Overview

Fortescue, an Australian company, is the fourth largest mining company and is committed to working towards achieving a net positive impact for biodiversity. In 2025, the company started to work with IUCN to develop credible pathways to achieving Biodiversity Net Gain outcomes at project level as an initial step. The first joint activities focused on their Eliwana mine and the surrounding Western Hub exploration area, located on the Country of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and the Pinikura (PKKP) Traditional Custodians of the land in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. An independent site review was performed to assess Fortescue’s approach to net positive impact and explore options for enhancing biodiversity value on their non-operational areas.

In this context, Fortescue and IUCN piloted the IUCN RHINO approach to understand how using a science-based metric like START could further inform their biodiversity management to help inform pathways toward net gain and Nature Positive outcomes. In 2025, the Locate, Evaluate and Assess phases of the IUCN RHINO approach were completed. In 2026, the next phase of the project will focus on the Prepare phase, with the aim to refine an action plan that will be shared with the relevant stakeholders at the landscape level to quantify targets that could also contribute to the Kunming Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF).

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