The Wombat State Forest (locally: Bullarook) is located 50 kilometres (31 mi) west of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, between Woodend and Daylesford, at the Great Dividing Range.

[1] The only initiative in Australia to introduce community forestry, within the internationally understood context, is in the Wombat State Forest.

Other areas of importance include cultural heritage, research, education, tourism, recreation, mineral exploration, mining, and grazing.

[4] This forest was the testing ground for techniques, ideas and attitudes that shaped resource management and sawmilling well into the twentieth century.

The sustainable yield for the Wombat Forest was set at historical sawlog license levels of around 70,000m3 per annum, with an added 63,000 tonnes of waste going as woodchips to the CSR Bacchus Marsh hardboard plant.

[13] There are about 400 volcanoes in a stretch of the Great Dividing Range that extends from Kilmore in the north east to Mount Gambier in South Australia to the west.

These lands were converted to agricultural zone due to the suitability to grow crops under abundant rainfall conditions.

[12] The geological evolution belongs to the Quaternary period of the Cainozoic Era which has emerged from an "ash dominated rainforest to dry sclerophyll forest".

The volcanic activity of the region has supplemented the creation of mineral water- carbon dioxide mix that is seen in the form of bubbles emerging from the springs.

Fungi play a vital ecological role through their mutually beneficial symbioses with the great majority of plants as well as with numerous animal species.

Many fungal species fruit between late summer and early winter, depending on temperature, rainfall and various other environmental factors such as soil chemistry.

Furthermore, fungi provide an important food source for many of the Wombat Forest's animals including mammals, birds, reptiles and invertebrates.

While several countries have comprehensively mapped and RED-listed thousands of fungal species, only a handful of Australian fungi have been formally protected and only at a state level.

Groups such as Wombat Forestcare, Fungimap and various field naturalist clubs are making huge efforts and progress toward lifting the profile of fungi through acquiring knowledge of their diversity and distribution and contributing to fungal conservation.

During the forest's geological evolutionary process, flora initially emerged in oceans 630 million years ago.

The widely varying vegetation is a reflection of ecological diversity of the forest "in geology, soil type, aspect, climate, altitude and position in the landscape."

Under the EVC classification system followed in Victoria, the criteria adopted covers "depletion (what is left since European settlement), degradation, current threats and rarity".

The University of Melbourne facilitated by providing the consultancy inputs in preparing a review report on collaborative forest management and community participation in Australia.

[3] Other historic places of interest include the Andersons Mill, Balt Camp, Pioneer Sawmill, and Yankee Mine.