Half Of Australia Is “Virgin”

The ‘outback’ and the ‘bush’ have an iconic status in Australian life. A recent report for the Pew Environment Group and Nature Conservancy said that Australia had the highest number of endemic mammal and reptile species in the world.

“Three million square kilometres (1.1 million sq miles) — an area 12 times the size of mainland Britain — have been left pristine. We were pleasantly surprised that there were still so many areas which came up in such good condition after 200 years of European settlement. The other two great remaining wilderness areas in the world are the Sahara and the northern Boreal forest in Canada.

“Australia has a total land mass of 2,988,902 sq miles (7.7 million sq km) and a population of about 21 million, most of whom live in the capital cities around the coast.

“The areas of the Outback highlighted in the report were in central Australia and at the top of Queensland, regions that are predominantly unsettled or under the control of Aboriginal communities. Nearly a quarter of Australia is indigenous freehold land.

“The Wild Australia programme, a collaborative project between the Pew Environment Group, which is based in Washington DC in the US, and the Nature Conservancy, would invest $A12 million (£6 million) — raised over three years from private, conservation-minded donors in the US — in maintaining the wilderness areas. ”

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