Australian Wildlife Conservancy in huge land buyout

AN environment group has made what is thought to be the largest private conservation buyout of land in Australia, if not the world.

The Australian Wildlife Conservancy has bought two huge cattle stations totalling more than 837,000ha.

The acquisitions are considered critically important because the stations abut national parks on Cape York Peninsula and on the South Australian-Queensland border, the Courier-Mail reports.

Together, the national park and conservancy areas make up 81,124sq km - an area larger than Tasmania.

The conservancy has bought the 170,000ha Piccaninny Plains Station in the heart of Cape York and SA's 667,000ha Kalamurina Station which will link a vast area to the Simpson Desert National Park in Queensland's far southwest.

Allowing animals and plant species to migrate unhindered over thousands of square kilometres, the acquisitions will be critical if climate change hits as hard as predicted.

The 1665sq km Piccaninny Plains includes the Wenlock River, which has more fish species than any other waterway in Australia, the Archer River and a magnificent network of wetlands. It abuts the Mungkan Kandju National Park.

Piccaninny also has the largest and most intact tropical grasslands in the high rainfall belt of northern Australia.

Its plains are typical Australian eucalypt country, hosting kangaroos and acacias but its rainforests show the continent's ancient land links with Papua New Guinea and support charismatic species like the spotted cuscus.

It will complement a move in June by Premier Anna Bligh to nominate the Archer, Lockhart and Stewart rivers on Cape York for protection as wild rivers.

Kalamurina is a vast 6800sq km desert wilderness containing endangered species, including the marsupial ampurta and kultarr, about 160 bird species and habitat not protected in national parks.

The Warburton River rises in Queensland, flows through Kalamurina and then converges with Kallakoopah Creek and the Macumba River in SA before flowing into Lake Eyre.

Kalamurina will link with southwest Queensland's 10,152sq km Simpson Desert National Park and five other major reserves straddling the border.

Conservancy executive director Atticus Flemming said Kalamurina was one-third the size of Kakadu National Park.

"It's critical we get these areas conserved now because of the impact of climate change," Mr Flemming said.

He said conservancy land was staffed and attention was paid to feral animal and fire control, two issues that graziers often complained about in relation to national parks.

The conservancy tried to buy areas where species existed that were not otherwise protected in national parks. After that it aimed for strategic buys that would link parks or fill in gaps, as occurred in this instance.

The Courier-Mail reports of the conservancy's 20 properties, seven were open to the public, including one in the Kimberley which hosted about 3000 campers a year.

"We always make sure we have infrastructure in place to make sure visitation is compatible," Mr Flemming said. "Eighty per cent of our staff are located at reserves."

The conservancy works with museums, universities and the CSIRO and gets its funds through public donations and, for some projects, the Federal Government.