Sunrise over the Flinders Ranges photo courtesy of © Michael Waterhouse Photography 

Help create a NEW 60,000 hectare National Park to protect half a billion years of history

FNPW, the Flinders Ranges Ediacara Foundation and the South Australian Government are working together to create a new national park on the western edge of the Flinders Ranges that is like no other on Earth. It contains what retired South Australian Museum palaeontologist, Professor Jim Gehling, describes as “… the rarest and the oldest fossils on Earth that you can see with the naked eye.”

This land holds the key to our understanding of how life on Earth unfolded. It contains fossils that date back 560 million years. Sir David Attenborough himself believes them to hold “…the earliest evidence of complex life in the history of our planet.” Surely that’s something worth protecting and preserving forever, as part of a NEW Australian national park!

Part of the privately owned Nilpena Pastoral Lease, this region was once the sea floor. The great naturalist Sir David Attenborough believes the area to be so important that he visited Nilpena and made the BBC documentary ‘First Life’ there. Due to its exceptional and unique geological heritage, the area has even been proposed for recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

This is also an area of significant biodiversity value, containing two threatened ecological communities, some 44 species of native animals and 111 species of native plants. A total of 29 of these species are listed as ‘threatened’, including the Thick-billed Grasswren pictured below. Effective predator control in other National Parks in the area has seen two mammal species reintroduced in recent years - the Western Quoll and the Brush-tailed Possum. 

Be a part of Earth’s history

Our aim is to protect both the current native landscape and the animals that live there, but also an area that provides a globally unique window into the absolute depths of time.

This is not just a once in a lifetime opportunity, nor even once in a millennium… it’s a moment in time when you can be a part of the earth’s history. Will you help us?

Flinders Ranges photo courtesy of © Michael Waterhouse Photography

With your support, we will ensure this legacy is protected from fossil looters and that this land and its unique heritage is protected and preserved for future generations, celebrated and shared throughout the world. 

We should never again let the sun set on this region that depicts the dawn of life on Earth, without the protection it definitely deserves.

Thank you in anticipation of your valued support.

Ian Darbyshire
CEO – Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife