Biolinks Alliance has submitted an urgent call for more research and funding to the 2018 inquiry into Australia’s faunal extinction crisis.
The Kyneton-based alliance comprises 18 landcare and environment groups dedicated to repairing regional landscapes and saving threatened species.
Board member Karen Alexander OAM, who authored the submission, said Victoria was the most cleared state in the country.
“Victoria’s native vegetation landscape is now highly fragmented which means many animals let alone plants cannot move from one patch to the other: a scenario that has led to regional extinctions,” she said.
Alliance members said reductions in funding meant more was being left to the community and volunteers, who had been working tirelessly in this field for years.
Biolinks Alliance Chair Paul Foreman said there was frustration among the group and there needed to be more significant and immediate change.
“The old way of doing conservation is broken, and the community, the people who have been working away at this on their own properties, in their own groups and communities are standing up and forging a new path together,” he said.
“Biolinks Alliance exists in our region to help catalyse this change. We need to be more ambitious, to work on a larger scale, to bring science into every plan and project, and to do whatever we can to address this devastating species loss.”
Biolinks Alliance’s submission states it is vital that governments give a long-term commitment and adequate funding for the right suite of measures to assist species to adapt to changing climate and integrate with productive agriculture and other land uses.
