Applying WildCountry

In recent years, the WildCountry vision has increasingly been applied in more specific contexts across numerous regions of Australia. 

In particular, WildCountry is being embodied in landscape conservation projects involving partners seeking to protect and restore ecological values and functions locally and regionally. 

These projects include:

• Gondwana Link in south-west Western Australia
  
• Wild Arc in western South Australia, 
• Great Southern Sanctuary, part of the ‘Habitat 141’ project across the borders of Victoria, South Australia and NSW, and most recently, 
• Wild Island in Tasmania.

For information on these projects see Landscape-scale Conservation Initiatives

The WildCountry vision is also being applied more broadly in other parts of Australia, for example in discussions on conservation planning for the Kimberley region of Western Australia, in support for maintenance of the Travelling Stock Route Network, which provides ecological connectivity and valuable remnant vegetation across eastern Australia, and in supporting the development of Indigenous Protected Areas on Cape York Peninsula. 

In these initiatives it is clear that not only ecological connections, but those between individuals and organisations are also critical in restoring the health of our country.

Aboriginal land rights, Indigenous ecological knowledge and the land management expertise of Traditional Owners have combined to create progressive change in environmental policy and practice in Australia.

Indigenous Protected Areas, for example, are a key part of the conservation landscape. Alongside the WildCountry science, this Indigenous knowledge and stewardship is vital to addressing the conservation imperatives which face Australia.

Read more about WildCountry and Aboriginal Australia

The need to apply the WildCountry vision in specific local and regional contexts is now giving rise to a new phase of the WildCountry program.  

This phase will focus on increasing the understanding of ecological processes at a regional level and as applied to more specific problems. 

In order to achieve this, the WildCountry Science Council has decided to create a WildCountry Network of scientific advisors who are able to participate in sharing and developing the vision in a wider range of applications.