Fauna of Tasmania's Wilderness World Heritage Area

​​​​​​​​​​ ​The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA) plays a central role in the conservation of Tasmania’s unique fauna. 

The TWWHA:

• is 1.58 million hectares of largely pristine wilderness providing a large area for natural processes to occur

• supports habitats that are unique inthe world including huge buttongrass moorlands, the harsh alpine and subalpine zones, diversity of highland lakes and tarns, and labyrinthine caves. 

• supports pockets of Tasmania’s ancient cool temperate rainforest, with its age-old Gondwanan trees and ferns, mossy vaults and secret animal life beneath the canopy.

Although the world heritage fauna values of the TWWHA are well documented (WHA Nomination 1989), ​​​there has been no inventory of fauna species and how well these species are protected. This information is: 

• valuable for assessing the conservation status of species and the contribution the TW​WHA makes towards fauna conservation in Tasmania 

• useful for monitoring the effectiveness of fauna management
  

For example, monitoring changes in the number of native and exotic species in the TWWHA over time can give an indication of how the condition of the TWWHA may be changing. These changes may be a result of the introduction or eradication of exotic species, extinction of native species or changes in knowledge of species distribution or taxonomy.

The accurate inventorying of species in a particular area is a key first step in conserving both specified taxa, as well as in the long term conservation of biodiversity. 

For the vertebrate fauna, the inventory is reasonably reliable and complete. Inventories of invertebrates are necessarily both incomplete and constantly changing, as new species are unearthed and old systems of classification are revised and replaced. 

Compiling an inventory of an invertebrate fauna has three powerful benefits:

1. it summarises and centralises the current knowledge base

2. it provides a platform from which to design and implement further survey and taxonomic work

3. it highlights taxa, areas and habitats which are particularly poorly known
   

Please contact us if you are interested in adding new vertebrate records or updating the current lists.