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Conservationists plan new eco-system for wildlife in Australia

— PHOTO: AFP

A kangaroo and sheep stand next to a rare waterhole on a station near White Cliffs, an outback area hit badly by drought in the State of New South Wales, Australia, in this July 2002 file picture.

Scottsdale (New South Wales): An ambitious scheme, described as a terrestrial version of the Great Barrier Reef, is under way to establish a wildlife corridor along almost the entire east coast of Australia to help protect animals and plants from climate change.

The project aims to re-establish a network of protected habitats along a 2,780-km ribbon of land from the Australian Alps, in the southern state of Victoria, through New South Wales to Atherton in Queensland.

“What we’re planning to do is make a series of stepping stones for species at risk,” explains Owen Whitaker of Bush Heritage, a non-profit organisation that buys land for conservation with government funding and private donations.

“If we go through even a 3C temperature increase in the next 50 to 100 years that is going to cause a big change in the way plants grow and in the way animals need to move through the landscape to survive. We need to give the rarest animals that are clinging on [to life] by their tails the space to rearrange themselves as the weather changes.”

Mr. Whitaker is talking as he makes his way through the Scottsdale reserve, a 1,200-hectare property south of the capital, Canberra. The estate rises up from a large, fertile, grassy valley with rich alluvial soils, swamps and bogs, through dry eucalyptus woodlands and onto a grassy woodland plateau which drops steeply into the Murrumbidgee River, with its water-sculpted rocks and sand bars.

A wedge-tailed eagle, Australia’s largest bird of prey, soars overhead as kangaroos and wallabies move through the bush, frogs chorus from somewhere damp in the distance and there is a ripple on the water as a platypus surfaces momentarily. Also home to significant numbers of threatened species, such as the endangered golden sun moth, the diamond firetail, the hooded robin and the gang gang cockatoo, Scottsdale is the first property to be bought by Bush Heritage for the Alps to Atherton wildlife corridor, which will be comparable in size to the Yellowstone to Yukon wildlife corridor in north America.

A major contribution to the purchase price of the estate came from the family of Dr Peter Barrer, a British scientist who lived in New South Wales and who was a strong supporter of carrying out conservation works on a large scale before his death in 1997.

“It’s a bit like a jigsaw of a landscape where bits of the puzzle are missing,” Mr. Whitaker says, adding that though along the spine of the proposed corridor sit national parks, state forests and other Crown land, these nature reserves have become islands of conservation from which species cannot move because they are surrounded by farms, which have been heavily cleared or modified for agricultural purposes, and other private properties. “If we can manage these properties better, and link them all together in some way, we can give species room to move to new areas where the climatic conditions might suit them better,” says Mr Whitaker. “It might not be far. Many species are only capable of moving short distances so it might just be up the hill and over the other side. Other species might have to move kilometres away to cooler climes or to higher altitudes.”

Scottsdale, one of the largest remaining underdeveloped properties in the region, was bought because of its strategic position near the Namadgi National Park and the coastal ranges of the Eastern Escarpment. There are thousands of properties along the proposed corridor, however, and not all can be bought.

With first-stage funding from local, state and federal government, private landowners will be encouraged to sign up to voluntary conservation agreements and to undertake land-care works. Some farmers will get financial incentives to carry out the work and find less harmful ways to farm. —

Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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