One of the world’s biggest landscape restoration plans launched

Greening Australia, along with an alliance of partner organistations, today officially launched the Landscape Conservation Plan for ‘Habitat 141’.

Habitat 141 is an area roughly centered on the one hundred and forty first line of longitude, running from the southern New South Wales rangelands south to Portland and straddling three states, Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales.

The Habitat 141 program involves the reconnection and restoration of two nationally recognised biodiversity hotspots, over an area covering 18 million hectares (2.3% of the Australian land mass) and incorporating 14 National Parks containing a myriad of significant flora and fauna species.

The Habitat 141 region has a number of major issues that will be addressed with the restoration and reconnection program.

• Less than 3% of open woodland habitats remain intact because these habitats are more fertile and were cleared for agriculture.
• More than 80% of the region’s freshwater wetlands have been lost or heavily modified since European settlement, which has led to the decline of woodland birds in southeastern Australia.
• Over 200 flora and fauna species are listed as threatened in the region and many more are likely to be declining.

We have led the establishment of Habitat 141 as a coordinated response to these issues in one of the most important regions in Australia.

The good news is that we have put together a network of local people, farmers, businesses and community groups to do the on-ground restoration work and start to turn the situation around.

Because of the scale and impact on the Australian continent planning and science has been vital, so we have marshaled the involvement of natural resource management players, policy makers, Governments and community organisations.

The lead organisations, or Alliance include the following; Conservation Volunteers, Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority, Government of South Australia, South East Natural Resources Management Board, Murray Darling Basin Natural Resources Management Board, Greening Australia, Mallee Catchment Management Authority, Parks Victoria, Trust for Nature, and Wimmera CMA.

For media enquiries contact Richard Gerathy on 0419 203 075.