Connecting Country is a unique landscape-scale project which aims to increase, enhance and restore biodiversity across the Mount Alexander shire. The project is being run by the community and involves a wide range of groups and agencies.

Connecting Country is a project which aims to collect and collate knowledge and information about the natural landscape in the Mount Alexander region.

Specifically this project will inform and encourage new ways for this community to live compatibly within that landscape.

Underpinning the research is the belief that the social and built community of the future is co-dependent on the survival of a diverse and resilient natural landscape.

Please click on the map below to view Connecting Country's interactive mapping tool, provided by Spatial Vision.

In 2007, The Norman Wettenhall Foundation developed a work plan that focused on supporting community-led landscape restoration in south-east Australia. The Executive Officer contacted Friends of the Box-Ironbark Forests (Mount Alexander Region), an environment group in Castlemaine, to see if there was interest in working collaboratively across the region on a landscape restoration project. A Reference Group was then formed.

During 2008, the project produced a Biodiversity Blueprint that has identified our assets, the possible threats they face and what future actions we can take. It suggests directions, clarifies our priorities in landscape restoration and helps us to reconcile cultural, agricultural and natural values.

You may like to select one of the menu buttons on the top left, or view the photo gallery, our existing maps, our new interactive map portal or contact us.