Why is the Spirit of the Bunyip important?

Planting and fencing even a single corridor of native trees and shrubs can have many benefits for a farming property. It provides habitat for native plants and animals, and helps plants disperse between isolated patches. It improves the resilience of species and ecosystems and helps maintain water, air and soil quality.

Revegetation can reduce erosion and soil loss to waterways; and acts as carbon sinks, storing carbon in vegetation and in the soil. Spirit of the Bunyip has a representative steering committee of key agencies, councils and community organisations which enables them to plan together.

The Spirit of the Bunyip program also provides an accessible entry into the environmental investment market.

The Spirit of the Bunyip brand represents a large scale and collaborative effort towards environmental recovery, and makes it easy for corporate investors to demonstrate they are investing their ‘green dollar’ in projects that are making a difference.

What are the challenges?

Already only about 25% of the original vegetation in this area remains – much of it in isolated patches. Most of it is not protected and its condition is declining.

Many species of native plants and animals are diminishing in number as their habitat disappears. Birds and animals like the Powerful Owl, Helmeted Honeyeater, Southern Brown Bandicoot and Leadbeaters Possum are among them.

Native fish such as the Australian Grayling and iconic trees like Strzelecki Gums and Green Scent Bark are also species under threat.

More than half of the rivers and streams in this catchment are in poor or very poor condition. Thousands of tonnes of sediment continues to flow from these waterways each year, silting up Western Port and smothering seagrass beds that are a critical part of its fragile ecosystem.