Small grants program building WildCountry across Australia

The WildCountry Vision celebrates communities living within healthy, intact country and supporting protection and restoration of land to ensure that biodiversity can continue to flourish. One way in which this vision is being realised across Australia is through the work of many small community groups. The Dara Foundation and the Wilderness Society established a WildCountry Small Grants Program in 2005 to support these groups involved in landscape scale projects Australia focused on understanding, protecting and restoring important ecological processes and connections at the national, regional, and local scale. Following a further generous donation from the Dara Foundation in 2009 the program has continued for a further three years. The nine new projects funded in 2009 are now well underway.  Here are a just a few stories of what has been achieved so far.

The North East Bioregional Network (NEBN) has now received several WildCountry small grants to strategically build its restoration and landscape planning work in north east Tasmania.

Volunteers removing exotic pines as part of restoration of the eucalypt forest\ at Skyline Tier in north-east Tasmania. Photo: Todd Dudley.

This year, a land use plan is being developed for Anson’s Bay region.  This project has involved wide consultation, while a core group from a variety of institutions is using the Conservation Action Planning method to identify ecological features for protection and opportunities to achieve this. The group has also completed a report evaluating the site restoration efforts made so far at Skyline Tier. Todd Dudley, of the NEBN has been a key driver of community efforts in environmental work in the region and strongly endorses the Small Grants program: “the funding has been crucial in terms of verifying the conservation value of our work. The combination of economic, social and environmental benefits should lead to more support for restoration work in the region.”

On the other side of the country, in the Goldfields region of Western Australia, there is a very different project funded by a WildCountry small grant.  
CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, in association with the Goldfields Land and Sea Council is working with the local Ngadju people to document traditional seasonal knowledge. Thus far, five workshops have been held, involving over 30 Indigenous consultants. The knowledge documented through the project will assist in the conservation management of the Great Western Woodlands; most particularly in the challenging domain of fire management. The relationships established through the work are also a major benefit of the project. WildCountry recognises the great importance of traditional ecological knowledge, the special role of Indigenous peoples in managing land and the need to develop substantial conservation economies to support Indigenous people remaining on country. It is very encouraging that four of the projects funded this year are specifically involving Indigenous groups and focused on these issues.

The WildCountry vision is a long term one. Education and the involvement of the upcoming generation is an important part of making sure that this is fully realised. 
In Spring 2009 the Bendigo and District Environment Council (BDEC) and the Bendigo Field Naturalists Club used a WildCountry Small Grant to support a photographic competition, open to all primary school children in Greater Bendigo. The theme was ‘Wonderful Wellsford’, and so during the course of the competition, approximately 500 children from thirteen schools were taken to the Wellsford Forest.   Volunteers from the Bendigo Field Naturalist club and the Bendigo and District Environment Council (BDEC) guided the children and taught them about the natural values of the forest environment. Over 600 entries were received and placed on public display. According to Stuart Fraser of BDEC “This competition has created a greater awareness of the natural environment by actually having the children on the ground within Wellsford Forest, where they were able to experience by seeing, touching, smelling and specifically by having to concentrate not only on the large, but the small when they took their photographs”.

The WildCountry Small Grants program recognises that to achieve a big vision, we need to support the efforts of many groups across the country, who with a little bit of help, can achieve great things to ensure the long term health of our natural landscapes.

For more information visit;
WildCountry - a new vision for nature >>