During the Blue Mountains bushfires in Australia, December 2019.

We read in the media that the air is toxic, and the pollution levels are dangerous to our health. We read about the microscopic dust and PM2.5 particles. But what are these particles? 

They are the koalas caught in the burning tree canopies, too slow to escape. The few remaining native animal species that have been able to survive in our transformed environment. The smell of the smoke is the living laboratory of Blue Mountains ecosystems formed across millennia.

We are pleased to announce that Dr Rosalie Chapple has been elected to join the Executive Committee of the Australian Committee for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ACIUCN) in 2020.

Dr Chapple is a co-founder of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute, an independent Board Director and the Head of our Education and Training program. 

The Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute, in partnership with the Protected Areas Learning & Research Collaboration (PALRC), offers a five-day intensive training program on tools for adaptive management, based on the internationally recognised Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation. 

Our recent September 2019 course was hosted at the Jemby Rinjah Eco Lodge in Blackheath and included protected area managers and students from across Australia and around the world.

BMWHI Board Director and Education program leader, Dr. Rosalie Chapple, was invited to speak at the Capacity Building for Conservation Conference in London in July, 2019. 

This conference was the fourth in a series of international meetings aimed at tackling difficult and pervasive global conservation issues and provided a unique opportunity for discussion and problem-solving amongst the international conservation community. Dr. Chapple’s participation in the conference placed BMWHI alongside global leaders in conservation capacity building.

For long term Blue Mountains residents, changes to weather patterns, plant life and animal sightings have always been the subject of neighbourly discussions but, until now, many of these changes haven’t been receiving the kind of scientific scrutiny they deserve. 

This changed last year when the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute and Scenic World joined forces to launch our Climate Change and Ecological Monitoring project. 

Each year in June the Institute’s Education Program Leader, Rosalie Chapple, brings international university students to the Blue Mountains as part of a 3-week immersion in Australia’s protected areas.

During the multi-week travelling course, students visit protected areas in a range of climatic regions to observe Australia’s unique flora and fauna, and to understand the challenges of conserving and managing natural and cultural heritage in the 21st century.

While bushwalking is a passion shared by many of us living in the Blue Mountains, few of us know what species of plant life we pass by on our walks, and even fewer again will ever take the time to develop a detailed knowledge of the species we come into contact with. 

Not so though for Blackheath resident, Tamara Venables, who has spent the past two years photographing and documenting orchid species throughout the Blue Mountains region.

It's back by popular demand! BMWHI's five-day intensive course on Adaptive Management for Conservation will be running again this year from Sept 23-27 in the Blue Mountains, near Sydney. 

The course is based on the Open Standards framework and is offered by the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute in partnership with the Protected Areas Learning & Research Collaboration (PALRC).