Conservationists in South Australia have launched an ambitious project to turn a former mining region into a refuge for some of Australia’s most threatened wildlife.

The Great Southern Ark initiative will see an area the size of Hertfordshire fenced off and restocked with indigenous species, which have declined rapidly across the country due to predation by foxes and feral cats introduced from Europe.

The project in South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula – often described as “Little Cornwall” due to the many Cornish miners who settled in the region – officially launched yesterday, but work to eradicate invasive predators was already well underway.

Fence construction is expected to get underway in the next few weeks. This will seal off the peninsula from invasive predators and provide a sanctuary for soon-to-be reintroduced species, such as southern brown bandicoots, western quolls and red-tailed phascogales, which are all marsupials.

Australia has experienced the highest rate of mammalian extinction in the world over the last 200 years. Losses have been particularly acute in the Yorke Peninsula, where 27 of its 29 mammal species are reported locally extinct.

The Yorke Peninsula is on Adelaide's doorstep Credit: GETTY

Intensive agriculture, invasive predators and the now-defunct gypsum mining industry have all been blamed for the decline, which conservationists will aim to reverse through the rewilding initiative.

Supporters claim the Great Southern Ark project – a collaboration between the WWF, Greening Australia, Naturally Yorke and the South Australian and federal governments – could boost the local tourist industry as well as biodiversity. The region is only 60 minutes by car from Adelaide.

The Yorke Peninsula accounts for 0.08 per cent of Australia’s landmass, a sobering statistic that highlights the limitations of the local initiative. Nevertheless, conservationists claim it is a necessary step in halting the decline of Australian wildlife.

“These are bold, risky projects, but we’re facing a species-extinction crisis in Australia,” Darren Grover, head of living ecosystems at WWF, told ABC News.

“We can’t keep going along doing what we've been doing because it’s not working. We need to take some risks.”