It’s been a busy, but productive 12 months for NACC’s Biodiversity Program. Over the past year, numerous local land managers have worked with NACC’s Biodiversity team to help better protect and manage the region’s biodiversity and priority landscapes. The successful collaboration has also helped to improve everyone’s biodiversity knowledge and understanding through community capacity-building and strategic partnership activities.
With less than 30 per cent of the region’s bushland protected in conservation reserves, much of the remaining remnant vegetation is located on private land, making it critically important for land and wildlife conservation purposes. With this in mind, NACC’s Biodiversity Program has been working hand-in-hand with local landholders, local community groups and local governments, to help them protect and manage their remnant bushland, and address key threats.
During the last 12 months, 16 new management agreements were established between NACC and land managers in the region, protecting more than 1,700 hectares of high conservation value remnant vegetation. These areas provide habitat for a range of threatened species including Malleefowl (Leipoa ocellata), Carnaby’s Black-Cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus latirostris), Western Spiny-tailed Skink (Egernia stokesii badia) and Fitzgerald’s Mulla-mulla (Ptilotus fasciculatus). While threatened species are the flagship of NACC’s Biodiversity Program, the field conservation activities help to protect and improve habitat for endangered and non-threatened species alike.
NACC’s Biodiversity Program Coordinator Jessica Stingemore said the team has engaged with hundreds of individuals and groups – expanding community knowledge and understanding of natural resource management issues within the region, and boosting their capacity to interact with local biodiversity issues.
“It’s been a great year for win-win outcomes,” said Jessica. “Between the NACC Biodiversity team and our community, we have created many positive outcomes for the Northern Agricultural Region’s environment,” she said.
“It’s been particularly gratifying to see that, through our collaboration, we have achieved significant on-ground outcomes for the conservation of key biodiversity assets, threatened species and threatened ecological communities in our region.”
“I’m looking forward to continuing to work closely with our local land managers, and achieving even more environmental and community outcomes for the region in the years ahead.”
These projects are supported by the Northern Agricultural Catchments Council through funding from the Australian Government National Landcare Programme.
