Wet Tropics of Queensland - (World Heritage Natural Site in Australia)

Wet Tropics of Queensland 

Short Report

This area, which stretches along the north east coast of Australia for approximately 450 km, mainly in the hands of tropical rainforests. This biotope offers a very rich and varied supply of plants, as well as marsupials and birds singing, along with other rare and endangered species of flora and fauna.

Wonderful Universal Importance

Brief synthesis

The Wet Tropics of Queensland or Wet Tropics, stretches along the north coast of Australia for approximately 450 kilometers. Includes approximately 894,420 hectares of tropical rainforest, this stunning area is very important for its rich and unique biodiversity. It also offers a unique registration of the ecological and evolutionary processes that the flora and fauna of Australia, with the relicts of the great Gondwanan forest that Australia and part of Antarctica 50 to 100 million years ago. All of Australia's unique marsupials and most of the other animals of rainforest ecosystems and their immediate families occur in the wet Tropics. This live relicts of the Gondwanan era and their further diversification offer unique insights into the process of evolution in general. They also provide important information for the interpretation of fossils of plants and animals that nowhere else in Australia and on the evolution of the Australian sclerophyll flora and fauna marsupial in particular.

The property offers support for tropical forests of their origins and climatic limits, and unlike most other seasonal tropical evergreen equatorial forests, is subject to a dry season and frequent cyclonic events. Many of the individual functions of the humid tropics relate to the extremely high but seasonal rainfall, varied terrain and steep environmental gradients. In addition to the complex range of types and forms of life, the humid tropics is also recognized as an area with a special landscape features, nature and beautiful extensive landscapes.

Wide Report

This area, which stretches along the north-east coast of Australia for some 450 km from just south of Cooktown to just north of Townsville, mainly in the hands of tropical rainforests. This biotope offers a very rich and varied supply of plants, as well as marsupials and birds singing, along with other rare and endangered species of flora and fauna.

The site offers an unrivalled living record of the ecological and evolutionary processes that form the flora and fauna of Australia the last 415 million years as the first it was a part of the Asian continent Pangaean, then the 'Praehistorium Gondwana' the old continent, and for the last 50 million years an island continent. During this 415 million year evolution, the processes of speciation will be further developed, deaf and adjustment are determined by history, in particular continental drift and cycles of climate change. The rainforests constitute approximately 80% of the property have more taxa with primitive characteristics than any other area on earth.

The field contains a unique record of a mixture of two continental , and faunas. This confusion has occurred after the collision of the Australian and Asian continental plates approximately 15 million years ago. This impact is a unique event in the mixed two evolutionary clauses streams of both flora and fauna, in some cases with a common cause, which largely separated for 80 million years. The ancestry of all Australia's unique marsupials and most of the other animals in the rainforest of ecosystems which the Wet Tropics Queensland contains many of the nearest surviving members. The site contains one of the most important live records from the history of marsupials and songbirds. The Riversleigh fossil deposits (Australian Fossil mammal Sites (Riversleigh/Naracoorte) World Heritage site) are rich in marsupial fossil taxa closely with the problems which still lives in the rainforests of the Wet Tropics Queensland, the best surviving equivalent of the Oligo-Miocene Riversleigh rainforests. Today the main vegetation type is wet tropical rainforest but this is lined and, to a certain extent dissected by sclerophyll forests, forests, swamps and mangrove forests.

The rainforests of the site is classified in 13 major structural forms, including two sclerophyll components and have the richest flora in Australia. The mammal fauna including monotremes, marsupials, rodents and bats. Nine species are endemic: these consist of four types of ringtail pretend, Australia the only two tree kangaroo species, and the musky rat-kangaroo, which in many respects the smallest and the simplest macropods. The last two of the endemics, the Thornton Peak rat and Atherton antechinus , have very limited distributions that are used as the basis for the definition of two centers of endemism for because mammals. A notable presence is because the Australian Ferntree's cassowary, one of the largest birds in the world.

Aboriginal occupation in the area between Cooktown and Cardwell is thought to date back at least 40,000 years. The northern tribes (Barrineans) be considered as the first wave of the Aboriginal occupation of Australia, making them the oldest rainforest culture in the world. Rainforest culture thoroughly differs from that of most other Australian Aboriginal tribes, with its strong dependence of arboreal skills, daily use of toxic plants and unique weapons. Major centers of the survival of this culture are the Bloomfield River and Murray.

Historical Data

Approximately 185, OOOha is reserved in 41 national parks designated by the Queensland State Government in the last 50 years. They were led by the Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service since its creation in 1975. Previously, they were managed by the Queensland forestry department. State Forests, timber reserves and reserves were established a comparable period. Yarrabah Aboriginal and Islander Reserve was established in 1892. Details for individual protected areas are added. Registered on the World Heritage List in 1988.

Source:whc/unesco