The Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Site is an area of approximately of very wet forests on parts of the coast and adjacent ranges of tropical Queensland, Australia. The area meets all four of the natural heritage selection criteria for a World Heritage site. and on 21 May 2007 the Wet Tropics was added to the Australian National Heritage List.

The tropical forests have the highest concentration of primitive flowering plant families in the world. Only Madagascar and New Caledonia, due to their historical isolation, have humid, tropical regions with a comparable level of endemism. Many plant and animal species in the Wet Tropics are found nowhere else in the world. The Wet Tropics has the oldest continuously surviving tropical rainforests on earth.

Indigenous peoples

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 environment.

Geography

The Wet Tropics of Queensland stretches in part from Townsville to Cooktown, running in close parallel to the Great Barrier Reef (another World Heritage Site).

The terrain is rugged. The Great Dividing Range and a number of small coastal ranges, highlands, tablelands, foothills and an escarpment dominate the landscape.

The heritage site contains the northern section of the Queensland tropical rain forests including the Daintree Rainforest. Sixteen different structural types of rainforest have been identified.

The World Heritage area includes Australia's highest waterfall, Wallaman Falls. In total it spans 13 major river systems including the Annan, Bloomfield, Daintree, Barron, Mulgrave, Russell, Johnstone, Tully, Herbert, Burdekin, Mitchell, Normanby and Palmer River.

  • Wooroonooran National Park

and over 700 protected areas including privately owned land.

The Wet Tropics Management Authority was established in 1983; it is responsible for managing the site according to Australia's obligations under the World Heritage Convention. The agency employed 20 staff in 2012 as a unit within the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection. It is headed by a board of directors responsible to the Wet Tropics Ministerial Council which contains both Queensland and Federal Government representatives. This includes at least 50 individual species which are endemic to the area. The large rare trees Stockwellia or Vic Stockwell's Puzzle Stockwellia quadrifida (Myrtaceae) grow only in restricted areas of "well developed upland rain forest" in the Wet Tropics. They continue living today as descendants of, and very similar to, the ancient Gondwanan ancestors of the Eucalypts, which diversified into so many different species forms of all the Eucalypt plants today. 65% of Australia's fern species are protected here, including all seven of the ancient fern species.

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370 species of bird have been recorded in the area.

The southern cassowary and rare spotted-tailed quoll are some of the many threatened species, while the musky rat-kangaroo is one of 50 animal species that are unique to this area. Some areas are off-limits to the general public to prevent the introduction of Phytophthora.

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File:Kuranda - Barron Gorge lookout.jpg|Barron Gorge in Barron Gorge National Park

File:Wooroonooran Josephine Falls.jpg|Josephine Falls, 2008

File:Daintree Rainforest 3.jpg|Daintree Rainforest, 2011

File:Musky-rat.jpg|The musky rat-kangaroo is a marsupial species only found in the Wet Tropics ecoregion.

File:Map of the Wet Tropics of Queensland - UNESCO World Heritage List.jpg|Map of the region, 2012

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See also

  • Environment of Australia
  • Forests of Australia
  • List of World Heritage Sites in Asia and Australasia

References

  • Wet Tropics Management Authority webpage
  • World heritage listing for Wet Tropics of Queensland