Australia needs a new shared vision that the current trajectory of loss of natural heritage on its offshore islands is not acceptable and needs to change. This Special Issue brings together seven papers from leaders and practitioners with experience in offshore islands across the Australian and New Zealand context. The fundamentals for each paper are to suggest potential solutions or scenarios to move forward with island policy, and management.

Conservation depends on people and community partnerships not only save time and money, but they also foster ownership and longevity of conservation initiatives well beyond their project timeframe. To engage island communities successfully in conservation efforts, we need to understand their motivations and embed these into program design. We present four case studies on major populated islands in Australia where community collaboration is building the collective impact needed for conservation success. They contain key learnings to help guide managers in future island planning.

Island landscapes and component biodiversity provide invaluable services. However, these are threatened by climate change. There is currently no framework for assessing and mitigating such threats on islands. Based on an existing adaptation standard, we propose a systematic approach for planning the adaptation of islands based on a risk management process.

Important technical advances have been made in eradicating invasive species and restoring biological communities on New Zealand islands. However, further developments are needed to address the important social dimensions in restoring inhabited islands and other sites. Five case studies are discussed illustrating how different social issues are being addressed.

Conservation entrepreneurship is based on the notion that it is possible to build a business system around a conservation challenge, and in doing so, create a targeted and adequate resourcing mechanism to support interventions, over adequate time frames. This paper takes the reader through the process of building such models using structures and terminologies that are commonplace in the business world, but perhaps not so much so in the conservation sector.