| HOW YOU CAN HELP | Gondwana Link Home |
There a number of ways in which you can help in achieving Gondwana Link's aims. These are:
- donating
- investing in ecologically supportive industries based on native plants
- protecting and managing privately owned bushland
- volunteering
Our work relies heavily on private contributions – your donations. Click here to give a tax deductible donation directly to one or more organisations, stating a preference for the funds to be used for their Gondwana Link work. Your donation will be used to protect, buy or replant bush in one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots – south-western Australia.
Greening Australia and Australian Bush Heritage Fund launched the Great Southern Arc fundraising campaign early in 2005. This campaign is raising funds to support the Gondwana Link work being carried out in the area between the Stirling Range and Fitzgerald River National Parks. Funds raised by the Great Southern Arc campaign will be used to purchase key properties in this area of the link, revegetate degraded agricultural land, facilitate social and economic development utilising native plant based industries, and strategic knowledge development and communication.
Investing in plant based industries
The Gondwana Link coordinator is working with Greening Australia WA, the Centre for Excellence in Natural Resource Management, other organisations and landholders to investigate and develop investment opportunities for commercial native plant crops. These ecologically supportive, plant based industries utilise sandalwood (Santalum), broombush, essential oils, flowers, fine timber and bush foods.
There is now an option to invest profitably in the
establishment of biodiverse sandalwood plantations on cleared land in key
landscape zones that are both structurally and taxonomically diverse
(containing over 50 local plant species). See
www.spicatum.com.au to find out
how.
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Protecting and managing key areas of land
The sensitive management and restoration of privately owned land is one of the many approaches necessary to achieve the Gondwana Link's vision. Privately owned bushland is integral to relinking natural ecosystems and some key bushland areas have been purchased by private landholders and then protected and managed under conservation covenants. There are also opportunities for landholders to purchase strategically located, suitable farm properties and get help in its restoration. Contact the coordination unit for information on available properties.
Through their landcare and other conservation works, a number of landholders have already made a substantial contribution to what will become hundreds of kilometres of linked vegetation. Building the Gondwana Link can be done while you make lots of improvements to your property.
Many farmers have already fenced their remaining bushland areas. For example, in the Stirlings to Fitzgerald link a substantial network of smaller linking corridors has been built, through the $1.2 million Pallinup/North Stirlings landcare project. This project alone has established over 800 kilometres of fencing to protect 4,500 hectares of bush and 2,000 hectares of revegetation. 8 million seedlings of local plants are now growing on this land, mainly through direct seeding.
Incentives to help landholders have been available through the South Coast Natural Resource Management Southern Incentives program. In 2002, protective conservation covenants went on nearly 2000 hectares of bushland in the Stirlings to Fitzgerald link. Further incentive programs have been available from 2005 onwards, through the SCNRM Regional Strategy process.
If you would like to discuss ecologically supportive investment opportunities, land purchase and covenanting contact us.
Volunteering
There are often opportunities for you to become personally involved in the work of the Gondwana Link groups.
There are fences to pull up, native seed to collect and plant, filing systems to manage, events to organise, plants, animals and birds to identify and study – and much more.
If you wish to volunteer please contact one of the groups involved in Gondwana Link below.
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Bush
Heritage Australia |
Fitzgerald
Biosphere Group |
Friends
of the Fitzgerald River National Park |
Greening
Australia |
Green Skills | The Nature Conservancy | The
Wilderness Society |
