The Thin Green Line project has been working to thicken a connectivity pinch point on the Illawarra escarpment that exists between the Macquarie Pass and Budderoo National Parks.

Since 2016, a consortium of GER’s partners and local landholders have been planting trees, managing feral animals and weeds, protecting habitat and building landholder knowledge and capacity to support the region’s rich biodiversity.

The challenge

The escarpment, coastal plains and plateau areas of the Illawarra support a rich and diverse mix of native animals. These include 40 threatened animal species, with some only found along the escarpment. The rainforests and moist eucalypt forests of the escarpment provide high quality habitat for sooty owls, stuttering frogs, logrunner, grey-headed flying-foxes, spotted-tailed quolls, long-nosed potoroo and Highland’s forest skink among many others. Some of the forests of the Illawarra escarpment and plateau areas are well represented in a number of formal conservation areas that provide a significant refuge for native plants and animals. Gaps however exist between those conservation areas and the habitat that supports this rich biodiversity is at its thinnest point between Sydney and the Victorian borders. Without connecting corridors linking these areas and the strategic management of threats, many of the rare and threatened species will become increasingly isolated, resulting in the decline of wildlife populations and their genetic diversity.

The Thin Green Line project

The Thin Green Line works with local groups, landholders and communities to reconnect, restore and protect the habitats that sit within this connectivity pinch-point.

The project, which was originally funded as part of the NSW Environmental Trust’s Bush Connect program, is supported by a consortium of Great Eastern Range’s community, government and organisational partners. These include lead partner, the National Parks Association of NSW, Wingecarribee Council, South East Local Land Services, University of Wollongong, Illawarra Aboriginal Land Council, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, ex Office of Environment and Heritage and more recently, the Australian Wildlife Society.