Our Ambition
To engage and equip Australian and New Zealand government agencies, land-users, industries and the community to innovatively secure, restore and protect our unique wildlife, and the ecosystems they maintain, for future generations.
Our Mission
To produce the robust tools needed for innovative long-term solutions for the conservation challenges faced by our unique wildlife. We do this through applied research projects that draw together in collaboration the diverse skills and capacities of researchers, communities and organisations across Australasia.
Our Vision: Help Wildlife Win!
To deliver conservation projects that ensure our unique wildlife, their populations, and the ecosystems they maintain are secure for future generations.
The Problem
“Business as usual/ad hoc crisis management” is not an acceptable response to the continuing decline of our unique wildlife caused by devastating bushfire, agricultural land use, urban development, changed water use, loss of Aboriginal land management, introduced species, disease and now climate change.
Our Solution
We work to bring together knowledge, resources and practical experience, in what is otherwise a highly fragmented field, to address national gaps and challenges in wildlife conservation and provide comprehensive solutions and the capacity to act. Expertise and new tools are not only needed to halt ongoing declines, but to reverse them by returning missing wildlife to the landscape and rebuild healthy self-sustaining ecosystems. We have set out to improve conservation by delivering innovative projects that are focused within three broad areas of conservation:
Rewilding for Resilience
Reintroduction of species to restore ecosystem function is the emerging global paradigm in wildlife conservation. Australia and New Zealand have yet to fully embrace this highly promising strategy. The theoretical basis for rewilding is strong but there is a need to develop the knowledge base for its practical achievement, and documentary evidence of its environmental, social and economic benefits is needed to drive policy.
We aim to deliver projects that:
- Develop methods of best practice rewilding for long-term ecosystem restoration.
- Demonstrate evidence of the benefits of rewilding to the ecosystem and the economy.
- Inform and engage communities in rewilding and securing threatened species.
- Incorporate this rewilding “know how” in a suite of accessible resources and training and disseminate widely to professionals and the community.
Wildlife People and the Economy
Australia has an enviable conservation reserve system, but around 60% of the landmass is used for some form of agriculture. While there is growing support within the farming sector and industry bodies for the improvement of conservation outcomes on agricultural land, there is insufficient practical knowledge about how this is to be achieved.
We aim to deliver projects that:
- Collaborate with agricultural land managers to develop practical knowledge about how to improve wildlife conservation on agricultural land while not compromising and where possible improving productivity.
- Quantify the costs and benefits of these new approaches and communicate them to industry and the general community.
New Technology for Wildlife
Gene storage and use is at present a completely neglected technology for wildlife risk management despite seed banks being normal practice for plant conservation. The storage of the ‘seeds’ of animals (sperm, egg and embryo) poses technical challenges but offers all the same advantages by conserving the genetic abundance of the present for use in the future.
We aim to deliver projects that:
- Develop an Australasian network of wildlife genome storage expertise and facilities.
- Establish best practice methods and guidelines for genome storage of the reproductive tissues of the different types of wildlife.
- Undertake research to continuously improve genome storage outcomes, and methods to integrate the stored genetic resource in conservation breeding programs in the field.
How we operate. Our Indirect costs policy:
FAUNA Research Alliance is a not-for-profit organisation supporting the development and delivery of environmental conservation projects by drawing together the limited resources and support needed to secure threatened wildlife. Most of our income funds go directly to the conservation projects to maximise their impact. Much of our administration and support is done by volunteers.
FAUNA Research Alliance does not pay indirect costs during the administration and delivery of conservation projects where our funding has been generated from general public or philanthropic donations or grants and prizes from other not-for-profit foundations or charities.
We will pay indirect costs where they have been included in grant applications to bodies that allow them to be budgeted. Note some organisations allow indirect costs but set a maximum percentage to be charged.