Implementing WildCountry

Translating WildCountry scientific principles into on ground work is accomplished through facilitating large scale conservation initiatives, including indigenous conservation activities, in various regions across Australia.

The work includes participation in collaborative, multi-stakeholder landscape conservation projects; partnerships with indigenous landowners; development of regional conservation plans; policy development and promotion of legislative change.

To implement our WildCountry vision, The Wilderness Society works to:

• provide scientific input to landscape restoration plans in SW WA (through the Gondwana Link initiative);

• research, educate and advocate policy and legislative change to ensure the protection of the Great Western Woodlands of southern WA (the eastern end of Gondwana Link);

• promote secure wilderness protection in south western SA (WildArc);

• provide input into the SA Government’s NatureLinks program, a conservation planning program which has taken aboard WC scientific principles;

• build networks with conservation and resource management groups in western Victoria (Habitat 141), expanding this regional vision to SW NSW and eastern SA;

• develop conservation plans underpinned by WC science for the whole of Tasmania;

• promote the protection and proper management of the Travelling Stock Route networks in NSW and QLD;

• develop and promote the conservation case for keeping the magnificent intact savannah landscapes of northern Australia from fragmentation and degradation through inappropriate industries and other activities;

• learn from traditional owners; and assist with and promote conservation activities on indigenous lands  across Australia, though agreements with land owners;

• advocate and assist with government legislative and policy development around the protection of Wild Rivers;

• research and publicise industries compatible with conservation to aid in the promotion of the concept of a conservation economy.

WILDCOUNTRY SMALL GRANTS PROGRAM REPORT 2005 - 2008

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. Learn more >>