Greater Gariwerd is a highly significant living, cultural landscape for Traditional Owners – reflecting their voice, knowledge, history, heritage, and cultural practices. Within the Glenelg Hopkins region, the following parks and reserves form part of Greater Gariwerd Landscape:

• Gariwerd (Grampians National Park), created in 1984.
• Black Range State Park, created in 1988.
• Cherrypool Highway Park, created in 1983.
• Brady Swamp State Game Reserve, created in 1993.

Gariwerd was listed on the National Heritage Register in December 2006 for its outstanding cultural heritage, landscape, and biodiversity values. Major Thomas Mitchell named the mountains the ‘Grampians’ after scaling Mt Duwil (Mt William), the highest peak, with a small group of explorers in 1836. The arrival of European settlers soon after irrevocably changed the lives of the region’s Traditional Owners. Western Victoria has a particularly rapid and brutal history of dispossession and massacres.

By the mid-1840s the Grampians had become a centre for farming, mining and timber production, and a source of water for surrounding farmland. Water extraction, land clearing and the introduction of grazing forever changed the landscape and ecosystems Traditional Owners had relied upon.

Gariwerd was designated as state forest in 1872 and declared a national park in 1984. As most of the western Victoria plains had been cleared for agriculture, the remnant bushland in the park has become a refuge for native plants and animals. The Park contains more than 1,000 plant species, including 23 species that are found nowhere else in the world.

The Southern Gariwerd and Black Range local area provides habitat for a large number of rare and threatened species, including 33 recorded fauna species such as the western swamp cray (critically endangered), growling grass frog (endangered) and heath mouse (endangered), and 42 flora species, including the endemic Grampians pincushion-lily (endangered), metallic sun-orchid (endangered) and trailing hop-bush (vulnerable).

There is some agricultural production on the periphery of the national park, including grazing and hardwood plantations.

More than 1.3 million people per year visit Gariwerd – international, national, state, local, school groups, retirees, tree changers and outdoor enthusiasts. Many of these visitors continue to other locations and contribute to the tourism economy of the Glenelg Hopkins region.

This local area includes the Glenelg Hopkins portion of the Greater Grampians bioregion and areas of the Dundas Tablelands bioregion around Rocklands and Cherrypool. This includes the most intact areas of native vegetation in the Glenelg Hopkins region. The distinctive form of the Grampians is the result of folding, faulting and subsequent erosion of sandstone. Dwarfed eucalypt woodlands and heathlands can be found along the highest peaks and ridges, often dominated by endemics such as the Mt Abrupt stringybark and the Grampians grey-gum, while taller wet eucalypt forests are found on the eastern slopes of the Victoria and Serra Ranges. Red gum woodland and wet heathland commonly surround what were once swamps but are now man-made water storages.

The headwaters of the Glenelg River, Wannon River and Dwyers Creek are found within this local area, with the Wannon being one of the five listed ecologically healthy river reaches in the region. Almost three-quarters of Gariwerd is used as special water supply catchment areas, producing high-quality water to supply western Victoria, which is important to the regional economy. The significance of water to the ecosystems and economy of the region is one of the reasons the National Park was created.

There are relatively few wetlands across this local area due to its topography. Where they do occur, they are generally temporary freshwater marshes and swamps formed on the flats. Brady Swamp, for example, is adjacent to the far south-eastern corner of the Gariwerd (Grampians National Park), straddling public (Brady Swamp Wildlife Reserve) and private land. The swamp is one in a chain of wetlands of the Wannon River Floodplain, as the river reaches the flats after exiting the valley between the Serra and Mt William Ranges within the Grampians.

Other key areas in this landscape include:

• Black Range State Park, which is less frequented than Gariwerd, is notable for its rugged stone escarpments and range of interesting and uncommon plant species and important fauna species.
• The Rocklands and Grampians State Forest, which includes the Rocklands Reservoir, Grampians State Forest and Claude Austin State Forest is popular for a wide range of outdoor activities including camping, fishing, bush walking and nature study. Rocklands Reservoir was constructed during the 1950s along the Glenelg River to supply the now decommissioned Wimmera-Mallee domestic and stock channel system. Water for the environment is released from Rocklands Reservoir, under strict conditions, to provide additional flow to the Glenelg River.