Conservation in Australia

Wilderness Australia supports the efforts of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy

Australia’s environment is one of the most diverse on earth and its landscape is one of the oldest.  Its flora and fauna have evolved in isolation for 45 million years, untouched by the upheavals of the world’s continental plates.  The result is a unique, highly specialised and very fragile environment.

The landscape changed with 60,000 years of Aboriginal inhabitation but 200 years of European settlement, with the subsequent land clearance and introduction of exotic flora and fauna, has presented a massive environmental challenge.  With the largest mammal extinction rate of any country in the last two centuries and a host of species on the endangered list, many of Australia’s lesser known mammal species (the Mala, Bridled Nailtail Wallaby, Numbat, Rufous Bettong, Woylie to name a few) can only be seen in feral proof conservation areas. 

At its highest level, Australia faces a challenge to provide water to its growing population and to allow for its predominantly European farming practices.  At a lower level, the sheer specialization that many species of flora and fauna have developed in this environment means that certain individual events, even a fire, can threaten the survival of a species.  While national parks now protect significant wilderness areas across the country, the efforts of a number of independent non-profit conservation organisations have been successful in actually saving species and establishing breeding programmes that will hopefully rebuild populations. 

At Wilderness Australia we have a strongly held belief that tourism should help foster conservation of our natural and cultural heritage and a key motivation in setting up the company was to ‘give something back’ to the environment from which derive our livelihood.  We work with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy to raise funds for conservation in Australia and AU$25 per person from every booking is donated to the AWC.  

Read more about the AWC - www.australianwildlife.org