Biolinks and Connectivity

On July 20th I attended a Biolinks Forum at Ballarat University. The topic of the Forum was “The importance of landscape scale conservation and the role of restoring connectivity in the landscape”. The guest speakers were Gavin McFadyen from the Wilderness Society Australia, Prof Michael Soule – Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz and Prof Peter Gell – Professor of Environmental Science and Director of the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of Ballarat.
The general overall theme was the need to create biolink connections between existing remnant vegetation whether it be on public or private land to allow the movement of animal and plant species and help the flow of genetics. These biolinks aren’t just on a local scale, but a whole landscape scale, which in ambitious cases involves state, country and even world scales.
The other theme was the need for whole of community support for connectivity projects. It’s all well and good proposing a project, but if the local community aren’t in favour then it is very unlikely to get off the ground. This is where networks are of great importance, whether they be CMN’s, Landcare groups, Field Nat’s groups, Friends Of groups etc or local landholders. Each group can be working on individual projects, but by linking up with other groups doing similar works the landscape scale biolinks can be achieved much more easily.
The one simple solution to protecting nature is connectivity and the need to overcome habitat fragmentation.
Article by Wendy Murphy