Since the mid-1970s, conservationists, planners and land managers have been directing their attention to the formation of regional biolinks as an intuitively appealing way of slowing the decline of biodiversity in Australia, a continent that has lost over 40% of its forests since colonisation – 70 to 80% in states like Victoria.
Also known as greenways, green belts, shelterbelts and wildlife corridors, the biolink concept resonates because it is easy to understand.
In his highly influential book, Linkages in the Landscape, La Trobe University conservation researcher, Andrew F Bennett, notes the appeal of biolinks as “a visible solution to a visible problem – habitat fragmentation is generally a strikingly-obvious process. Equally, habitat corridors are a visible sign of efforts to ‘mend’ the fragmented landscape (‘bandages for a wounded natural landscape’ – Soulé and Gilpin 1991).”
He also notes that the ability to establish biolinks at different scales gives local communities the feeling they can ‘do something about’ the damage in their local environment and see visible results.
Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water diagram showing landscape elements that contribute to wildlife corridors.
Gondwana Link project in south-western Australia.
Do biolinks actually work?
The rapid uptake of biolink projects around the world initially outpaced scientific understanding and data collection. Questions were raised about their effectiveness, particularly given the scarcity of conservation resources. Multiple studies were conducted looking at the key domains of:
Landscape connectivity – the physical connections between habitats across a landscape.
Habitat connectivity – connections between patches of habitat (‘stepping stones’) suitable for specific species.
Ecological connectivity – the function of ecosystems across space and time.
Evolutionary connectivity – allowing populations to interact naturally, breed and strengthen genetic diversity.
In 2010, the first meta-analysis was published. It showed that corridors increase migration between habitat patches by as much as 50%. Ten years later, a second analysis was done to solve questions raised in the first analysis. It found that, although not all corridors worked as planned, overall corridors effectively increase species movement, fitness and richness. This further translated into an increase in community biodiversity.
Macro (large scale) biolinks
Beginning in the early 2000s, up to a dozen large-scale biolinks were proposed or established in Australia, one of the earliest being the Gondwana Link project in south-western Australia. Conceived by a small group of conservationists in 2000, the program now coordinates dozens of separate conservation projects along a 1,000 km corridor from the forests of Margaret River to the semi-arid woodlands and Mallee country bordering the Nullarbor Plain.
In 2005, Greening Australia began shaping up its Habitat 141 project; a 50-year collective response to habitat fragmentation and climate change along the 141st longitude stretching from the coast of South Australia, along the Victorian border, and up to the rugged rangelands of New South Wales.
Noting the success of these and other projects and how they might be connected to the National Reserve System (a network of more than 10,000 Commonwealth, state and territory protected areas), in 2012 the Australian Government published a National Wildlife Corridors Plan. Information on that plan is now difficult to find online. The program appears to have been folded into one of the most ambitious initiatives of all – the Great Eastern Ranges biolink.
This impressive program seeks to conserve and manage a 3,600 km ‘continental lifeline’ of habitats, landscapes and people from the Grampians in western Victoria, along the Great Divide and Eastern Escarpment of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, to the wet tropics and remote Cape York Peninsula in Queensland’s far northeast.
Over 250 regional, state and national organisations have chosen to align their activities with the GER vision. Among them is the Biolinks Alliance, which performs a unique role as a capacity and partnership-building organisation consisting of 18 member Landcare networks working mostly in Central Victoria.
The missing link – community-based conservation
Australian National University researcher, Carina Wyborn, has been studying conservation connectivity since the early 2000s. Many of the themes she discusses in her publications discuss the challenges of collaboration.
“Without people working together, connectivity initiatives will go nowhere (Lovett et al. 2008), thus collaboration and community-based conservation are central.
“Centred in an ethic of place, community-based conservation is underpinned by the premise that local populations have a greater interest in and knowledge of local contexts … further, “by placing these local contributions within a larger picture (e.g large-scale programs), gives conservation on private land greater purpose.”
Paddock-scale connections
For decades individual landholders have been working with organisations like Landcare to restore and protect pockets of habitat on private land. This work is critical, given that over 60% of all land in Australia is privately owned or managed (farms, pastoral leases and mines) and that 70% to 90% of inadequately protected wildlife is found on private land.
However, it has sometimes been difficult to see these activities within a broader vision.
Given their commitments to sustainability and better environmental management, many councils are stepping up to fill critical gaps, offering incentives to landholders and practical tools such as maps. A great example of this is Cardina Shire Council’s interactive map, which shows what has been done and what opportunities there are for improvement.
Biodiversity Legacy is also working with landholders and organisations across Australia, like Land Covenantors Victoria and Prom Coast Ecolink, to promote the connection of private landholdings and consider how they too can be tied into the vision we all share – protecting and connecting land for conservation and threatened species.
The Helping Hands for the Sheoak project, supported by the Natural Resource Conservation Trust (NRCT) has had a kick-start with a partner tour of proposed planting sites and works undertaken to date.
The aim of the project is to continue the recovery of valuable Sheoak stands on private land, which will have multiple benefits, including providing more feed trees for the nationally endangered Glossy Black-cockatoo.
The Helping Hands team (left to right): Jim Phillipson (Rendere Environmental Trust), Misty Anderson (Moogji Aboriginal Council), Loulou Gebbie (Biodiversity Legacy), Josh Puglisi (FEVL), Louise Carey (Acting CEO Moogji Aboriginal Council) and Les McLean (Natural Resource Conservation Trust).Sheoak (older tree example) photo with thanks to David Francis via Flickr.
Robyn adds, “As part of the tour we visited two properties participating in the project and the Moogji Aboriginal Council nursery where Sheoaks for planting are being grown. The group also looked at a different protective guarding installed by the project, where heavy browsing of previously planted seedlings had been occurring.”
