In 1985, the Victorian government announced that it would purchase all 774 allotments on the Summerland Peninsula to protect the penguin colony, setting up the "Summerland Estate Buy-Back Programme". The programme had a projected end date of 2000, with the land to be added to the Phillip Island Nature Park. During this period, land owners could not build on their land, improve their properties, or sell them to anyone but the Government. By 2007, 732 properties had been voluntarily sold by their owners, at a cost to the government of around a million dollars a year.