Geoconservation aims to preserve the natural diversity of our non-living environment (our geodiversity).

Pedra Branca Island

Geoconservation is an essential part of bioconservation, as geodiversity provides the variety of environments and environmental pressures which directly influence biodiversity. For example, a tiny rock out in the middle of the Tasman Sea called Pedra Branca Rock, is the only place in the world where the Pedra Branca skink lives. Without this landform this skink would not exist.

However, geoconservation does not focus solely on the importance of non-living things in conserving biological systems, but is also based on the premise that geodiversity has important conservation values of its own, independant of any role in sustaining living things.

Further, our geodiversity, such as delicate fossil sites, karst systems, coastal dunes systems and peats soils can be fragile.

The Biodiversity and Conservation Branch of the Department of Primary Industries and Water (DPIW) has developed the principles of geoconservation in considerable detail. See the DPIW web site for details of the Concepts and Principles of Geoconservation.