Far East Victoria Landcare Facilitator, Josh Puglisi, notes that “larger exclusion fences and other types of tree guards will be utilised across the sites as browsing by deer and macropods are the biggest threat to the establishment of the seedlings”.
This tree planting project builds on the Landcare, Birdlife Australia and DEECA Sheoak recovery works that were undertaken as part of the Black Summer bushfires response. Project sites range from Lakes Entrance and Marlo through to Wangarabell and Genoa in the east.
Around 10 years ago, former Melbourne schoolteacher Stuart Inchley and policymaker Victoria Johnson stumbled across a 300+ acre property for sale in the hills of South Gippsland (historically known as Land of the Lyrebird).
With a passion for conservation sustainability and climate justice, the couple made the life-changing decision to purchase the property, place a conservation covenant on it and act on its behalf as land stewards.
It took several years for Stuart and Victoria to properly survey the property, characterised by dense bush, cool temperate rainforest and steep terrain, learn about local species and appreciate just how unique it is.
At first, he thought there were maybe a few dozen, but with local ecologists from Gippsland Threatened Species Action Group and elsewhere, Stuart and Victoria have now counted over 260 individual plants. Given estimates suggesting that just 1,000 are left in Victoria, this is a major find that is attracting interest nationally and internationally.
Listen to leading Victorian ecologist, Karl Just, describe South Gippsland’s rainforests and species found within the Tarwin River Forest.
Back to reality
Unfortunately, Stuart and Victoria’s elation and finding so many Slender Tree-ferns was short-lived. Within just a few weeks they heard chainsaws and logging activities in the property next door.
These actions, by HPV Plantations – the largest private plantation company in Australia – came within a few metres of the couple’s fenceline; too close for comfort for the ferns, which can easily be damaged by being exposed to wind, rain and other elements.
Stuart and Victoria felt they had no choice but to launch a campaign to stop these actions, garnering huge community support through their Gippsland Forest Guardians website.
As at October 2024, Gippsland Forest Guardians, supported by Friends of the Earth, are currently embroiled in a court action relating to a Freedom of Information request, blocked by HPV, to review harvesting plans for the Turton’s Creek area.
Partnerships for protection
With Gippsland Threatened Species Action Group and other groups, Stuart and Victoria are also running campaigns to protect the last remnants of Cool Temperate Rainforest in South Gippsland, home to unique native species such as Gang-gangs, Powerful Owls, Pilotbirds, the rare and endangered Strzelecki Burrowing Crayfish and Strzelecki koala.
Typically dominated by Myrtle Beech, Southern Sassafras, Blackwood and eucalypts with a thick understorey of tree and ground ferns, these rainforests exist in high rainfall, higher altitude fertile environments. While they can still be found across Victoria, land clearing, fire and logging have reduced the amount of these forests in Victoria to a mere 0.08% of the state’s total area and are now listed as a threatened community under the Victorian Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act (1988).
In partnership with Prom Coast Ecolink and local landholders, in 2024 the Gippsland Threatened Species Action Group received a generous grant from the Wettenhall Environment Trust to undertake a mapping survey of Cool Temperate Rainforest on Stuart and Victoria’s property and three adjoining Trust for Nature properties (totalling 850 over acres) to map the distribution of Slender Tree-ferns.
We’re all behind Stuart and Victoria and the commitment they have made to protecting the environment and building connections with the local community to raise awareness of BDL and the need to strengthen local biolinks.
Given its commitment to landscape-scale ecological protection and the development of community biolinks, it follows that Biodiversity Legacy (BDL) would also consider the plants and animals that depend on these landscapes and what more can be done to protect flagship and icon species.
And so this year, with the Rendere Environmental Trust, BDL agreed to host the start-up of a Threatened Species Action Hub, which will bring conservation organisations, local communities, government and non-government entities together to develop cross-sector, cross-discipline and cross-border initiatives to drive real improvements in threatened species recovery.
To this end, the BDL team is expanding to include a threatened species coordinator and a grants and partnership team who will leverage existing relationships with groups connected to the Ecolands Collective and a broad network of on-ground conservation organisations.
This work will align with and support Victorian Government programs such as the Icon Species Initiative and the Nature Fund, which supports high-impact projects aligned to the government’s Biodiversity 2037 goals.
First grant awarded
In September 2024 the new team secured their first Nature Fund grant to establish a major initiative focused on reversing the decline of Spot-tailed Quoll (STQ) in Gippsland, Victoria.
The STQ is a culturally significant carnivorous marsupial with a historically wide distribution across Victoria. However, the population has declined dramatically over the past 30 years and monitoring suggests numbers continue to decline.
Sleeping Spot-tailed QuollThe project will focus on protecting Spot-tailed Quolls in the last stronghold of the species – East Gippsland.
The 10-year project, which aims to identify pathways for STQ recovery in East Gippsland, will be delivered in partnership with Wildlife Unlimited and Odonata as a demonstration of BDL’s cross-sector, multi-agency and First Nations partnership approach.
It is anticipated that at least four icon species will be included in the action hub by the first half of 2025, with BDL teams working furiously behind the scenes to secure baseline funding.
Other partnerships
BDL is also collaborating with organisations such as the Gippsland Threatened Species Action Group (GTSAG), which has a strong track record and decades of experience delivering on-ground conservation.
In 2024, the Rendere Environmental Trust supported the creation of GTSAG’s new website, which profiles local species, key threats and what actions landholders can take to protect them. GTSAG is also focused on building stronger biolinks by working directly with landholders and farmers.
Expect to hear more about the Hub in 2025!
Banner: Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby with thanks to Brett Mills.
