Habitat 141

Habitat 141 Connecting the Outback to the Ocean

Habitat 141, a plan to link national parks from the outback to the ocean, is the largest environmental restoration project ever tackled in Victoria.

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AINTING a picture of the state of Victoria’s natural environment is a grim job. It’s harder knowing the diversity the Victorian landscape used to offer.

The same marketing ploy used by Tourism Victoria, depicting the state as a jigsaw puzzle offering a “multitude of sensory experiences”, could just as easily be used to describe our natural environment.

The pieces would include the Grampians, Wilsons Prom and our spectacular coastlines.

Other pieces would be made up of the mallee desert country, box-ironbark forests of Central Victoria and the snow-capped alps in winter.

What such a puzzle would also show is just how many pieces we’ve lost.

The grasslands that once stretched from the edges of what is now Melbourne to the SA border are probably the largest missing piece.

Noted for their economic potential by Matthew Flinders as far back as 1802, heavy grazing, urban development and intensive agriculture have all taken a toll. Less than 1% of Victoria’s high quality native grasslands now remain. Eight of the 26 mammals that depended on grassy ecosystems are no longer with us.

Already under pressure from habitat fragmentation, weeds and feral animals, our natural environment now has a new threat to deal with – climate change.

This new danger is likely to force shifts in the distribution of animal and plant species, alter ecosystems and open up areas to increased weed invasion.

Studies have already identified 90 animal species in Australia at risk from l Mildura climate change, more than a third of them found in Victoria. The number is likely to be much greater.

In anyone’s book this is a depressing l Horsham picture. We need big ideas and fast.

Habitat 141, extending into SA and l Portland NSW and named for the 141st longitude line that parallels the Victoria/SA border, is a bold new vision to restore rivers, wetlands and bushland and reconnect some of our most ecologically important parks and reserves.

Rockface and landscape near Mt Arapiles. Photo: Steffen Schultz

Habitat 141 – Connecting

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TRETCHING more than 500km from the NSW outback down through Victoria’s Murray-Sunset National Park and all the way south to the coast, Habitat 141 – Connecting the Outback to the Ocean is a very big idea.

It has to be if it’s to turn around the environmental damage caused to this huge sweep of land, much of which has been dramatically altered since European settlement.

Land clearance for agriculture has left vast tracts of the area devoid of native vegetation, robbing many species of their habitat and pushing them towards extinction.

Large stretches of grasslands and grassy woodlands, important habitat for threatened species like the Red-tailed Black Cockatoo and Bush Stone Curlew, have been heavily cleared for cropping.

In the Wimmera region around Horsham less than 3% of original Buloke Grassy Woodlands remain.

They are now one of Australia’s most endangered ecosystems.

Habitat 141 also takes in part of the Victorian Volcanic Plain, one of Australia’s 15 national biodiversity hotspots, as well as north-western Victoria, which has been identified as having the highest number of threatened species in any one region in Australia.

It includes the Wimmera River system, which after years of drought and lack of environmental water flows has been brought to its knees. A recent report found that salt levels in the Wimmera River at Dimboola are three times higher than the sea.

This river system is a key part of the natural systems found in an area that stretches from the Grampians north to the Big Desert, an area that is also home to about 30% of Victoria’s remaining wetlands.

Isolation the biggest threat What’s happened in the Habitat 141 region mirrors what’s happened across much of Victoria. The widespread clearing of native habitat has resulted in a landscape dotted with isolated patches of native bush surrounded by a sea of farmland.

Many native plants and animals continue to survive in the area’s large national parks, like the Grampians and the Little Desert, but others have been stranded in small patches of native bush on roadsides and private land.

While these patches of remnant bush offer some sanctuary for threatened species, they are often degraded and can only sustain smaller populations of plants and animals, making these species increasingly vulnerable to bushfires, flooding and invasive species. Cut off from other populations these species are also more susceptible to inbreeding.

The loss of natural bush connecting national parks and smaller patches of remnant native vegetation throughout the Habitat 141 area has greatly

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Murray-Sunset National Park

Victoria’s own outback, the MurraySunset National Park protects a wide range of dry-country flora and fauna.

Murray-Sunset dune. Photo: David Neilsen

Wyperfeld National Park

The magnificent ancient red gums of this long-established park desperately need water. The last major flow was in 1974.

Photo: Christabel Mitchell

Little Desert National Park

Focus of Victoria’s first major conservation campaign, the park has mallee and heathland with abundant wildlife.

Photo: Buloke Mistletoe, Steffen Schultz

reduced the ability of many species to move through the landscape, placing the long-term survival of many in doubt.

From little things big things grow Habitat 141 has grown out of an extraordinary program called Project Hindmarsh, which in just ten years has linked the Big and Little deserts by planting hundreds of hectares of native trees and shrubs along roadsides and on private property near the towns of Nhill, Jeparit and Rainbow.

Established by the Hindmarsh Landcare Network in 1997 and heavily supported by the Victorian National Parks Association, the project has created unique links between local farmers and people from Melbourne through its annual tree planting weekends.

Habitat 141 is the next logical step, and is a 50-

the Outback to the Ocean

Habitat 141 l Mildura

l Horsham

l Hamilton l Portland

Lower Glenelg and Cobboboonee national parks The stringybark woodlands, heathlands and river landscapes of Lower Glenelg are complemented by the forests of Cobboboonee, Victoria’s newest national park.

