Connected landscapes

To support and enhance the connectivity of plants, animals and people, Biodiversity Legacy seeks to build relationships with individuals and communities already doing great work on the ground.

We use the term ‘community biolink’ to frame discussions about local contexts and how we can support communities with knowledge and resources to enhance biodiversity protection and landscape connectivity.

Conversations at the grassroots level help us understand what landholders and communities need to expand their vision and see how their projects can contribute to biodiversity outcomes beyond the spatial footprint of individual properties and projects.

Biolink Coordinators

Biodiversity Legacy’s Biolink Coordinators facilitate this local connectivity by building relationships that strengthen grassroots networks and build capacity. The coordinators (right) are community-based with a deep understanding of local contexts and bring to the table a diversity of skills and knowledge.

To advance on-ground projects focused on protecting and enhancing habitat for significant species, they also work closely with Biodiversity Legacy’s Threatened Species Coordinator to connect activities and share knowledge.

Stuart Inchley

Biolink Coordinator, South Gippsland and Bass Coast

Jen Oceans

Biolink Coordinator, Northern New South Wales

Dixie Fitzclarence

Contracts Manager and Southern NSW Biolink Coordinator

Maddy Rzesniowiecki

Threatened Species Coordinator

Tim Rowe

Biolink Coordinator, East Gippsland Victoria

Biolink Coordinator guidance:

  • networking across the not-for-profit environmental sector
  • surveys and mapping to identify potential biolinks and threatened species
  • strategic and succession planning
  • academic engagement
  • communications to engage the media and community
  • citizen science activities
  • community regeneration projects
  • access to access to specialist land managers, botanists and surveyors
  • linking land convenators together
  • general support and advice, such as how to set up a community-based not-for-profit structure and linking to government organisations.

Emerging biolinks

As the Biolink Coordinators are place-based, their work looks different depending on the local context.

In Gippsland Victoria, for example, various community initiatives are coming together to restore and protect pockets of habitat from the Bass Coast to the forests of South Gippsland, Corner Inlet and the Avon Wilderness.

In the Clarence Valley, NSW, local community members are banding together to establish a local landholding entity to support the acquisition, protection and ongoing stewardship of local land. Currently, they are focussing on protecting habitat for the endangered Glossy Black Cockatoo.

Our Biolink Coordinators are widely networked and share knowledge and resources through the EcoLands Collective. This rapidly evolving group includes:

  • Land Covenanting Victoria
  • Gippsland Threatened Species Action Group
  • Wildlife Unlimited
  • Gippsland Forest Dialogue
  • PromCoast Ecolink