatically. And change what you measure. Track a tangible weekly metric like submissions per active participant, or percentage of participants who completed their one weekly action. Stop counting heads at awareness events and calling it impact. If your work touches conflict mitigation—dingoes near campgrounds, kangaroos in peri-urban reserves, flying-fox roosts near schools—borrow proven tactics from the national expert guide on reducing human–wildlife conflict, and pair them with clear behaviour targets. For example, “Store all food in sealed containers on site” or “Leash dogs within 50 metres of roost signage, every time.” Then measure compliance as a behaviour, not just knowledge of a rule. Third, win trust fast with seven-minute micro-missions and instant feedback. People stick with programs when they feel competent quickly and can see their impact. Think Aussie Backyard Bird Count and FrogID—millions of records because the first task is simple, satisfying, and visible. Your job is to design a first-touch experience that delivers a meaningful win in under ten minutes. Picture this: a new participant scans a sign, the app opens pre-filled with location, and they’re guided through a single, ultra-clear task—record one species they can confidently identify, or capture a short audio of a frog call that the system can verify. As soon as they submit, they get instant feedback: “Nice. That was a spotted pardalote. You just filled a gap on our regional map and helped confirm breeding activity this week.” They see their dot appear live on a community map. They get a tiny dopamine hit, plus the knowledge that their contribution mattered to a real decision. That’s competence satisfaction. It’s powerful. Traditional programs often start with long training and complex data sheets that can leave newcomers feeling clumsy or unsure. A micro-mission lowers the bar to entry without lowering standards. It gives people an immediate success and a clear next step. Then you ladder the difficulty and autonomy gradually. Week one: a single observation. Week two: a five-minute timed transect. Week three: join a small local team led by a Traditional Owner ranger for a seasonal burn prep survey. Each step reinforces capability, opportunity, motivation—the COM-B triangle in action. Close the loop every time. Don’t just say thanks. Show impact. “Your transects helped us detect a 20 percent increase in glider sightings along the creek line. We’ve now prioritized that corridor for habitat restoration.” Or, “Because 78 percent of you kept dogs leashed near the roost this month, heat-stressed flying-foxes had fewer disturbance events.” When people see their behaviour linked to outcomes, they’re far more likely to repeat it. A quick note on safety and conflict: if your program touches field encounters—dingoes, roos, goannas, snakes—build in plain-language, location-specific protocols from the start. The expert 2025 guides on safe wildlife encounters and conflict reduction translate beautifully into micro-missions. For example, a two-minute pre-field checklist that becomes the default: where are the exit routes, what’s the buffer distance for this species, how do we store food, who has first-aid. Treat safety behaviours as measurable habits, not as fine print. Let’s bring it together. If you do nothing else this quarter, do these three things. One, move budget—real budget—into Indigenous governance and pay Traditional Owners first. Two, choose a single behaviour that matters, redesign the path so it’s the default, and measure that behaviour weekly. Three, build a seven-minute micro-mission that gives people an immediate win and closes the loop with visible impact. You don’t need a perfect app or a national media campaign to start. You need a co-design session with Elders on Country, a crisp behavioural target, and a first touch that makes the right action effortless. If you’ve been stuck in information mode—webinars, flyers, school talks—try this pivot for ninety days. You’ll feel the energy shift. Volunteers will come back. Data will tidy itself because people finally know exactly what to do and why it matters. And you’ll start seeing those early ecological signals that tell you stewardship is taking root. The truth is, Australia doesn’t need more beautifully worded awareness campaigns. We need programs that act like living systems—rooted in Indigenous leadership, designed around human behaviour, and constantly feeding participants’ effort back into community decisions and ecological outcomes. That’s how you move beyond participation to ownership. That’s how you turn a burst of enthusiasm into long-term care. So, as you plan your next season, ask three simple questions. Whose governance sits at the center, and are we paying for it properly. What is the one behaviour that, if everyone did it weekly, would change our outcomes. And what’s the seven-minute mission that proves to a newcomer, right now, that they can do this and it matters. If your work includes hotspots for human–wildlife tension or field encounters, fold in the national expert guidance early and make those safety behaviours the default. Then keep closing the loop. Every time someone contributes, show them how their action shifted a decision, filled a data gap, or improved conditions for a species they care about. Do these things and you won’t just run a program. You’ll help build a community that sees itself as a caretaker of place, now and for the long haul. Thanks for listening, and here’s to designing programs that last longer than their grants and leave our wildlife better off, faster than we thought possible.