The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is in a place where glaciers have done a lot of damage. It is an island in the Southern Ocean, right next to a continent. Tasmania is one of Australia‘s states and, since 1982, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. These parks and reserves cover more than 1 million hectares and have steep gorges.
Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area
It is one of the few temperate rainforests that still exist on Earth. The remains found in limestone caves show that people have lived in the area for more than 20,000 years. The main business of TWWHA, which is shortened to TWWHA, is tourism. The place isn’t very developed, which is partly because of the difference between development and the idea of pristine nature.
There are no permanent residents in the area, except for a few small spots on the edges. People come here to do things like climbing, bushwalking, and whitewater rafting. By road, you can’t get to Bathurst Harbor. But the beautiful sights are worth the short flight in a small plane to Melaleuca Airstrip and the short boat ride or tour group trip from there.
This is a large, wet, temperate wilderness area that takes up a lot of southern and western Tasmania. The highest point is only 1,600 meters (5,000 feet) above sea level, and there is no snow cover all year long. A lot of the area is very rough, and it has the only large areas in Australia that were recently covered by glaciers.
The last ice age ended somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago. It is one of the last temperate wilderness areas in the world, and the South West Wilderness is part of it. There are six types of ecosystems in this area. These include rainforests, sclerophyll communities, alpine vegetation without trees, subalpine vegetation without trees, and wetland communities.
Tasmania Wildlife
There are many ancient species, primitive taxa, and a lot of different kinds of plants. They have strange qualities, like scleromorphic shrubs that evolved in a maritime climate in treeless alpine and subalpine ecosystems. The Darwin Crater in the TWWHA has the longest pollen record in Australia that has been kept going all the time.
There are 1,397 species in the area, from 293 families. There are 30 types of land mammals, 120 types of land birds, 14 types of land reptiles, 7 types of land frogs, 16 types of freshwater fish, and 68 types of marine fish. A lot of the wildlife in the TWWHA is only found in that area. The Moss Froglet (Crinia nimbus) and the Pedra Branca Skink are their names.
Tasmania has 904 species of Uniramia, 179 species of Chelicerata, 90 species of Aschelminthes, 88 species of Crustacea, 69 species of Mollusca, 57 species of Annelida, eight species of Platyhelminthes, and one species each of Onychophora and Nemertea. There are no permanent homes for people in the Tasmanian Wilderness.
You will only have a small amount of space near the edge. Not many roads go through the area. There is also trout fishing in the lakes of the Central Plateau. Trout are a species that were brought from the northern hemisphere. Unlike most of the rest of the Tasmanian Wilderness, people have been using the Central Plateau area for a long time.
About 30% of the land in the state has been set aside for conservation purposes. About 20% of the state is covered by the area. It is made up of four of Tasmania’s largest national parks and a number of smaller conservation areas with different land tenures.
Tasmania has 6.8 million hectares of land, and 3.4 million hectares of that is forest. 70% is on public land, 40% is in commercial forests, and 30% is on public land that is protected. Tasmania has a little less than 500,000 people living there. It is the state in Australia with the worst economy. Tourism is the only thing that is seen as a growth area.
Ecotourism is a type of tourism that focuses on the state’s natural features, especially the Tasmanian Wilderness. This puts a lot of stress on the environment there. Even though most places for tourists to stay are outside the area’s borders and most tourism happens at a few well-developed spots near the area’s edges.
