Mapping our Energy Future: Community Priorities for Nature

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Where and what are the top priorities for environmental protection and restoration in our region? How can we support a local renewable energy transition while protecting and enhancing our environmental values?

Those are the questions we want to answer - and we need your help!

As we all know, building renewable energy is crucial if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, but doing this in a way that protects nature and threatened species is a huge challenge in Queensland.

From 2025 to 2026, NQCC is undertaking a project aimed at better understanding the environmental values of the Townsville region, as well as identifying current and future threats and opportunities for protection and restoration. 

The project will involve bringing people together in a series of workshops to identify sensitive areas, understand thresholds for key species and rank priorities for regional restoration. With local expertise, we will produce maps, principles and plans for protecting regional environmental priorities as our local energy industry expands.

What it looks like:

We will run a series of Nature Priorities Workshops throughout 2025 and into 2026. In these workshops, we will look to build relationships with key stakeholders in our local environment and energy transition, including Traditional Owners and First Nations groups, environmental organisations and advocates, energy industry representatives, academics, local government and other community representatives. 

Our workshops will take us through four phases:

Phase 1: Understanding What Matters 
Identifying local environmental values and cultural heritage, recognising threats and exploring solutions for environmental protection and restoration

Phase 2: Shaping Priorities Together 
Setting key regional priorities and guidelines for protection and exploring local restoration projects or opportunities

Phase 3: Building a Nature-Positive Energy Future 
Aligning on actionable steps for community priorities on nature protection in the region 

Phase 4: Sharing Our Findings 
Presenting what’s been learned, gathering final feedback and preparing a report

How you can help:


Participating in our workshops:
 find upcoming workshops on our events page, and ensure you're signed up to email updates

Contributing knowledge: if you have knowledge to contribute but can't make it to a workshop, we still want to hear from you! Email [email protected].

Joining our research team: we would love your help compiling data on environmental impacts, ecological thresholds and connectivity! Select the "workshops and research" option on our volunteer sign-up page

Sharing our work: this project won't succeed without the right people in the room, so we would love your assistance reaching out to relevant stakeholders!


This project is funded by the Queensland Government as part of their Energy Partnerships Framework.


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  • David Bailey
  • Crystal Falknau