Keep It Wild is a great initiative which seeks to bring together the various threats to the conservation estate to help people to get active.

September 2018.

Australians have campaigned for decades to protect our remaining wild ecosystems. From the Franklin River to the Daintree, Arnhem Land to the Alps to south west WA, many hundreds of campaigns have seen the creation of an incredible conservation estate. But as the saying goes, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Now we must be ready to defend these wild places, which once seemed safely preserved, from a range of new threats. The obvious one is climate change. But there is also a more localised and immediate threat: there are many plans to open up reserves to logging, commercial tourism and mining.

These proposals are being resisted locally wherever they arise. But unless you’re a part of a local group it can be hard to know about what threats are arising and where.

Keep It Wild is a great initiative which seeks to bring together the various threats to the conservation estate to help people to get active.

It’s been put together by Darren Edwards, who says that recreation, adventure tourism, commercialisation, and extractive industries are ‘all having an impact on the wild spaces’.

He says ‘Keep it Wild Australia is an initiative I started in the hope that I can make a difference’. It aims to help individuals ‘protect our wild from commercialisation, privatisation and extractive industries’.

‘Rather than start yet another action group I decided that I could best serve our natural environment by supporting existing initiatives’.

The website provides an overview of the threats posed to wild areas, and links to the many groups already working to protect protected areas.

You can find the website here.

Keep It Wild Initiative Launched
Mountain Journal – Cam Walker
Published: 21 Spetember 2018