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Bush Heritage has identified five Anchor regions in which to focus its activites to achieve its long-term vision. These regions were selected because of the threats they face, their numbers of threatened ecosystems and species, their numbers of endemic species, the condition of land in the regions and their location in relation to existing Bush Heritage activities. These regions, described briefly below, require different conservation management strategies, both when acquiring and managing the land and also when working with others outside the boundaries of the reserves.
- Gulf to the Channel Country (and Lake Eyre): ranges from the arid centre of Australia through to the tropical savannas of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. Our activities will be focused in three regions: the Gulf to the Mitchell Grass plains, the Mitchell Grass plains to the Desert Channels and the Desert Channels to Lake Eyre
- Queensland Uplands and Brigalow Belt: ranges from the central Queensland uplands in the Carnarvon Ranges and surrounding districts north to the Einasleigh Uplands on the southern end of Cape York. In the north the key focus will be on the east-west gradient in the Einasleigh Uplands, and in the south on the region around the Carnarvon Ranges.
- Grassy Box Woodlands (South-east Lowland Grassy Ecosystems): ranges in an arc from the Victorian/South Australian border through the grassy box-woodland communities and north along the west of the Great Dividing Range into central New South Wales. Our activities will focus on specific ‘nodes’ of activity, consolidating habitats and working with networks of land owners.
- Tasmanian Midlands: the grasslands of central Tasmania contained by the Western and Eastern Tiers.
- South West Botanical Province: an area in the south-west of Western Australia fromShark Bay in the north-west to Esperance in the south-east. The key areas of activity will be in the south as part of the Gondwana Link project, and in the north along the northern York-gum communities.
Their broad location is shown in the map above. The regional boundaries will be defined more exactly as work develops within the regions and we identify specific regional and sub-regional priorities. Bush Heritage's Beyond the Boundaries program will focus its work on these regions, but will also work in other parts of Australia where our actions can contribute to meeting national objectives for the protection of biodiversity, namely:
- improving the resilience of Australia's biodiversity against the impacts climate change
- securing biological, hydrological and geomorphological processes linked to freshwater ecosystems
- increasing the comprehensiveness of the reserve system
- improving functional connectivity of land managed for conservation
- reducing fragmentation of the reserve system
- improving the quality of land and habitas in biodiversity 'hotspots'
- ensuring the appropriateness of fire regimes
- increasing the conservation of native animal and plant communities on productive grazing land and
- improving the health of habitats for migratory species in target regions.
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