Providing Green Jobs and Roadsides in the Wheatbelt

The Wheatbelt Revegetation Bank program is a source of environmental offsets for road improvement works – ensuring no net loss in the quantity and quality of native vegetation.

Over the next 10 years and beyond, many upgrades are planned for improving road safety across the Wheatbelt road network. This can necessitate clearing roadside vegetation – in a region where road reserves are one of the few remaining refuges for native vegetation.

As a condition of environmental approvals, we provide an environmental ‘offset’, a measure taken to counterbalance unavoidable environmental impacts from a project. The program mainly involves creating expanded green corridors through the purchase and revegetation of cleared farmland abutting road reserves.

The government has committed $5 million over three years to establish the Wheatbelt Revegetation Bank, and further funding will come from Wheatbelt road projects that utilise its offsets.

The initiative has been adopted as part of the State Government’s Green Jobs Plan, aiming to provide opportunities – in the areas of native seedlings, site preparation and planting – for Aboriginal businesses.

The Green Jobs Plan will include $60.3 million over the next three years, to support projects that will protect our environment and create jobs, of which $15 million has been allocated to set up a Native Vegetation Rehabilitation Scheme.

In combination with the State’s Offsets Fund for Recovery program, the scheme will target revegetation, habitat restoration and protection of existing vegetation to deliver at-scale environmental outcomes and employment over several years. The $8 million program supports conservation groups to carry out ‘on ground’ work and will improve habitat for our unique and important flora and fauna, as part of the State’s requirement for delivering environmental offsets.

The program will also provide employment opportunities including fencing, seeding, planting, managing threats, and improving native vegetation and habitat for fauna such as the Carnaby’s Cockatoo.

Find out more about this, and our revegetation activities around Western Australia, on our website.