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WildCountry – a big vision for restoring Australia’s wilderness
The WildCountry Vision
The Science of WildCountry
Cape York WildCountry: What has been achieved
WildCountry in the West: Gondwana Link
South Australia: The First WildCountry State
From the Kimberly to the Cape: Northern Australia is WildCountry and must be kept that way!
Imagine Australia as it was before 1788 – an ancient landscape with unique wildlife and ecosystems that evolved largely in isolation since the final break up of Gondwana 45 million years ago. A wild and beautiful land, sustaining life in all its forms over the aeons and nurturing humans for at least 50,000 years.
Draw the contrast with Australia a little more than two centuries later. Large areas of our landscape are degraded and fragmented, in desperate need of restoration; our scarce remaining wild areas are under relentless pressure from modern land use. It is now a land where the interdependence of all life is poorly understood by the majority of human inhabitants.
Over the past 250 years Australia has been an epicentre of extinctions. We have lost more mammal species to extinction than any other country over this period; we now have the dubious distinction of having more threatened animal species than all but a few of the world’s countries.
Yet Australia is still home to more plant and animal species than most other countries on Earth. A great many are unique to Australia and we are still blessed with landscapes of superlative natural beauty and ecological integrity.
To protect what remains of this precious heritage, The Wilderness Society is now implementing WildCountry, an Australia-wide program designed not only to protect our wild places and wildlife, but also to help define the path toward restoration. We have been inspired by the success of a project facing an equally daunting task of protection and restoration in the United States of America. The US Wildlands Project, which started in 1992, has set a new agenda for the US conservation movement, for the first time outlining a continent-wide program based upon the long-term needs of plant and animal species.
As WildCountry seeks to identify a new way for Australia to manage its land and its unique heritage, The Wilderness Society is committed to building solutions to allow appropriate economic futures for the communities that live on land. Indigenous communities and rural communities remain the main custodians of our bush and working with these communities to ensure strong economic futures that are ecologically positive is a key aim of the program.
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The WildCountry Vision
WildCountry is a plan to re-wild Australia. By means of reservation and rehabilitation, Australia’s natural ecosystems are to be restored and sustained, breaking the destructive cycle in which modern society competes with (and usually destroys) indigenous cultures, the integrity of ecological communities and the habitats of plant and animal species.
As a first step toward achieving this ambitious goal, The Wilderness Society has established the WildCountry Scientific Council, bringing together some of the nation’s most eminent environmental scientists. The Council plans to undertake a continent-wide, comprehensive assessment of the conservation status of our landscapes and ecosystems. This assessment will guide development of a continental conservation plan that will identify opportunities and priorities for WildCountry protection and restoration, including the use of habitat corridors and conservation management prescriptions to promote large scale ecological connectivity.
The Wilderness Society is developing an Implementation Plan which, nation-wide, will protect threatened environments, rehabilitate degraded natural areas, and restore devastated ecosystems. Our objective is to work in partnership with landholders, local communities and other conservation organisations, to develop a conservation network connecting important parts of the Australian continent. Wherever possible, wilderness areas will form the core of the network, surrounded and buffered by areas managed with conservation in mind.
This protected area network will be achieved through a variety of ways and tenures, including:
Wilderness areas;
National Parks and reserves;
Conservation agreements on private land;
Indigenous management/ownership;
Buffer areas surrounding protected bush so the impact of modern society is greatly reduced;
Corridors and landscape links.
The Wilderness Society will work with indigenous peoples to ensure that protection of the environment through WildCountry will help them restore and maintain their inalienable links with the land. This would include both indigenous land management and ownership, with the Cape York campaign an existing model for this process.
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The Science of WildCountry
Adopting leading edge scientific research and principles, the WildCountry Scientific Council will identify: (a) the best of Australia’s remaining natural environments; (b) core wilderness areas; (c) links and corridors that connect them; and (d) complementary large-scale restoration and/or land management practices. The goals are:
To maximise protection, rehabilitation and restoration of all native species and ecological communities across their range;
To cover all possible environmental and landscape variations in order to ensure maximum survival and evolutionary potential of biodiversity;
To restore and maintain long-term ecosystem resilience across all Australian regions and landscapes, including areas large enough in size and numerous enough to survive environmental change or catastrophe.
The inaugural meeting of the WildCountry Scientific Council took place in March, 2002. Internationally renowned conservation biologist, Emeritus Professor Henry Nix of the Australian National University, and Emeritus Professor Michael Soulé, currently Scientific Director of the US Wildlands Project, were appointed co-chairs of the Council.
Other distinguished members of the Scientific Council include:
Professor Richard Hobbs, Murdoch University
Dr Rob Lesslie, BRS
Dr Brendan Mackey, Australian National University
Professor Hugh Possingham, University of Queensland
Emeritus Professor Harry Recher
Dr Jann Williams, RMIT University
Dr John Woinski, Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Department
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Cape York WildCountry: What has been achieved
Cape York Peninsula is a vast, 14,000,000ha area of wilderness landscapes, including superlative examples of tropical rainforests, heathlands, savanna woodlands, dune fields, extensive monsoonal wetlands, and marine environments.
On ‘the Cape’, recent initiatives have provided a scientific and economic basis for the realisation of the WildCountry vision. For example, the Queensland Government has made a commitment to protect the Cape’s conservation values, has signed the Cape York Heads of Agreement, and has agreed to facilitate the involvement of traditional owners in the management of National Parks on the Cape.
See also: Cape York Agreement
The landmark Natural Heritage Significance of Cape York Peninsula scientific report, undertaken by two of the WildCountry scientists, Professor Henry Nix and Dr Brendan Mackey, was released in October, 2001. Challenging conservation management convention, the report argues for a holistic approach using WildCountry principles. It was refereed by Emeritus Professor Michael Soulé.
