Australia is one of 17 Mega-biodiverse nations of Earth and has 1350 endemic terrestrial vertebrate species, the highest number for any nation. The greatest concentration of these species are found along the eastern side of Australia, in a north-south band of better watered ranges that extend from the Australian Alps in Victoria to the Atherton Tablelands in northern Queensland. Within these essentially natural “Great Eastern Ranges” (GER) an archipelago of protected areas and three World Heritage sites are embedded and form part of a very large continuum of essentially unfragmented lands. These natural lands have been interconnected since the end of the Cretaceous when dinosaurs roamed rich rainforests in Queensland. The GER has witnessed the isolated evolution of Australia’s unique biodiversity for over 45 million years including its rich marsupial fauna. This heritage is ancient, which is why every mountain gully, every catchment basin and every mountain range in the GER can potentially include species not found anywhere else on Earth. The established protected areas of the Great Eastern Ranges do not adequately conserve this rich biodiversity. Connectivity conservation does assist however by retaining natural interconnections of lands between protected areas. It is this need for “habitat conservation” and the dispersal, migration and evolutionary process opportunities that connectivity lands provide which formed a basis for a grand vision to conserve the “Great Eastern Ranges Connectivity Corridor”.
Results/Conclusions
The GER conservation vision extends for 2800 kilometres from the Australian Alps to Atherton (A2A). In 2007, this vision was endorsed by the Governments of Queensland, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and the Commonwealth Government. It was formally announced by the NSW Attorney General in early 2007, along with a major grant for a 3 year period to implement connectivity conservation in NSW. The GER Corridor is viewed as an important adaptation response to climate change and provides opportunities for mitigation through strategic restoration work and the retention of Green Carbon. Progress in implementing the GER vision has been progressive in NSW and slower in other states. It has been pioneering work for Australia. The grand lessons for 2010 are that large-scale connectivity conservation is now generally accepted as a critical planning response to climate change in Australia; persistence with GER has paid off with good connectivity conservation management progress in NSW; and that advocacy momentum for improving implementation of connectivity conservation in Australia is increasing.