Taking up the challenge
Victoria is home to an amazing diversity of life, landscapes and seascapes. No other area of similar size in Australia supports such a broad range of ecosystems, a range that includes the alps, forests, marine and coastal environments.
We are the custodians of a rich natural heritage, a natural heritage too precious to lose.
However, in just 170 years Victoria has lost much of its original bushland. Our grasslands have all but vanished and our Box-Ironbark forests, the honeypot for many of our birds in winter, have been devastated.
We need long-term solutions to repair and restore the health of our natural environment.
Opportunity of a lifetime
The Victoria Naturally Alliance is working to help turn the state's biodiversity crisis around and hoped that the Brumby Government's Land and Biodiversity White Paper would take advantage of an historic opportunity to turn the clock on nearly 200 years of devastating land clearance and habitat loss.
The White Paper was released in December 2009, and the alliance wanted too see real action to overcome Victoria’s biodiversity crisis, including:
- Plans for very large scale restoration of habitat across Victoria.
- An approach that emphasises maintaining and restoring the ecological processes that maintain biodiversity.
- Science-based biodiversity and land health targets as well as systematic, long-term monitoring
- Strong commitment to avoiding native vegetation loss.
- Real recovery of threatened species, not just plans that keep them hanging on at the edge of extinction.
- Effective control of weeds and feral animals.
- A long-term strategy to protect our native plants, animals and ecosystems in the face of climate change.
- Institutional and legislative reform to ensure effective implementation of biodiversity protection and restoration.
- Targeted public awareness and education programs
- A huge boost in involvement by the community in protecting Victoria’s unique natural heritage in all its forms.
- A massive boost in funds for biodiversity conservation and landscape-scale revegetation.
Related links
Land and Biodiversity White Paper
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