Sector board volunteers are the latest in a long line of contributors to life in the Noosa Biosphere. Please add acknowledgements to the Noosa Wiki
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Boronia Keysii © Stephanie Haslam
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AusMaB: An Alliance of Australian Biospheres
Noosa Biosphere, the Great Sandy Biosphere and the Mornington Peninsula and Western Port Biosphere have formed an Australian Network of Biospheres (AusMaB) in November 2009.
AusMaB: Noosa Biosphere - Great Sandy Biosphere - Mornington Peninsula and Western Port Biosphere
Map: adapted from Google Earth- About the Alliance
- Mornington Peninsula and Western Port Biosphere
- Great Sandy Biosphere
- Noosa Biosphere and our shared opportunities
About the Alliance
Chairman of each of the Biospheres formed the alliance at a meeting in Noosa with Dr Natarajan Ishwaran - UNESCO's secretary of Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme.
- Rob Gell, Chair of Mornington Peninsula & Western Port Biosphere Reserve
- Michael Donovan, Chair of the Noosa Biosphere Reserve
- Russell Stewart, then Chair of the Great Sandy Biosphere
Dr Ishwaran gave his support for the initiative.
Chairman of Noosa Biosphere Ltd, Michael Donovan, said the move would give these three major biosphere’s an opportunity to collaborate, share ideas and information and generally learn together.
Mornington Peninsula & Western Port Biosphere Reserve
Mornington Peninsula & Western Port Biosphere Reserve was nominated by the community and declared by UNESCO in 2002 because the area contains and supports exceptional ecological values on the fringe of a vibrant and expanding city.
The total area covered by this nominations approximately 2100 square kilometres. It comprises the Mornington Peninsula, the waters of Western Port, and the southern part of the Western Port water catchment in Victoria, Australia.
This Biosphere Reserve has many outstanding conservation values, including Western Port, a Ramsar wetland of international importance. But it also faces unprecedented challenges, such as rapid urbanisation, the possibility of substantial port development, and a topography that is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Mornington Peninsula & Westernport Biosphere Reserve website
The Great Sandy Biosphere
The Great Sandy Biosphere was announced in May 2009.
It has 40% of world's perched lakes, the majority of the world's complex rainforests growing on sand, the largest unconsolidated coastal sand mass in the world, and unique sub-tropical patterned fens (swamps), the only ones in the world containing vertebrate lifeforms.
It is part of a bio-geographic overlap known as McPherson-McLeay Overlap, has a concentration of rare, threatened, endangered and vulnerable species, including significant populations of species which have declined elsewhere in Australia; exhibits adaptation of fish, frogs and invertebrates to acidic conditions; is a major transitory point for humpback whales; is recognised as a major feeding and roosting location for migratory birds; supports highly significant dugong populations and sea-grass beds; and is a major breeding sites for oceanic turtles in the Pacific Ocean.
Noosa Biosphere and our shared opportunities
Proud to live in the only place in the world where two biospheres occur side by side!
Equally proud of our alliance with the Mornington Peninsula and Western Port Biosphere.
We are looking at opportunities in our alliance going forward, such as:
- Learning from each others successes and failures.
- Networking opportunities to share expertise and resources.
- Advantages in scheduling visitors and speakers.
- Tourism opportunities - Biosphere and nature-based tourism marketing potential for the whole region and referral to other Biospheres
- Forming coalitions, when useful.
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Acknowledgements
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