The removal, alteration and fragmentation of habitat are key threats to the biodiversity of
terrestrial ecosystems. Investment to protect biodiversity assets (e.g. restoration of native
vegetation) in dominantly agricultural landscapes usually results in a loss of agricultural
production. This can be a significant cost that is often overlooked or poorly addressed in
analyses to prioritise such investments. Accounting for this trade-off is important for more
successful, realistically feasible and cost-effective biodiversity conservation. We developed a
spatially explicit bio-economic optimisation model that simulates the effect of conservation
effort on the diversity of woodland-dependent birds in the Avoca catchment (330 thousand
ha) in North-Central Victoria. The model minimises opportunity cost of agricultural
production and cost of biodiversity conservation effort on a catchment level subject to
achieving different levels of biodiversity outcome. We identify the locations and spatial
arrangement of conservation efforts that offers the best value for money