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Cape York Peninsula Land Use Strategy
Cape York Peninsula Land Use Strategy
Abrahams, H., Mulvaney, M., Glasco, D., & Bugg, A.
Office of the Co-ordinator General of Queensland
Australian Heritage Commission, March 1995
Rainforests in Australia are restricted and are recognised around the country as areas of significance (Section 4.1 in this report). The species richness (sub-criterion A3), presence of rare, endangered or restricted species (sub-criterion B1) and Gondwanic associations of rainforest communities (sub-criterion A1) are of particular note. The rainforest areas of Cape York Peninsula display these features often.
The importance of these communities has resulted in a detailed thematic study of the rainforests of Cape York Peninsula being undertaken as part of the CYPLUS NRAP project by Stanton and Fell, the results of which have been incorporated in the Neldner, Clarkson 1994 database. That detailed work considered all mapped rainforest areas of the Peninsula.
Some 20% of the national extent of rainforest occurs on the Peninsula. The majority of this is little disturbed, if at all. These factors contribute to all rainforest areas identified on the Peninsula being of national conservation significance. Areas identified on Figure 10.1 are those mapped as Rainforest by Neldner and Clarkson (1994). These authors mapped 748,100 hectares of rainforest on the Peninsula, this is about 5.6% of the total area.