OUR WORK
Rewilding Australia
For thousands of years, the forests of Australia echoed with the sound of eastern quolls and parma wallabies. Today, their footprints are reappearing in the wild once more.
Imagine this. Eastern quolls darting through coastal forests and bettongs bounding back through the bush where they haven’t been seen for a century.
That’s not wishful thinking – it’s what’s possible when we tackle invasive species at a landscape scale and give native wildlife the chance to return.
The Invasive Species Council has always worked across the invasion curve – stopping new invaders, eradicating them where we can and managing established pests. But the ultimate goal is thriving Australian wildlife and landscapes.
Bringing Rewilding Australia into the Invasive Species Council is the next step in taking that vision even further.
Rewilding the Future
Rewilding Australia began with a simple idea from rewilding specialist Rob Brewster – let’s drive and support bold ambition by governments, landholders, Traditional Owners, and the community, to bring lost native species home.
Rob began in 2013 with a bold mission to restore lost species and repair ecological damage through innovative, collaborative and landscape-scale rewilding. From post-fire recovery in southeast Australia to cutting-edge research on ecosystem restoration, Rewilding Australia has long recognised that real change requires working across borders, jurisdictions, and communities.
In just 5 years, with WWF-Australia’s backing, that idea has leapt off the page. Eastern quolls, platypuses, bettongs and parma wallabies are back in places they’d been gone from for decades.
Now, as part of the Invasive Species Council, Rewilding Australia is scaling up that ambition – combining the science of species return with our fierce advocacy for investment in large-scale invasive species management. It’s the partnership Australia needs to bring our wildlife home and start a wildlife revival.
'Rewilding without tackling invasive species is like trying to build a house on quicksand.'
Rewilding Australia began with a simple idea from rewilding specialist Rob Brewster – let’s drive and support bold ambition by governments, landholders, Traditional Owners, and the community, to bring lost native species home.
Rob began in 2013 with a bold mission to restore lost species and repair ecological damage through innovative, collaborative and landscape-scale rewilding. From post-fire recovery in southeast Australia to cutting-edge research on ecosystem restoration, Rewilding Australia has long recognised that real change requires working across borders, jurisdictions, and communities.
In just 5 years, with WWF-Australia’s backing, that idea has leapt off the page. Eastern quolls, platypuses, bettongs and parma wallabies are back in places they’d been gone from for decades.
Now, as part of the Invasive Species Council, Rewilding Australia is scaling up that ambition – combining the science of species return with our fierce advocacy for investment in large-scale invasive species management.
It’s the partnership Australia needs to bring our wildlife home and start a wildlife revival.
Why it matters
And we can’t do it alone. It takes collaboration on a massive scale – governments, landholders, Traditional Owners and communities working together across borders and land tenures.
Because invasive species don’t care about lines on a map – and neither should we.
What’s already working
Rewilding Australia has already shown what’s possible when invasive species control and rewilding work hand in hand:
- Jervis Bay, NSW south coast – After being locally extinct for more than 70 years eastern quolls have returned to 2 fenced safe havens totalling 150 hectares and providing fox and cat-free habitat, within the Shoalhaven region of NSW.
- Southern Yorke Peninsula, SA – Brush-tailed bettongs (AKA ‘woylies’) are back on the ground for the first time in over a century in Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park following the implementation of a long-term, landscape-scale fox and cat management strategy.
- Lungtalanana (Clarke Island), TAS – A focus on cat management on up to 3 islands within the Furneax Group in Bass Strait, by Tasmanian Traditional Owners, is paving the way for reintroductions of fauna that have been missing for over 150 years.
- Royal National Park, NSW – Strategic landscape-scale fox and deer management continue to reduce the risk of predation and river-bank trampling by these invasive species. Early results are showing excellent survival of platypus following their reintroduction in 2023.
'But to get beyond the fence, beyond island sanctuaries, and even beyond National Parks, we need more ambition, innovation and long-term coordinated funding. These blue-prints for rewilding show us that we could see a wildlife revival within our lifetime if we tackle invasive species at scale.'
A bigger vision
This is our vision for a wildlife revival in motion.
We want to show what’s possible at scale – and to convince governments to back it properly.
Once you’ve seen what’s possible, you can’t settle for anything less.
'This is about healing Country – if we put the right species back and removed what shouldn’t be here. It’s about responsibility – for a thriving Country.'
Your donation is a lifeline for Aussie wildlife.
Invasive species destroy our natural places and transform the landscape, leaving our native animals without shelter or food and natural systems destroyed. You can help create an Australia where our unique wildlife is safe in flourishing protected areas.