Grampians National Park

Photo: Swamp Antechinus, Doug Phillips

Photo: Wedge-tailed Eagle, Steffen Schultz

year plan to restore ecological integrity to some of Australia’s most iconic natural features including parts of the Murray River and the Grampians National Park.

The key aim is to reconnect the extensive heathlands and mallee bushlands of the Murray-Sunset, Big Desert, Wyperfeld and Little Desert parks down through the threatened Buloke Grassy Woodlands to the red gum country, extensive wetlands and rich limestone coastal plains near Portland.

Although much broader in scale, Habitat 141, the largest environment restoration project ever attempted in Victoria, will build on the work done as part of Project Hindmarsh, bringing together a range of stakeholders to restore wildlife corridors along rivers, creeks, roadsides and on private land and enable species to move throughout the landscape again.

A botanical wonderland and rich in fauna, Grampians-Gariwerd is of great significance for Indigenous people.

The project will not only attempt to restore natural connections between national parks and other areas of native vegetation but will also tackle pest and weed pressures and restore the health of ecosystems to help species cope with climate change.

Find out more

Greening Australia is proud to be leading the way with Habitat 141 and is looking forward to working with key organisations, including the VNPA, to make this vision happen.

For more information contact Ron Dodds from Greening Australia on (03) 5381 1010.

To keep up to date with this project and other news about Victoria’s natural environment, join the Victoria Naturally Alliance’s free monthly ebulletin. You can sign up through the website – www.victorianaturally.org.au.

Photo: Red-tailed Black Cockatoo, Wayne Bigg

Habitat 141 Connecting the Outback to the Ocean

Creating a southern link

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HE first major project under Habitat 141 will concentrate on reconnecting large reserve systems north from the Grampians National Park via the Wimmera River and the Mt Arapiles-Tooan State Park complex through to the Little Desert National Park.

This southern link will also extend southwards down through the Glenelg River and Dergholm State Park complex to the Lower Glenelg National Park.

To succeed, Greening Australia and other partners involved in the project will need to secure blocks of degraded or marginal farmland, either by buying properties or through covenanting arrangements, and replant these areas with a mix of local native plants.

This work will increase vegetation cover and enable species to move within the landscape. Also important is the need to restore degraded bushland, improve the health of local wetlands and waterways and control pests, weeds and salinity.

Waterways One of the best ways of improving water quality is to replant native vegetation along

ecosystems including the nationally threatened Buloke Grassy Woodlands, Manna-Gum and Lowland Forests.

The work will help provide habitat for a number of threatened mammals including the Yellow-bellied Glider, Long-nosed Potoroo, Spot-tailed Quoll and Southern Brown Bandicoot. Woodland birds such as the Red-tailed Black Cockatoo, Masked Owl and Powerful Owl will also benefit.

Trees near Natimuk killed by salinity.

Photo: Steffen Schultz

river systems. The southern link will aim to restore streamside vegetation, creating wildlife corridors along the Wimmera and Glenelg river systems.

Water quality is important for many local species including the Cape Barren Goose, platypus and freshwater crayfish.

It will also improve both the extent and condition of wetlands including the internationally significant NatimukDouglas Chain of Ponds by restoring wetlands and reducing cropping and grazing pressure in the area.

No habitat, no wildlife This southern link will help restore rare

Keystone species Many of the mammals threatened by feral predators such as cats and foxes are what’s called keystone species – they play key roles in maintaining healthy ecosystems and their loss could have far-reaching implications for other native species.

Potoroos are considered keystone species in many Australian forest and woodland ecosystems because of their consumption and dispersal of mycorrhizae – ‘truffle-like fungi’, most of which form symbiotic associations with plant roots considered essential for good plant health.

The southern link will concentrate on areas with populations of keystone species, including the Long-nosed Potoroo.

Why we need to restore the ‘wind harps of the Wimmera’ BULOKE trees have been called ‘wind harps of the Wimmera’ because of the musical sighing sounds they make as the wind passes through them.

Isolated to parts of western Victoria and southeast South Australia, buloke woodlands have long been popular with bird watchers and naturalists for their unique flora and as the home of a broad range of wildlife.

However, as these dwindling woodlands disappear the animals and plant communities that make them their home are also on the decline.

Fat-tailed Dunnart

Diamond firetail

This stunning little bird wears a dapper suit of black breast band with white spotted flanks and a bright red rump and beak.

Vulnerable in Victoria and SA.

Near threatened in Victoria, these small grey marsupials need a variety of habitats.

They like to live together in dens.

Photo: DSE/McCann

Photo: J Barnett

Mistletoebird

At only 9.5-11cm long, this bird is tiny. It relies on mistletoe plants both to feed and nest and is the only Australian representative of the flowerpecker group.

Photo: DSE/McCann

Source: Buloke Woodlands, flora and fauna for the Wimmera

Buloke Mistletoe

Vulnerable in Victoria, this mistletoe with its spectacular flowers occurs almost exclusively on buloke. It is important as food and shelter for many native birds, mammals and insects.

Photo: Steffen Schultz

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The Victoria Naturally Alliance thanks the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust and the John T Reid Charitable Trusts for their support. For more information on the alliance go to www.victorianaturally.org.au. Printed on 100% recycled paper.