IMPORTANT BIODIVERSITY AREAS

PRIORITY BI1

Tasmanian Wilderness Word Heritage Area (TWWHA)

The TWWHA includes significant and extensive areas of intact vegetation and provides landscape-scale environments that enable interaction between native
species without human intervention. A high proportion of flora and fauna are endemic to the TWWHA. Temperate rainforest, eucalypt forest, buttongrass moorland and alpine communities create a unique mosaic and provide refuge for a wide range of rare and threatened species including carnivorous marsupials. The TWWHA contains many sites of tangible cultural value for the Aboriginal community, including caves, artefact scatters, quarries and middens. The broader connection that Aboriginal people have to Country is also recognised and plants, animals, marine resources, minerals (ochre and rock sources), tracks, forests, interpretation and presentation, and fire management are all identified as broader Aboriginal values of the TWWHA. The ability then for Aboriginal people to be ‘on-Country’ is highly appropriate and important to maintain that connection.

outcome

By 2030, a partnership program is reducing the threat of invasive species affecting the natural values of the TWWHA.

threats

Local threats that can be addressed by NRM actions:

  • Land use pressures on surrounding land including development, intensification of industries and poor management practices
  • Weeds, feral animals and disease
  • Increasing fire risk due to climate change

Actions

BI1.a

Establish a partnership program with land managers, community groups and businesses in buffer areas around the TWWHA where invasive plants, animals, fungi and diseases, and fire risk are managed appropriately.

Establish a partnership with PWS, Cradle Valley businesses and community groups to work on the issue of feral cats in the Cradle Valley area that borders the TWWHA.

Support partnership opportunities between PWS and West Coast Aboriginal communities to access culturally important sites in the TWWHA and maintain Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

Assess the weed, feral animal, fire and drought threat to patches of the EPBC-listed Threatened Ecological Community, Alpine Sphagnum Bogs and Associated Fens, and work with PWS to manage these threats if there is an opportunity to do so.

implementation

Investment Opportunity

  • Australian Government
  • Tasmanian Government
  • Regional or Local
  • Private or philanthropic

  • Information gathering activities including assessment and mapping of weeds and feral animals.
  • On-ground work including weed and feral animal management in strategic buffer zones. Land management agreements with neighbouring landholders. Fencing, stock control, bushfire risk mitigation.
  • Behaviour-change and capacity-building activities – education, awareness and skillbuilding focused on natural and cultural values of the TWWHA.

Local councils; Government agencies including PWS; Aboriginal groups; Landcare, Wildcare and other community groups; land managers; volunteers; businesses and not-for-profits in Cradle Valley; researchers.

Field days, workshops and educational activities; extension, capacity building and land management agreement opportunities for landholders; consultation with PWS and neighbouring land managers about preferred management options; volunteer and citizen science opportunities.