First thing the developer has to do is to get an assessment of the threatened species, of the ecological values of that site. At the moment, that developer lodges an application, there's usually trade-offs, negotiations, you end up with remnant bits of land. You might end up with some other offset land that the public has to run. There's no cohesive system of then making sure that we maintain and improve biodiversity values.
With biobanking there's just another tool available to make sure that the land we actually conserve has better biodiversity values. It's usually more contiguous. You see, just because you preserve two dozen trees at the end of a development site doesn't mean that's a great habitat.
Generally biobanking is really designed more for urban areas, with the offsets being offered in non-urban areas. It may be able to help in some circumstances, but it depends a lot on what we're talking about here. But biobanking does allow for offsets in relation to a specific species, as well as specific ecological communities as well as land. It's quite a flexible tool.
