WILDCOUNTRY SMALL GRANTS PROGRAM REPORT 2005 - 2008

Introduction   |   WildCountry Funded Grants 2005 – 2008   |   Criteria for Assessment of Applications

The Wilderness Society Inc
With thanks to the Dara Foundation
May 2009

Background and Purpose

The Dara Foundation and the Wilderness Society established a WildCountry Small Grants Program in 2005 to support community groups involved in landscape scale projects in southern Australia focused on understanding, protecting and restoring important ecological processes and connections at the national, regional, and local scale.

The program aimed to support cooperative work towards implementation of conservation strategies and plans that incorporate and promote the scientific principles being developed by the WildCountry Science Council.

In support of this aim, the program sought to improve the conservation, economic and scientific knowledge base; to enhance conservation advocacy; to enable the development of compatible economic opportunities; and to facilitate the development of conservation plans and strategies which meet identified conservation needs - criteria for assessment can be found here >>

Areas to which the program applied are Gondwana Link in Western Australia; the Western Corridor (Lake Eyre Peninsula) project in South Australia; the Tri-state region which extended across western Victoria, south west NSW and eastern South Australia and the North East Bioregion in Tasmania.  Areas covered could encompass both the terrestrial and adjoining marine environments.

Funding of $60,000 pa was available over three years (a total of $180,000), and applications for between $5,000 and $15,000 were invited from environment and community organisations.

A three-person selection panel comprising the Wilderness Society and Dara Foundation representatives assessed the applications. Seventeen projects via 13 regional organisations were funded over the three-year period and all have been acquitted. A summary of the outcomes of each project follows >>

WildCountry Funded Grants 2005 – 2008
Seventeen projects via 13 regional organisations were funded over the three-year period and all have been acquitted. A summary of the outcomes of each project follows >>

Criteria for Assessment of Applications
The grant program focus is on advancing community understanding of the need to address WildCountry scientific principles in conservation planning. The grant program also serves to build the knowledge base needed to advance conservation planning using WildCountry science principles. Learn more >>