The Conservation Council’s Biodiversity Working Group and Friends of Grasslands have co-authored a paper that proposes part of the solution to protecting and enhancing the ACT’s remaining natural places: The Biodiversity Network.

The world is suffering through a mass extinction event. Globally, nature is being destroyed at an unprecedented rate, with extinction rates being higher than the average over the last 10 million years by at least a hundred times. With the largest documented decline in biodiversity of any continent, Australia is at the center of this issue as the ‘poster country’ for extreme nature loss. Indeed, in July 2022, a landmark State of Environment Report was released outlining that overall Australia’s natural environment is “poor and deteriorating”. The cause of this extreme loss: climate stresses, habitat loss and degradation. Nature in the ACT suffers the same fate as the rest of the country. Approximately 6.2% of Canberra’s mature trees have been removed in the past 5 years; our beloved faunal emblem, the Gang-gang Cockatoo is endangered; and our natural areas are at increasing risk of pest plants and animals.

Using existing planning structures the Biodiversity Network will formalise conservation and management of biodiversity on all public and leased land. It aims to protect all sites with conservation value across the Territory through a combination of protection, restoration and reconnection; all the while maintaining other compatible land uses.

Did you miss the paper's launch? Then join us for a webinar to hear from a panel all about the Biodiversity Network, including:

How and why protection of biodiversity is currently failing across the ACT;
The benefits of the Biodiversity Network;
How the Biodiversity Network can be implemented in the ACT, and the opportunity presented by the current Planning Reform for biodiversity conservation;