See: www.env.qld.gov.au/environment/environment/capeyork/
These three WildCountry Scientific Council members are the core of the Cape York Peninsula Statement of Natural Significance Expert Committee, which will develop a Cape-wide conservation plan for the Queensland Government.
Approximately 1.4 million hectares of the Cape are already protected in National Parks; an additional 1.2 million hectares have been purchased for conservation purposes; and $22,000,000 of government money has been earmarked for implementing the outcomes of land use negotiations.
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WildCountry in the West: Gondwana Link
South-western Australia is inter-nationally renowned for its ecological diversity. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution across one of the Earth’s oldest land surfaces has created a major ‘biodiversity hotspot’. Sadly, massive clearing of vegetation for agriculture has fragmented the landscape. Climate change and land degradation now threaten the long-term viability of much of the region’s biodiversity.
The scale of the challenge, and the unique opportunities that currently exist, make this region the perfect choice for WA’s first WildCountry project – Gondwana Link.
The Gondwana Link Project is an initiative that will effectively link the ecosystems of inland Western Australia with the wetter forests of the south west corner. It aims to restore ecological connectivity from the woodlands of WA’s Goldfields, via five of the region’s significant wild places, to the karri and jarrah forests of the Margaret River area, a distance of almost 1,000 kilometres.
This is a cooperative effort from a broad range of community and non-government organisations. Initially, it is comprised of The Wilderness Society, Greening Australia, Fitzgerald Biosphere Group, Friends of the Fitzgerald, Mallee Fowl Preservation Group, and the Australian Bush Heritage Fund. A full-time Project Coordinator has been employed.
Collectively, the partner organisations bring together a wide spectrum of conservation strategies, including public advocacy, revegetation and landcare, land purchase and property covenanting, and the provision of incentives for conservation on private land. By working collectively to a long-term plan, each group’s conservation efforts will be complementary – so that, when completed, there will be protected bush from Margaret River to Kalgoorlie and beyond.
At the western end of the project, the boundaries of the new ‘old growth forest’ National Parks (won as a result of the last State election) are being negotiated with WildCountry objectives in mind. Elsewhere, existing National Parks have been defended from mining and roading, and intensive landcare actions are now being undertaken.
The Gondwana Link Project, a vital part of the nation-wide WildCountry campaign, represents a new way forward for conservation in Australia. It demonstrates that, by working together, we can ‘right the wrongs’ of the past and protect our great wild places forever. more . . .
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South Australia: The First WildCountry State
South Australia has become the first State where the Government is seriously looking at incorporating WildCountry principles into its conservation programs.
“We will support the efforts of conservationists to introduce the WildCountry philosophy into Australia to produce an Australia-wide comprehensive system of interconnected core protected areas, each surrounded and linked by lands managed under conservation objectives.”
South Australian Government Policy Statement, 2002
South Australia has vast areas of relatively undisturbed wilderness, particularly in the west and north of the State. The north-east is home to the spectacular Lake Eyre Basin and Cooper Creek system which includes the internationally important Coongie Lakes wetlands. In the far west there is a largely unbroken belt of mallee covered dune fields that stretches for hundreds of kilometres, from the central Eyre Peninsula to the border and over into Western Australia. This Western Wilderness Corridor forms the basis of the South Australian WildCountry project (as well as the broader development of WildCountry across the government and the state). more . . .
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From the Kimberly to the Cape: Northern Australia is WildCountry and must be kept that way!
Every year, as the southern summer approaches, the humid north-west winds sweep in across northern Australia, bringing monsoonal rains and an occasional cyclone. Most years, these rains drench the land and flood the rivers and wetlands. By March the winds begin to recede and ‘the Dry’ winter replaces ‘the Wet’… for another year.
This extraordinary climate, one of the most highly seasonal in the world, has produced the great tropical savanna of northern Australia – 100 million hectares, stretching from the Kimberley in the north-west, through the Top End and Gulf Country of the Northern Territory and Queensland, to Cape York Peninsula.
It is one of the very few tropical savannas still relatively intact in the world. The great savannas of India, the Americas, and the Sahel of Africa, have almost entirely disappeared due to clearing for crops and overgrazing by stock. Only some rapidly declining portions of the East African savanna – and most of northern Australia – remain as large, functioning ecosystems of this type.
So far, the north has largely escaped the intense development of southern Australia. Less than one percent has been cleared for agriculture, mining or townships. However, in the north, all is not as well as it would seem. Recent research has shown that many northern birds and mammals have rapidly declined in range. Weeds and feral animals, changes in the usual burning practices of indigenous owners, and intensive cattle grazing have altered the woodlands and wetlands in many areas.
Most threatening of all, cotton and other intensively irrigated crops are now spreading northward. The risk is, that the same practices that have so degraded the Murray-Darling Basin, will now be repeated in the north. A new approach is urgently needed, one that will protect the exceptional natural values and support the social and economic development northern communities need.
On Cape York Peninsula, a start has already been made. In collaboration with indigenous groups, areas with very high natural values – including Shelburne Bay and the Starcke Wilderness – have been protected from destructive developments.
WildCountry policies urgently need to be extended to many other areas of superlative natural value. For example, the Southern Gulf Wetland, Australia’s largest wetland, must be fully protected. Equally essential will be the development of alternative social and economic models that will maintain, not destroy, the savanna and wild rivers of the north.
Developing and implementing WildCountry policies from the Kimberley to the Cape will be a long, difficult, but crucially important task. more . . .
For more information, please contact:
Julie McGuiness
WildCountry Coordinator
Email Julie McGuiness
Workphone: 02 6249 6491
Mobile:
Created: 14 Aug 2002 | Last updated: 10 Sep 2003