Impact Investment: Artemis Nature Fund
Fight for the flight of a rare parrot
Funding context
With as few as 1,000 Golden-shouldered Parrots surviving in the wild, Rendere played a key role in bringing a team together to restore habitat on Artemis Station in Queensland – one of the last strongholds of this beautiful but vulnerable bird.
Rendere also guided the establishment of a not-for-profit structure – the Artemis Nature Fund – to enable the owners of the 125,000 cattle station on Cape York to attract government and private funding and bring ecologists and researchers on Country to develop conservation strategies. Based on the success of Artemis, Rendere further supported the team to transition the Artemis model to Conservation Partners.
Situational context
The story behind the Artemis Nature Fund relates to the demise of the Paradise parrot, the only Australian bird to be declared extinct since colonisation. To prevent the same thing from happening to the Golden-shouldered parrot (the Paradise parrot’s closest relative) Artemis station owners Sue and Tom Shephard engaged with researchers, birders and funders around the world to gather insights on what could be done.
The Fund, established with Rendere’s help, has enabled the development and implementation of a conservation program that focuses on the removal of overgrown vegetation from selected patches of former savannah and the restoration of grassland habitat. This work is being undertaken under the guidance of lead ecologist, Dr Steve Murphy.
Artemis now has hundreds of supporters who are helping to raise funds and awareness around the plight of this beautiful bird. In 2023, Artemis transitioned to Conservation Partners to extend this work into other areas and other species.
Photo: Male Golden-shouldered parrot at the nest. Photo by Barry Baker, with permission.
“Having the ecological and land management know-how to do on-ground conservation work is only half the story. The other half is having a structure in place that can access and manage funding, provide a decision-making process and ensure compliance with critical operational factors, such as insurance.
”Rendere created this structure for our work on Artemis. Without their support, the current push to save Golden-shouldered Parrot simply would not have happened.”
– Steve Murphy, Artemis Trust Secretary