Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
At around 1200 square kilometres the Wet Tropics Rainforest is a part of Australia's largest contiguous area of rainforest. Contains 30% of frog, marsupial and reptile species in Australia, and 65% of Australia's bat and butterfly species. 20% of bird species in the country can be found in this area including the threatened cassowary. Added to ...
The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, formerly known as the Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves, are the most extensive area of subtropical rainforest in the world. [1] Collectively, the rainforests are a World Heritage Site with fifty separate reserves totalling 366,500 hectares (906,000 acres) from Newcastle to Brisbane .
Rainforest in 2011. The rainforest is named after the Daintree River, which in turn was named in honour of the Australian geologist and photographer Richard Daintree (1832–1878). [4] It is a remnant of what was once a vast forest that covered the entire Australian continent.
The rainforest communities of this region exhibit ecological relations to other regions: the cool temperate rainforest is similar to the biome found in Tasmania, the warm temperate rainforest has links to the North Island of New Zealand, and the subtropical and dry regions are also found up north in the Queensland tropical rain forests ...
The ecoregion is the largest remnant of Australia's rain forest flora, home to ancient assemblage of plants, called the Antarctic flora, presently characteristic of New Zealand and southern Chile. Fossil pollen records indicate closed forest covered most of Australia between 50 and 100 million years ago. [8]
The Eastern Kuku Yalanji are among Aboriginal peoples who have lived in Queensland's Wet Tropics for at least 5,000 years. Now, the rainforest is being put back in their hands.
Tropical rainforests have been called the "jewels of the Earth" and the "world's largest pharmacy", because over one quarter of natural medicines have been discovered there. [2] Rainforests as well as endemic rainforest species are rapidly disappearing due to deforestation, the resulting habitat loss and pollution of the atmosphere. [3]
On 9 November 2012, the Australian Government also acknowledged the Indigenous heritage of the area as being nationally significant. The Aboriginal Rainforest People of the Wet Tropics of Queensland have lived continuously in the rainforest environment for at least 5000 years, and this is the only place in Australia where Aboriginal people have permanently inhabited a tropical rainforest ...