Annual Lecture 2007

Establishing large scale landscape restoration projects is only the beginning. How do we maintain them for the long haul, building resilience so that people and nature can co-exist productively?

• An Associate Professor and wildlife researcher at Deakin University, Andrew Bennett agrees that current studies of wildlife in rapidly changing rural environments emphasise the need to adopt a large scale and long term perspective in landscape restoration.

• Director of the University of Tasmania’s Centre for Environment, Ted Lefroy says that while there are many forces shaping the changing face of rural Australia, perhaps the most important of these are “the changing values of rural and urban populations and how they are influencing our relationship with the natural world.”

• Keith Bradby is the Director of Gondwana Link, where a collaboration of groups are working together to achieve a 1000km long band of connected and resilient country across south western Australia. Only if we are “appropriately audacious,” he asserts, achieving “conservation action at an unprecedented scale, speed and effectiveness, do we have any chance of retaining the Australia we love.”