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Updated: October 12, 2009
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WildCountry Victoria
"What really interests me about WildCountry is that it is trying to tackle the larger issues of what it actually means to conserve and restore something on a large enough scale to make a difference."
- Professor Richard Hobbs, WildCountry Science Council
The Wilderness Society in Victoria has launched a new campaign to protect biodiversity and fight climate change. Two factors have brought TWS to take on this new challenge:
1. Victoria is facing an extinction crisis.
- 44% of plants and 30% of native animals are either extinct or threatened with extinction;
- 70% of Victoria’s native bushland has been cleared. On private land that figure jumps to 92%;
- 75% of our waterways are degraded and 35% of wetlands are totally lost.
2. Climate change is expected to make the situation worse.
- Weather conditions in Victoria are expected to become warmer and drier;
- Drought conditions more regular, leading to more severe drought and bushfires;
- Crop production to be more severely impacted, drop in water
availability, increased threat to habitat of many rare and threatened
species, and further spread of weeds and pest animals.
- Degraded bank of the Murray River. The Murray-Darling system is just one area suffering from the onset of climate change.
Victoria's biodiversity is under threat on many fronts. Climate change, feral weeds and animals
(including goats, cats, foxes, rabbits, hares, horses and introduced fish) and inappropriate activities including intensive agriculture, native forest woodchipping , overgrazing and inappropriate fire management (broadscale so called fuel reductions burns and firebreaks) are all putting pressure on the natural resilience of Victoria's ecosystems.
Components of the WildCountry Campaign
1. Public awareness and education - Including advertising, a schools education program, tours and campaign materials to raise awareness about the need to protect wildlife and their habitat, and reconnect Victoria’s landscapes, and protect native vegetation, especially our forests, as carbon sinks.
2. Reconnect Nature - by creating biolinks and restoring ecological processes – Victoria is the most cleared state in Australia. To survive the impacts of climate change and protect wildlife, areas of native bush need to be reconnected and ecological processes restored so that wildlife can adapt or migrate across the landscape.
The Great Southern Sanctuary - In partnership with Greening Australia’s 'Habitat 141' program, TWS has been working for five years on the ‘Great Southern Sanctuary’, an ambitious conservation project which aims to link native vegetation from the coastal forests of the Cobboboonee in Victoria to the Mallee woodlands of New South Wales over 600 kilometres to the north. The Sanctuary also extends over 300 kilometres east-west from the Grampians in Victoria into the South Australian Mallee.
Alps to Atherton - This project, still in its infancy, looks at reconnecting the spine of the continent along the Great Dividing Range, from the tall Mountain Ash forests in the ranges and water catchments just east of Melbourne, to the Atherton Tablelands in north Queensland.
Other possible biolinks to be investigated include:
- Along the Murray River and its tributaries, including red gum wetlands and woodlands;
- An arc across central Victoria north of Melbourne, from the Wombat forests to the goldfields country further east.
3. Victoria Naturally - A new force for nature - We have joined forces with seven other peak environment groups, including Greening Australia, Trust for Nature, the Australian Bush Heritage Fund and Victorian National Parks Association, to create a bold new alliance called Victoria Naturally to increase protection and restoration for Victoria’s plants and wildlife, by protecting and restoring a connected network of healthy ecosystems across the state.
Much of the thinking underpinning Victoria Naturally is informed by the science undertaken by the WildCountry Science Council.
Already, Victoria Naturally has achieved a major breakthrough. In September, the Victorian Government will produce a White Paper on 'Land and biodiversity at a time of climate change'. The paper will assess the state of Victoria's biodiversity crisis and its major threats, including climate change, and make recommendations to help Government, Victoria Naturally and the broader community contribute to restoring Victoria's ecosystems and wildlife habitat.
The task now for Victoria Naturally is to lift community awareness about the plight about Victoria's biodiversity, to ensure that the state government takes bold steps towards biodiversity protection restoration.
Take action now
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To get involved, or ask about our tours or schools program, please contact our Victorian Biodiversity Community Campaigner Jess Abrahrams
To keep up to date with the Land and Biodiversity at a Time of Climate Change White Paper, please sign up to Victoria Naturally’s ebulletin list. To subscribe just email your name to info@vnpa.org.au
Members of Victoria Naturally include: The Wilderness Society, Victorian National Parks Association, Australian Conservation Foundation, Environment Victoria, Greening Australia (Victoria), Bush Heritage Australia, Trust For Nature and the Invasive Species Council.
Learn more about:
- WildCountry & Climate Change: How WildCountry is tackling the urgent issue of Climate Change.
- Case study: 'The Great Southern Sanctuary' - an ambitious program to protect and restore nature in Western Victoria, southern NSW, and South Australia.
- Case study: 'A bushfire action plan' which protects people, property and nature.
Related links:
For more information, please contact:
The Wilderness Society Victoria Inc
288 Brunswick St
Fitzroy, Vic, 3065
Phone: 03 9038 0888
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