WILDLIFE corridors stretching across state boundaries are set to be given priority for billions of dollars of environment grants to help endangered species move across the country safely.
The plan will set up a system under environment law to recognise projects that connect protected and private land - such as national parks and farms - over great distances to help preserve Australia's threatened diversity of species.
Australia's natural habitats have increasingly become fragmented and isolated, putting significant stresses on plants and animals.
Twenty per cent of Australia's wildlife is classified as threatened.
The federal government has not nominated new projects under the plan nor allocated new funding for the corridors. Instead, it points to corridor efforts already under way by conservation groups and state government authorities as potential projects to fall under the plan.
Those projects include the Great Eastern Ranges link, which stretches 3600 kilometres from central Victoria, through NSW, to far north Queensland, providing safe passage for species such as brush-tailed rock wallabies, koalas and spotted-tail quolls.
The final corridors plan, to be released on Sunday originally promised by Labor at the 2010 election, will allow conservation groups to nominate a project to the government under environment laws. The projects will then be assessed by an independent council and if successful will be declared by the environment minister as a national wildlife corridor.
Once declared, projects may then be given higher priority for billions of dollars of grants from environmental grants schemes.
These grants programs include a $1 billion biodiversity fund set up with carbon tax revenue, and the $2.2 billion Caring for our Country program among others.
Paul Sinclair from the Australian Conservation Foundation, who was a member of an expert panel that helped draw up the plan, said it was an important response to the impacts of climate change on the environment.
But he said ensuring long-term funding for the corridor projects - some of which have decades-long time frames - was a challenge.
Great Eastern Ranges Initiative director Rob Dunn said the plan recognised the benefits that come from such large-scale projects.
''To achieve change at such a scale, the funding is really just vital,'' he said.
The Environment Minister, Tony Burke, said the corridors plan was about setting priorities for conservation funding and encouraging community involvement.
''The plan does not, of itself, lock up any land,'' he said.