Perth is headquarters for one of Australia’s major non-government biodiversity conserving organisations.
Perth is headquarters for one of Australia’s major non-government biodiversity conserving organisations.
The Australian Wildlife Conservancy was founded in 1991 by Mosman Park millionaire Martin Copley, who bought virgin bush in the Perth Hills to establish Karakamia sanctuary.
During the 1990s he acquired several more similar properties specifically earmarked for conservation purposes.
Mr Copley is WA’s leading nature-based philanthropist and is believed to have spent at least $10 million funding the purchase of bush and pastoral rangeland for wildlife preservation. Today, the AWC is a publicly funded charity.
Mr Copley established it as a company limited by guarantee whose members have no rights to participate in the profits or any distribution of its assets. In the event that it ceased operating and was wound up, its assets would be transferred to another organisation with similar environmental objectives.
The public can make gifts or bequests of money or property to its gift fund to help the AWC achieve its environmental aims.
AWC now owns or leases more than 450,000 hectares of bushland across Australia and specialises in ensuring native wildlife, and in particular threatened mammals, are preserved.
In addition to Karakamia, the AWC owns Faure Island, within Shark Bay, Mount Gibson station in the Kimberley, and holds a stake in Ningaloo Station north of Maud’s Landing.
A crucial player in the AWC’s conservation acquisitions was Dr Barry Wilson, formerly a senior CALM officer, chairman of the Marine Parks and Reserves Authority and a member of WA’s Science Council, headed by Environment Minister Dr Judy Edwards.
Dr Wilson has served on the Shark Bay World Heritage Property Scientific Advisory Committee, the Gordon Reid Foundation (for Conservation), the Coastal Management Coordinating Committee (WA), Urban Bushland Advisory Committee and Perth Zoological Gardens board.
His fields of expertise include nature conservation and biodiversity policy development and protected area management, marine ecology and taxonomy, and museum curation and administration.
A similar conservation organisation that has made acquisition in WA is the Melbourne-based Australian Bush Heritage Fund (ABHF), which is a company limited by guarantee, with tax deductibility status.
ABHF was formed at the instigation of Greens Senator Bob Brown, who used his US Goldman Environment Prize as a deposit on two forested properties of 241ha earmarked to be wood chipped.
The fund’s patron is ABC radio host, Phillip Adams. It has staff based in Hobart, Melbourne, Sydney, Carnarvon Station Reserve, Charles Darwin Reserve, Brisbane, Emerald, and Yass.
The ABHF was founded a year before the AWC and also raises funds from the public to create a help acquire reserves across Australia. ABHF’s 19 areas of conservation significance cover 360,000ha and include the tropical rainforests of the Daintree River area of North Queensland to woodlands near Kojonup and the Stirling Range National Park.
