Restoring nature’s former glory
THE WORD GONDWANA evokes a sense of the epic. It conjures an ancient time when Earth’s supercontinents were being rearranged; when Gondwana – the great southern landmass that eventually broke into Australia, Africa, South America, Antarctica, Arabia and the Indian subcontinent – was covered in lush rainforests; and when the evolutionary paths of the plants and wildlife of the Northern and Southern hemispheres diverged.
It is fitting, then, that the word features in the name of one of Australia’s biggest conservation projects: Gondwana Link. Epic in both proportion and intent, it aims to restore and reconnect 1000km of bushland in southern Western Australia, from the karri forests of the state’s south-west to the semi-arid woodlands and mallee country bordering the Nullarbor Plain further east.
These habitats straddle one of the oldest intact parts of the Earth’s crust: the Yilgarn Craton. The landforms here have been undisturbed by geological interference for more than 250 million years – unlike the landscapes of Europe and many other parts of the world where landforms and habitats were renewed during the last Ice Age, a mere 20,000 years ago. With hundreds of millions of years of uninterrupted and continuous evolution of plant species, south-western WA is one of the most floristically diverse places on Earth. It is also a biodiversity hotspot, home to high levels of endemic plants, but it’s under pressure due to vegetation loss.
STIRLING RANGE AND Fitzgerald River national parks and the Great Western Woodlands – the largest area of intact temperate woodlands left in the world – are just a few beauty spots within the Gondwana Link corridor. In these stunning terrains, a magic
