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Newcastle Herald
Newcastle Herald
National
Damon Cronshaw

A small price to pay for the planet

Risk: Tim Faulkner says about one in three 'unique Australian mammals are at risk of becoming extinct'.

Aussie Ark is seeking to buy a 245-hectare wildlife refuge to add to its sanctuary at Barrington Tops and advance its plans to tackle the extinction crisis.

Curricabark Wildlife Refuge, which is near the Aussie Ark site, has been registered as a wildlife refuge since 1974. It is home to about 30 threatened species.

Aussie Ark president Tim Faulkner said the property would be a "significant addition" to the organisation's lands and sanctuaries due to its "important biodiversity and considerable potential".

Mr Faulker said the Barrington Tops contained "Eastern Australian temperate forests". These forests were "some of the largest carbon sinks on Earth" and contained "15 per cent of all vertebrate fauna in Australia".

"We have an opportunity to buy a property called Curricabark. It's only $120,000. That's a small price to pay for native wildlife conservation.

"So often people are interested in planting trees and that's great, but I'm asking you to help us protect trees."

He said the area was "heavily forested" with abundant wildlife.

Aussie Ark is hosting a GoFundMe page to raise the funds.

Conservation Goals: Aussie Ark's Barrington Tops wildlife sanctuary. The organisation is seeking to expand its land to protect threatened species.

Research recently published in Nature found that restoring 30 per cent of the world's ecosystems in priority areas could prevent more than 70 per cent of projected extinctions and absorb almost half of the carbon built up in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.

Aussie Ark spokeswoman Brodie Chiswick said the Barrington rewilding project was part of a global movement.

"Our first step is stopping what we've got left from being destroyed and then working on augmenting that habitat and restoring it back to what it should have been," Ms Chiswick said.

"David Attenborough says it beautifully in his new documentary. He says some of our biggest problems are climate change and deforestation. If you restore the forests, you tackle climate change."

Aussie Ark presently has more than 2000 hectares of fenced, predator-proof sanctuaries in the Barrington Tops for animals like the Tasmanian devil, eastern quoll, long-nosed potoroo and brush-tailed rock wallaby.

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