| Photographs: | None |
|---|---|
| List: | Register of the National Estate |
| Class: | Natural |
| Legal Status: | Indicative Place |
| Place ID: | 101682 |
| Place File No: | 8/01/000/0525 |
| Nominator's Statement of Significance: |
|---|
| The reserve contains a nationally significant area of intact temperate lowland grassland, one of the most threatened and least preserved habitats in Australia. It contains populations of two nationally threatened species, the Striped Legless Lizard Delma impar, and the Golden Sun Moth Synemon plana. It also contains highly significant Aboriginal chert quarry sites. The history of the site - its change in purpose from commercially valuable |
| Official Values: Not Available |
| Description: |
|
The Gungahlin Grasslands reserve is arguably one of the most important nature reserves in Australia, protecting as it does a sample of the community that is probably the most endangered and least conserved in Australia - the lowland temperate native grasslands. In the ACT region, it is estimated that less than 5% of the original community survives, in a fragmented way. The reserve contains 170ha of relatively undisturbed temperate native grasslands, primarily Themeda triandra, Poa spp, Danthonia spp, and Stipa spp, which is of national significance. The area comprises gently undulating country, with the exception of the rocky Gungahlin Hill, 650m asl. In addition to the overall community, the reserve supports an important population of the nationally vulnerable Striped Legless Lizard, Delma impar, and the nationally endangered Golden Sun Moth Synemon plana. The Mulanggari section contains a complex of three surface Aboriginal chert quarry sites, "valued by the Ngunnawal people as a place of frequent and repeated use by their ancestors". It also "provides substantial, tangible and highly visible evidence of a particular mode of hardstone acquisition for Aboriginal stone tool making". Frawley describes Gunghalin Hill as comprising regenerating open forest, dominated by Eucalyptus mannifera and E rossii. The reserve is also of considerable interest in that the northern unit was originally to be cleared for the planned Gungahlin Town Centre; its value at the time as 'premium land for urban development purposes' was estimated to be in excess of $40 million. Its preservation in 1995 is thus seen as a significant recognition of its importance to the community, as reflected by the ACT Government. |
| History: Not Available |
| Condition and Integrity: |
| 170 hectares of the reserve are regarded as being intact temperate native grasslands; the remaining 330 ha of grasslands are disturbed, and provide a buffer to the core areas. It is anticipated that management of the reserve as a unit of Canberra Nature Park by the ACT Parks and Conservation Service will enable it to retain its extraordinarily high conservation values. |
| Location: |
| The reserve comprises three contiguous units. The northenmost unit, Mulanggari, on the site of the originally proposed Gungahlin Town Centre, is bounded on the north by the proposed Wells Station Road continuation and to the south-west by Gungahlin Drive. It continues across Gungahlin Drive as Gungaderra Unit, bounded partly in the north by th suburb of Palmerston, to the west (the Gungahlin Hill unit of Canberra Nature Park) by the CSIRO's Division of Wildlife and Ecology, to the south and south-west by the Barton Highway, the local radio complex of studios and transmitting stations, and Bellenden Street, and to the east by Gungahlin Drive (existing and proposed, as at early 1997). The third unit, Crace, is south of Bellenden Street and the suburb of Mitchell, west of Flemington Road, north of Randwick Road, and east of the Barton Highway. |
| Bibliography: |
|
ACT Heritage Council, 1996. Australian Capital Territory Interim Heritage Places Register; Aboriginal Chert Quarries (C1/1, C1/2 and C1/3), Gungahlin. Department of Urban Services, 1996. Canberra Nature Park; draft management plan. ACT Government. Frawley K, 1991. The Conservation of Remnant Woodland and Native Grassland in the ACT. National Parks Association of the ACT. Kirkpatrick J, McDougall K and Hyde M, 1996. Australia's Most Threatened Ecosystems; the southeastern lowland native grasslands. Surrey Beatty and Sons. Kukolic K (1993). Survey of the Striped Legless Lizard Delma impar in the Gungahlin Town Centre and North Watson Proposed Development Areas. Internal Report 93/1, Wildlife Research Unit, ACT Parks and Conservation Service. Kukolic K, McElhinney N & Osborne W, 1994. Survey for the Striped Legless Lizard Delma impar during 1993 in the proposed Development Area E1 comprising sites for Gungahlin Town Centre and the suburb of Franklin. Internal Report 94/3, Wildlife Research Unit, ACT Parks and Conservation Service. Osborne WS, Kukolic K and Williams KD, 1993. Conservation of Reptiles in Lowland Native Grasslands in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales and the ACT. in Lunney D & Ayers D (eds). Herpetology in Australia; a diverse discipline. Transactions of the Royal Zoological Society of NSW. World Wide Fund for Nature Australia, 1995. New Reserve of the Year Award, 1995. Information leaflet. |
Report Produced: Tue Feb 9 16:03:23 2010