The Great Eastern Ranges (GER) plays a vital advocacy and lobbying role for connectivity conservation by promoting its multiple benefits and best practice science across sectors, land tenures and state boundaries. By advocating for connectivity conservation, GER mobilises available resources, attracts vital project funding, and puts conservation on the political agenda.

Key contributions and accomplishments in this space include:

• Playing an instrumental role in lobbying for the development of the Australian Government’s ‘National Wildlife Corridors Plan’ in 2012 – a world-leading plan to establish a national framework for connectivity conservation. GER is still working actively to get the NWC plan funded and enacted.
• Serving as a member of the global IUCN WCPA Connectivity Conservation Specialist Group (CCSG) whose purpose is to advance science, policy, and practice to protect ecological connectivity to maintain the integrity of protected areas, save biodiversity, and increase resilience to climate change. GER’s contribution to CCSG has included assisting with the development of the inaugural IUCN Guidelines for conserving connectivity through ecological networks and corridors in 2019.
• Partnering with fellow Australian large landscape conservation initiative, Gondwana Link, to promote and mainstream connectivity conservation at the national level.
• Forming the Connectivity across Large Landscapes Australia New Zealand (CALLANZ) network alongside Gondwana Link and Reconnecting Northland to boost the practice and science of connectivity conservation in Australasia through the sharing of knowledge, tools and lessons learned.