Government and non-government conservation agencies have long-term goals and objectives to provide environmental services, such as conserving the biodiversity of Australian native vegetation. In addition to national parks and reserves, private lands are often included in conservation programs to...

Contracting with private landholders for labor towards production of environmental services (payment for actions) or the environmental services themselves (payment for outcomes) is reliant on the environmental organization’s ability to monitor and assess the environmental outcomes provided....

Paying private landholders for environmental services, rather than input-based payments, has been proposed as a way to improve the performance of contracts for conservation agencies. A challenge is that the assessment of environmental services is subjective, raising the question of how...

Conservation and restoration of native vegetation is often a gradual process which may require many years to transform an ecosystem from one vegetative state to a target ecosystem. This process is stochastic, with some changes potentially irreversible. In contrast, contracts with landholders to...