Ecological Rationale

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Protecting the public River Red Gum Forest estate

Patch clear-fell 50 metres from the Murray River. Amazingly, up to 95% of the timber logged along the Murray River is used for low value products such as firewood, fence posts and railway sleepers. Photo courtesy of NPANSW

A heavily cleared landscape

The River Red Gum Forests occur in one of the most heavily cleared landscapes in Australia with a minimum of seventy-five percent of the Murray Fans sub-region having been cleared in 200 years.

Very poorly reserved

The region is also one of the most poorly reserved in the whole of Australia, with less than two percent of the Riverina bioregion protected in permanent reserves and no national parks occurring along the length of the Murray in NSW. Both the National Land & Water Resources Audit and the National Reserve System recognise the region as one of the highest priorities for consolidating the protected area system in Australia.

Conservation values

Eighty percent of all River Red Gum forests have already been identified as high conservation value or indicative key areas for conservation in the Riverina bioregion

Important wetlands

The area includes significant amounts of wetland listed as being nationally and internationally important within the Directory of Important Wetlands and the Ramsar Convention. Fifty percent of Australia’s wetlands have already been destroyed and 50 percent of our inland waterbirds are listed as threatened.

Listed as vunerable. Over 9000 hectares of Superb Parrot breeding habitat has been logged by Forests NSW, despite operations having not been assessed under the EPBC Act. As one of the many Australian bird species that uses tree hollows for breeding, clearing of woodland areas has had a large impact on the parrot and, with minimal replacement of old trees, its numbers may continue to decline in the future. Photograph: Geoffrey Dabb

Threatened fauna

The region contains likely habitat for at least 46 threatened fauna species and 16 to 26 have already become regionally extinct. Some of these species require large habitat areas – powerful owl pairs, for example, will defend a home range of 400-1450 hectares. Protecting our River Red Gum Forests in national parks that encompass all of the Red Gum State Forests will prove crucial in providing this.

In addition, nineteen migratory bird species protected under international agreements with China and Japan have also been recorded in or near the forests.