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Peri-urban regions offer significant contributions to city regions as landscapes of food production, resources for urban consumption, as well as for biodiversity and nature conservation – a key part of a city region as a socio-ecological, not simply a socioeconomic, space. Consequently, these roles have long been recognized as crucial to objectives of urban sustainability. They are also sites of socio-ecological tensions that relate to urbanization, as well as to the risk or hazard profile of locations undergoing social change. Whether sustainability, or resilience, in socio-ecological systems is a sufficient goal is increasingly under question. Seeking regenerative city regions, and in particular peri-urban landscapes requires reconsiderations of the relationships between policy, and the practices of communities and the state. Particularly with regard to planning policy this suggests consideration of the city and peri-urban region as connected, but also recognizing the specific qualities and vulnerabilities of peri-urban regions. Using the case of Narrm-Melbourne, Australia where several decades of planning policy have sought outcomes that reflect sustainability objectives this paper concludes that the peri-urban region has a strong potential to offer possibilities for a transformation to a sustainable, and potentially regenerative city region, but that current policy approaches are inadequate as they increase the vulnerabilities of communities, and neglect the potential of planning for multifunctionality and socio-ecological objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper provides a critical analysis of the development and current outcomes of Australia's first endorsed strategic assessment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, namely, the Melbourne Strategic Assessment. It covers progress towards protection of a number of Nationally Significant Species and Ecological Communities – most notably, the native grassland communities immediately adjacent to Melbourne's Urban Growth Boundary. The Commonwealth approval to protect biodiversity and allow urban development was made in 2010 and it aimed to achieve its outcomes by 2020. These outcomes included providing new land for homes, for new transport corridors, and for conservation of biodiversity. Natural Temperate Grassland (4,667 ha), Grassy Eucalypt Woodland (709 ha) and seven other Matters of National Environmental Significance will be impacted. Mitigation for this is establishment of 15,000 ha of grassland reserves, 1,200 ha of grassy woodland reserves, over 4,000 ha of other land zoned for conservation and 300 ha of wetland restoration. We conclude that the Melbourne Strategic Assessment has been a success in terms of the elegance and comprehensiveness of the approach, in cooperation between the levels of government, in the economic benefits, and in some aspects of social engagement of the agreement. However, the achievement of environmental outcomes must be currently considered a failure due to poor implementation. This failure includes not meeting the agreed 10 year deadline for land acquisition and management, poor monitoring and protection of set‐aside areas, and in reporting. We offer suggestions for how these current shortcomings could be overcome. These align well with the recommendations of the review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (The independent statutory review of the Act in 2020) and include the establishment of the proposed Office of Compliance and Enforcement, the adoption of National Environmental Standards and the reforms regarding the role of Indigenous Australians in strategic assessments. If these were adopted, we conclude that the strategic assessment approach should be more widely used because of the more holistic approach and efficiencies that it envisages compared with site by site approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective biodiversity conservation requires robust and transparent prioritization of management actions. However, this is often hampered by a lack of spatially‐explicit data on habitat variables and empirical data on the effect of management actions. Although approaches exist that integrate structured expert elicitation (SEE) with species distribution models (SDMs) to encode species responses across habitat gradients, difficulties remain in predicting management outcomes under different settings, at a region‐wide scale when key habitat covariates are not spatially explicit. Therefore, we developed an approach to integrate SDMs with SEE to capture expert understanding of likely outcomes of management actions for individual frog species, and use this to spatially predict the effect of management actions. We demonstrate our approach across approximately 4000 wetlands in greater Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. As a measure of management effectiveness, we used the change in predicted probability of occurrence of seven frog species at wetlands 10 years after conservation actions are implemented (or not implemented). Management effect was elicited from experts under six scenarios. Individual expert estimates were aggregated using generalized linear models that were then used to spatially predict expected management effects, and a measure of uncertainty in the prediction, at all wetlands. Predicted management effect was strongly influenced by species initial probability of occurrence, with enhancing aquatic and surrounding vegetation an effective action for most species. We discuss practical challenges and recommend solutions in the integration of SDMs and SEE for the spatial prediction of management effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Increasing integration of urban ecology science strengthens actions for biodiversity. • Collaboration between ecologists and land managers underpins landscape stewardship. • Adaptive management addresses novel ecosystems and impacts of urbanisation and climate change. Cities have important roles in biodiversity restoration and management. Local municipalities, as key land managers, play critical roles since some species are restricted to small patches of urban habitat, and some are considered threatened. Evolving approaches to urban nature policy, strategy and implementation demonstrate increasing sophistication and complexity, with approaches transitioning towards the adoption of more complex objectives, that address a wider range of urban nature forms, species and ecosystems. These objectives are increasingly underpinned by urban ecology research, citizen science participation and political championing. This paper adopts a 'dialogue'-adapted research approach to examine the evolution of the City of Melbourne's urban nature policies and actions across the decade from 2010 to 2020. We identify the key factors that enabled the endorsement and implementation of this capital city's Nature in the City strategy, analysing the science-policy interface and governance aspects that underpinned this significant policy transition. Through interviews and workshops with a range of actors involved in the implementation of the City of Melbourne's urban nature policies and activities over the last 10 years, we identify lessons learned that can be applied in other cities by urban land managers. In doing so, we argue that Melbourne's focus on biodiversity conservation and opportunities for restoration of species and ecological processes constitute important innovations in urban landscape policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animal movement can be significantly altered in human‐dominated landscapes such as urban and peri‐urban areas, where habitat is often fragmented and/or linear. Knowledge regarding how wildlife respond to anthropogenic change is vital for informing conservation efforts in such landscapes, including the design of nature reserves and wildlife corridors. To better understand how threatened species persist and behave within human‐dominated landscapes, we examined the home range and space use of the nationally endangered southern brown bandicoot Isoodon obesulus obesulus in peri‐urban Melbourne, Australia's second‐largest city. Specifically, we examined whether: (1) bandicoots were confined to linear strips of remnant vegetation or also made use of the broader highly modified landscape matrix; (2) the configuration of the linear vegetated strips affected home range shape; and (3) home range area differed between bandicoots living in linear strips and those in larger remnant habitat patches. We found that: (1) 71% of adult males and 33% of adult females used the matrix, but non‐dispersing juveniles were entirely confined to the linear strips; males also travelled greater distances into the matrix (away from the vegetated strips) than females; (2) bandicoots had longer home ranges in narrower strips and males had longer home ranges than females; and (3) home range area for both sexes was smaller in linear strips than has been recorded in other studies in larger remnant habitats. Our study highlights the importance of retaining narrow, fragmented and modified vegetation to accommodate threatened biodiversity within human‐dominated landscapes, but suggests the surrounding matrix may also offer important resources for adaptable species, such as bandicoots. Supporting off‐reserve conservation of biodiversity in novel ecosystems is increasingly pertinent in our rapidly urbanizing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]