Terrestrial Biodiversity Adaptation Research Network

The Great Eastern Ranges Connectivity Conservation Initiative is an example of a comprehensive and strategic approach which brings together people and organisations to establishing a conservation corridor along the 1,200 km New South Wales section of the Great Eastern Ranges. Connectivity conservation is based on the concept of ‘landscape corridors’ that maintain or establish connections over thousands of square kilometres – extending biodiversity corridors to the landscape scale. Elements of landscape corridors include both dispersal corridors and ecological corridors. The term ‘connectivity conservation’ is widely used to capture an emerging consensus that: (1) we need management on lands around formal protected areas to buffer them from off-reserve threats and to care for biodiversity assets on other land tenures; (2) on cleared and fragmented land, large-scale restoration and rehabilitation is needed so protected areas are not isolated islands and ‘extinction vortices’; (3) in largely intact areas, the ecological integrity in toto can be maintained through protected areas and off-reserve conservation management areas; and (4) conservation planning must factor in the large scale, spatially dependent, ecological and evolutionary processes essential for adaptation to environmental change.

Mackey B, Watson J and Worboys GL of ANU Enterprises Pty Ltd 2010, Connectivity conservation and the Great Eastern Ranges corridor, an independent report to the Interstate Agency Working Group (Alps to Atherton Connectivity Conservation Working Group) convened under the Environment Heritage and Protection Council/Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council.