What is Connecting Country?

Connecting Country is a community organisation working to restore landscapes across the Mount Alexander region of central Victoria. Since 2007 we’ve worked with over 200 landholders and community groups to rehabilitate more than 10,000 hectares of habitat for local plants and animals.

Our work is based on four key action areas:

• Support Landcare through our Landcare Facilitator and 30 local Landcare and Friends groups.
• Restore landscapes through on-ground actions such as protective fencing for existing habitat, revegetation, and weed and pest animal control.
• Engage community through environmental education, workshops, information sharing, an informative website, social media and volunteer involvement.
• Monitor biodiversity and landscape health through citizen science with a focus on woodland birds and arboreal mammals.

Our vision is for the people of the Mount Alexander Region to be proud of the beautiful, productive, healthy and diverse landscapes, habitats, forests, waterways, flora and fauna that we have supported and created in our region.

To restore landscapes and achieve our vision we seek funds from diverse sources. Please contact us if you would like to become a project partner, or know of grants or other funding opportunities that can benefit biodiversity in our region. To learn about priority projects that require funding, please view our Connecting Country Prospectus.

You can view Connecting Country’s Constitution here.

Our history 

In 2007, The Norman Wettenhall Foundation (now Wettenhall Environment Trust) developed a work plan for 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 identified our assets, the possible threats they face and what future actions we can take. It suggested directions, clarifies our priorities in landscape restoration and helped us to reconcile cultural, agricultural and natural values.

In 2009, Connecting Country worked in partnership with the North Central Catchment Management Authority to implement a program across the local landscape that had a specific focus on the threatened species, the Brush-tailed Phascogale (Tuan), and its Yellow Box Woodland habitat.

Since 2012, we have implemented programs related to local Landcare support, habitat connectivity, weed removal, supporting the development of local action plans, habitat enhancement for woodland birds, community skills training in environmental management and biodiversity monitoring. You can find more information on our current projects here.