50ha is an amazing sized property and the south coast is an incredible part of the world.
My wife and I have recently bought some land near Margaret River/Augusta region and are planning out how we can plant local species and invite as many native critters as possible to come by.
Best of luck with your replanting and conservation projects.
I know some people will be upset because they think saying that might mean we don't get emissions under control. I don't think people here on HN have much control over emissions, but in any case I encourage you to get emissions under control to the extent you can!
Everyone can affect their emissions to some extent.
* Don't have children is a big one, or limit the number you have. One child is equivalent to 24 people people not driving, someone quoted to me the other day. It's not a popular idea though.
* Drive a small car not a big car. Drive about 90kph, it's more fuel efficient than driving faster.
* Buy local - It might be more expensive in money, but milk shipped 4,000 kilometers is more expensive in emissions than milk from a supplier in your region.
And so on ...
With my limited time, I document the biodiversity of our block here:
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations?place_id=any&use...
My wife throws up our photos on Flickr, which includes a great many of our efforts at sustainable farming and replanting, an album documenting our house-build, as well as our hiking, and far, far too many of our dog.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/with/7...
I think we have one or two species that are, on some level, endangered.
Our favourite species on our block is a type of orchid: https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/31446320265/i...
It's basically a sex-doll for wasps. The female wasps can't fly, they live on the ground and climb up to the top of a stalk of grass, and the male, attracted by pheromones, would swoop in and carry her off. This orchid presents a rough approximation of the shape, and a convincing approximation of the pheromones that the male wasps are confused and try to fly off with it, catapaulting them into the pollen resevoir. If they get tricked twice: viola! Pollen exchange.
I'm also active on iNaturalist, and maintain a python API client and some other open source tools for it: https://github.com/pyinat/pyinaturalist
If you ever have the desire to put together some data visualizations, stats, automation, or anything else fun or useful with your iNat data, you're more than welcome to ping me for help on GitHub (jwcook) or on the iNat forums (jcook).
I joke that we outsourced it to a pair of gullible young people who did all the hard work so us older people can enjoy living in it. :-)
Yeah, I struggle with that too. At the same time, there is a huge amount of opportunity for average people to make an impact in whatever small sphere of influence we may have.
If I always frame my efforts in relation to the entirety of the world's social and environmental problems, of course those efforts are going to seem insignificant; but I think that's as misleading as, say, viewing my personal spending habits as inconsequential based on how much they impact the global economy. Small changes in your local community or social circle really do matter!
That's one reason I like platforms like iNaturalist: it's a good tool to encourage others to simply learn more about the living things around them, which is a significant step in nudging someone from indifference toward being an advocate for nature.
Sorry if that's not helpful, but I'd really like to encourage you to keep doing what you're doing, because it probably matters a lot more than you think it does (especially to all the creatures that live in and around your larger-than-average backyard!)
I split my attention in far too many directions, but I'm writing audio-description for film and television as a hobby; biodiversity and conservation and hiking (we live in a biodiversity hotspot); and tinkering with code (roguelikes!). I also irrationally love HTML as a markup language.
But I am terrified of the increasingly bleak looking future, and despite putting a lot of effort into conservation and living with as small a footprint as possible, I don't see much hope for our broken civilisation, much less our species.