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Parks - IUCN

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The Western Australian<br />

South Coast Macro Corridor<br />

Project – a bioregional<br />

strategy for nature<br />

conservation<br />

JOHN WATSON AND PETER WILKINS<br />

An innovative strategy of ‘bioregional initiatives’ to improve the viability of protected<br />

areas has been widely accepted by environmental land managers around the world.<br />

The South Coast Region of Western Australia has outstanding biodiversity values with<br />

an extremely high degree of endemism, much of which is represented within the<br />

Fitzgerald River National Park Biosphere Reserve, an internationally significant protected<br />

area. The wider community of the South Coast Region and relevant government<br />

agencies are working together on a bioregional initiative called the ‘Macro Corridor<br />

Project’ – a bold programme to increase viability of the existing protected area network<br />

by either maintaining existing linkages or re-establishing previous linkages between<br />

the biosphere reserve, major national parks, nature reserves, and other remnant<br />

vegetation across the region.<br />

T<br />

JOHN WATSON AND PETER WILKINS<br />

HERE HAS been a sad decline in the distribution and survival of many plants<br />

and animals on the Australian continent over the 200 years or so since European<br />

settlement (Commonwealth Department of the Environment, Sport and Territories,<br />

1996). For example, more mammal species have become extinct over the past 100<br />

years in Australia than in any other country (Bailey, 1996).<br />

This has been caused by a combination of three major factors:<br />

❚ Changes in land use, particularly extensive clearing of natural vegetation for<br />

agricultural purposes, and urbanisation mainly around the coastal fringes of the<br />

continent.<br />

❚ Changes in land management, for<br />

example the unavoidable introduction<br />

of ‘unnatural fire regimes’ (with regard to<br />

both frequency and intensity) and the<br />

edge effects resulting from roads and<br />

other access.<br />

❚ Introduced organisms, notably the<br />

European fox and the rabbit, and fungal<br />

pathogens such as Phytophthora<br />

cinnamomi, which has had a particularly<br />

dramatic impact on highly diverse<br />

heathland habitat.<br />

Collectively these factors have led to<br />

a total loss of natural vegetation in some<br />

areas, gross fragmentation and<br />

subsequent decline in quality in other<br />

7<br />

A 'Macro Corridor<br />

Project' is to be set<br />

up at the Fitzgerald<br />

River National Park.

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