Natural landscapes and their native vegetation are an important component of the Australian identity and our heritage. Many people, from Australia and overseas, like to look at, visit and enjoy native vegetation in our diverse landscapes. These provide places of scenic beauty and peace to support our cultural, spiritual and recreational needs. Many Australians use natural landscapes to derive a livelihood, and native vegetation plays a key role in supporting farming and other production activities. Native vegetation may be of intrinsic economic significance as a source of genetic and biochemical products as well as wild progenitors of potential agricultural and horticultural material. To gain support for the conservation or sustainable management of native vegetation, the value that it can bring to the quality of people’s lives is therefore critical to consider. Importantly, native vegetation provides habitat for many of Australia’s unique plants, animals and micro-organisms and is a key factor in protecting landscapes against land and water degradation. Preventing degradation and loss of native vegetation is much less costly than restoring and replacing it.

If managers want to arrest and reverse the decline in native vegetation communities in Australia, they first need to understand what motivates those whose everyday decisions and actions influence the ecological functioning of vegetation. Greater recognition of the true dimensions of environmental, social and economic values accorded to native vegetation by society can help ensure that the management of these ecosystems is given serious attention. Recognising the values that indigenous Australians place on native vegetation, and the benefits they derive from it, adds further depth to our understanding. Improved understanding of the contributions that native vegetation make to our socio-economic systems provides a basis to assess more reliably the significance and appropriateness of different land uses and management practices.

Knowledge of the values and benefits provided by native vegetation can be used to develop better management strategies, improve priorities for research and ecosystem monitoring, and more critically assess the need for management intervention where significant threats to values and benefits are identified. Deeper understanding of the benefits of native vegetation provides a much stronger basis to avoid land uses that degrade these systems and threaten their sustainability. It will also help ensure that management goals are consistent with sustaining the values that individuals and community place on these systems and the benefits that they can provide. For planning to be successful, it is important to state, or at least acknowledge, the values that underpin management goals.