An Extraordinary Natural Legacy

Two decades ago, in an endeavour to expand the state’s parks network and diversify regional economies, the Western Australian government started a program to buy selected leasehold properties, mainly in the Gascoyne and Murchison bioregions.

Their intention was to create a more comprehensive, adequate and representative reserve system and protect rare and unique biodiversity. The parks would also provide new recreational and tourism opportunities in regions with few or no existing reserves.

But the process was never completed and these properties have remained ever since as unallocated Crown land.

It was our privilege to be commissioned by The Pew Charitable Trusts to assess the natural values of some 60 of these properties, across 5 million hectares, and make recommendations about an appropriate future for them. This is the first publication to do so in a comprehensive way.

Western Australia is well known for its extraordinary biodiversity, rich in unique species and ecological communities. Nonetheless, as we delved into databases and scientific publications, we found ourselves surprised by the outstanding nature of these potential new parks.

Some of their values are already well appreciated – the world heritage biodiversity and scenic values of properties at Shark Bay, for example, and wetlands such as Fortescue Marsh and Thundelarra lignum swamp listed by the Australian government as nationally important.

But other values are poorly known or have only recently been appreciated. Discovered only 20 years ago beneath the sandy plains of many Murchison properties are groundwater calcrete ‘islands’ harboring communities of unique species of water beetles, crustaceans, mites and other invertebrates that never see the light of day. And aboveground, on ancient ironstone ranges with skeletal soils are unique plant communities, often with species found only on those ranges. That’s what you get in landscapes as ancient as those of the Yilgarn and Pilbara cratons.

The old infertile soils and low sporadic rainfall mean it can be tough for plants and animals to make a living across much of this country. But innovative adaptation and specialisation across eons of geological stability have produced impressive diversity. These properties include centres of diversity or endemism for stygofauna, lizards, wattles and other plants. They are also rich in cultural heritage. What can’t be quantified or represented on maps are the powerful stories such values represent – the billions of years of geological sculpting, the millions of years of biological evolution, and the tens of thousands of years of human occupation.

Unfortunately, the properties are also rich in threatened and at-risk species and ecological communities, which means they need attentive conservation management to retain and recover their values. If, as recommended in this report, these properties are protected as conservation reserves, Western Australians will be very fortunate in the future to be able to visit these ecological and cultural treasures.