The Great Dividing Range is vital to life in Australia. Almost three quarters of the Australian community live along the inland western slopes, eastern escarpment and adjoining coastal plains.
From the tip of our country at Cape York right down to Western Victoria, the Range's dense forests keep our air clean. Its rivers and water catchments are our lifeblood. And its national parks are our playground.
The water we drink
- Vast water catchments provide fresh drinking water for 11 million people, including the major cities of Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane.
- Rainfall that flows from the western slopes into the Great Artesian Basin provides the only reliable source of fresh water through much of inland Australia.
The food we eat
- Rich soils, high biodiversity, reliable climate and water supply support the Murray-Darling Basin, which grows around 30 per cent of Australia’s national food supply.
The air we breathe
- Victoria's old-growth Mountain Ash forests are some of the most carbon-dense forests on Earth, storing more carbon in the forest soil, tree trunks, and leaves than almost any other global ecosystem.
A refuge for our wildlife
- Rich biodiversity provides critical habitat for over 70 per cent of our threatened species.
- The high country of the Australian Alps provides a critical refuge for wildlife as the world warms and their habitat diminishes.
The places we love
- Vast and accessible national parks along the Range are our playground and contribute to the health and wellbeing of millions of Australians.
Despite its vital role sustaining life in Australia, in just two hundred years people have polluted, mined, logged, and cleared nearly 70 per cent of the Range. And the number of threatened species has rapidly increased as their habitat diminishes.
Yet big business lobby groups, backed by multinational mining companies, continue to campaign hard to weaken the laws that protect life. All so they can mine more, frack faster, and dredge deeper with little oversight. Right now, these companies have more influence on the government than our communities do.
People are doing incredible things to stop destruction and restore the Range locally, but without a national solution they can't keep up. We must work with nature at the scale at which nature operates, and that requires national leadership.
Governments and business must take responsibility and protect vital landscapes like the Range from pollution, overuse and extinction.
The government must cut pollution, support clean energy and create a new generation of environment laws that properly protect our air, water and wildlife.
ACF is bringing community, business, and government together to protect, restore, and connect critical habitats, water catchments, forests, and climate refuges along the Range.
This will give people and wildlife the best chance to adapt to global warming. And our children's children will be able to walk in the mountains, camp with their kids, and listen to the symphony of the bush.
ACF is focused on three key hotspots on the Range – Queensland's Galilee Basin, Sydney's water catchments and the forests of Victoria's Central Highlands.
Find out more about the Range. Read Our Great Dividing Range report.