Conservation

Wooleen Station belongs to the mulga shrub lands. The rangelands to which the mulga shrub lands belong comprise 80% of Australia and 40% of the World. 1/3 of man’s domesticated stock run on these rangelands and they also form the habitat for most of the world’s wildlife. At present a small % of this area in Western Australia has been acquired by government departments and interest groups for conservation, however this portion of conserved land excludes many large catchments, endemic ecosystems and unique land types. In a land as great as this it is small wonder that so much is overlooked and economised.

Wooleen Conservation: Building enviro rolls

Wooleen station is situated in the oldest landscape on earth, at 3.6 billion years. The best management we can hope to engage is that which the land has developed itself over countless millennia, however we are faced with a seemingly irrefutable need to produce from this land as it takes up so much of our continent.

At present nearly all of the land not conserved is managed according to archaic techniques that are very plainly not suited to it. The rangelands are (government) leased land, and as a condition of the leases they must run stock.Small areas of conservation are well intended and useful however ultimately rely upon sustainable management of the greater ecosystem if they are to succeed and prosper in the future. This is true for species that travel large distances to fulfil their needs, and also of those species that occupy such small areas that we have not yet discovered them. For these species we need much more than conservation areas. If we focus on small scale conservation to the detriment of large scale sustainability then that which we meant to conserve will eventually be lost.

Rangeland regeneration is Wooleen

We at Wooleen believe that the most we can do for conservation worldwide is to find a way to operate in our landscape sustainably. Ecological function and sustainability must be restored and nurtured for economic and social sustainability to be realised. Repairing the natural environment is the first step. Conservation of the land within Wooleen’s borders would be easy but not enough, and a model for sustainability in our rangelands needs to be formed. Indeed, a model for sustainability for our world.