Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom: Restoring Australia's Botanic Wonderland
by Ron Geatz
Smooth, white-barked eucalyptus trees rise from ochre soil, topped by umbrellas of brassy-olive leaves. Silvery saltbush hugs the ground, sheltering goanna lizards. The hot white surface of a dry salt lake glistens in the distanc. The screech of black cockatoos draws attention skyward, summoning visions of pterodactyls soaring overhead.
This 3-billion-year-old landscape in southwestern Australia has over the past 250 million years gone largely undisturbed by catastrophic events such as volcanoes, earthquakes and glaciers. It is flat, infertile, leached of nutrients and laden with salt. The result, bewilderingly, is a botanic wonderland.
In this isolated and seemingly inhospitable landscape, native plants -- about half of which exist nowhere else -- adapted and evolved intriguing methods of survival. Some became carnivorous; others established symbiotic relationships with hardier neighbors; still others developed bizarre root systems to scavenge sparse sustenance. And as the climate changed over millenniums, identical plants just meters apart evolved into distinct species -- estimated to be some 8,000 -- as did the animals that depend on them.
"This is a rare part of the world where evolution has proceeded apace," explains Keith Bradby, coordinator of Gondwana Link, an ambitious effort to conserve this landscape. "And it still can if we give it a hand."
The "hand" the land needs is substantial. It was post-World War II government policy to clear "a million acres a year" and transform the region into Australia's breadbasket. Yet much of this geography has proved unsuitable for traditional crops and grazing.
Mallee -- the thirsty, deep-rooted eucalyptus shrub that once covered much of the terrain and drew heavily from the underground water table -- is perfectly adapted to the salt-laden soil. But as nearly two-thirds of the mallee and other native groundcover was cleared and supplanted with shallow-rooted annual grass and grain, the groundwater rose, dissolving ancient salts that then were drawn to the surface. In some places, the semiarid landscape is now drowning in saltwater.
It is in this crazy quilt of wheat farms, primeval plants, orderly vineyards and vibrant wildflowers that The Nature Conservancy in Australia has inspired five Australian conservation organizations to think bigger than they ever have. Gondwana Link is a visionary effort to reconnect and restore a 1,000-kilometer swath of native bush land from the desert edge of Australia's Outback to the tall-tree forests of the Southwestern coast. The initiative takes its name from Gondwanaland, the prehistoric landmass from which most of the Earth's southern continents broke apart and drifted away.
"To heal this land, as much as a third of this region will need to be revegetated, possibly much more," says Bradby. "But the mix of plants changes, acre by acre, across hundreds of kilometers. To effectively reveg, you need to collect seeds from the plants on or next to each property."
Thus the partners find themselves pioneering restoration on an acre-by-acre basis at places like Yarrabee, a 2,300-acre former sheep ranch where a duo of tractors tills the sandy soil and sows a mix of native seeds painstakingly collected from the immediate vicinity. This, the most recent acquisition of Greening Australia and the Australian Bush Heritage Fund -- two of Gondwana Link's lead partner organizations -- is the largest single ecological planting ever undertaken in Australia. Once restored, the ranch will form a key part of the crucial habitat link between the region's two largest protected areas, the Fitzgerald River and Stirling Range national parks -- or the Fitz-Stirling, as the area is known locally.
Conservancy matching funds, created to encourage new strategic endeavors in Australia, helped to purchase Yarrabee. The same matching funds helped the Gondwana Link project get off the ground four years ago. Since then, more than 13,000 acres on seven properties have been purchased or placed under conservation easements in the Fitz-Stirling. Nearly half of the land targeted for conservation is currently on the open market, creating an unprecedented opportunity to buy and restore or restructure farms to make them ecologically and economically sound.
The Gondwana Link approach in this sparsely populated corner of the world involves, by necessity, a Conservancy-style push to invest in local partnerships and grass-roots experiments -- knowing that collectively they can make large-scale restoration a reality. Town-dwelling elders of the aboriginal Noongar people, eager to reconnect their youngsters with the country while the stories and memories of earlier times still survive, have become part of the cultural and ecological restoration.
Some local farmers are cultivating native plants, such as sandalwood, which can be sold for use in cosmetics and incense. Others are looking at planting native hardwoods that can yield sturdy support poles for the grapevines of the burgeoning Australian wine industry. And corporations have noted with interest that restored mallee is particularly effective at sequestering carbon -- making it a potential tool to offset greenhouse-gas emissions elsewhere.
If humans can adapt themselves to the dictates of the land, Gondwana Link may just succeed.
As the traditional farming population steadily declines, there is a growing desire by those remaining to create sustainable livelihoods and sustainable communities. "We are crazy enough to think we can achieve our ecological goals while strengthening the region's social fabric," says Bradby.
"As we restore the landscape, we also want to help restore people's relationship to and respect for the land and its needs. There is increasing awareness here of how rich and fragile this seemingly harsh geography really is. Ultimately, healing the land means healing ourselves."
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Comments: 7
Launch a Flash digital photo essay featuring the stunning flowers and other flora of Gondwana Link.
Launch a photo slideshow of the people, landscapes, plants, and animals of Gondwana Link.
How about republishing this also to the Australia group, where people go for articles with an Oz flavour?
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