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| Young people making a difference to the future of Victoria's basalt plain by restoring degraded habitats. |
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| Digital composite created by Csaba Szamosy for Imagine The Future Inc, 1996, from photographs by Anthony Duffy and D. Pollock (Werribee Open Range Zoo), Melbourne Water, Andrew Shannon (City of Hobsons Bay) and Merrill Findlay (ITF). |
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| Black swans in a very degraded urban habitat on the foreshores of the Yarra River estuary, with West Gate Bridge in the background. |
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| Photo contributed by Parks Victoria. |
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Over the last two hundred years people have stressed, polluted, drained, filled, flooded, quarried, covered, drilled, cleared, ploughed, poisoned, eroded, landscaped, shot, deforested, fertilised, ringbarked, woodchipped, cemented, asphalted and generally destroyed or degraded the biological communities we depend on, as if we had no tomorrow.
The result is thousands of hectares of once-fertile land now barren, once-pristine water systems now poisoned, once prolific plant and animal species now lost or threatened, a brown smudge of polluted air over our cities, and a global climate that is changing because of what we've spewed into the atmosphere. But now, even the most intransigent despoilers are realising that, if this is the price of western-style economic development, then it's a price we can no longer afford.
Slowly the term 'ecological sustainability' has entered everyone's vocabulary to change the way we think, and the way we behave. And now people are re-dreaming the future of the planet, and acting upon their dreams. Grasslands, wetlands and woodlands are being protected and rehabilitated. The habitats of threatened species, such as the Eastern Barred Bandicoot, Striped Legless Lizard, Brolga, Small Golden Moths Orchid, and Altona Skipper Butterfly are being protected, enhanced and extended. Waterways such as the Maribyrnong River and Moonee Ponds Creek are being cleaned up and revegetated. Land damaged by erosion and salinity is being healed. And suburbs and towns are being re-invented as more socially and ecologically sustainable human communities. All by the action of local people of all ages and all backgrounds supported by both public and private institutions.
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| Students revegetating Truganina Swamp at Laverton, one of the few remaining habitats of the Altona Skipper Butterfly, during Arbor Week 1996. |
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| Photo by Andrew Shannon, environmental planner, City of Hobsons Bay. |
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This is not to underestimate the damage that has already been done and is continuing to be done; nor the challenges people face in bioregions all around the world. Change is slow and very difficult. But at least we now know that we can change the way we think and behave. And many people are ... because they've imagined futures that are very different from the present and the past, and are working together to make these imagined futures real.
What are your stories about preserving, extending and rehabilitating habitats for native plants and animals on Victoria's basalt plain?
Copyright Imagine The Future Inc 2002.
Text by Merrill Findlay.
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