Australian Fire Season Hitting Gondwana Rain Forests, Historically Too Wet To Burn (Until Now)

[hatrack]

The Unesco world heritage centre has expressed concern about bushfire damage to the Gondwana rainforests of northern New South Wales and southern Queensland, and asked the Australian government whether it is affecting their world heritage values.

In a statement on its website, the centre said members of the media and civil society had asked about the bushfires affecting the areas inscribed on the world heritage list as the “Gondwana rainforests of Australia”. The forests are considered a living link to the vegetation that covered the southern supercontinent Gondwana before it broke up about 180m years ago.

EDIT

Scientists say the bushfires this spring have been unprecedented, in part because they have destroyed areas that have historically been too wet to burn. The affected area includes parts of the major remaining rainforest areas in south-east Queensland and north-east NSW, which are listed as one world heritage site.

The world heritage area includes the largest areas of subtropical rainforest on the planet, some warm temperate rainforest and nearly all the world’s Antarctic beech cool temperate rainforest. It consists of about 40 separate reserves, spread between Newcastle and Brisbane, and surrounded by fire-prone eucalypt forest and farms. The centre says the rainforests are “outstanding examples of major stages of the Earth’s evolutionary history, ongoing geological and biological processes, and exceptional biological diversity”.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/28/unesco-expresses-concern-over-bushfire-damage-to-australias-gondwana-era-rainforests

[Mickju]

1. As a former resident of Brisbane, this is heartbreaking.

I lived there from 1975 to 1980 and traveled up and down the Queensland coast and south to northern New South Wales, as well as to Sydney, Melbourne and Newcastle. It was all so beautiful with lush, green vegetation. There was frequent torrential rain. One summer I was visiting friends on a farm near Innisfail. After many hours of the most torrential rainfall I have ever seen we were flooded in and I was unable to leave for several days. So it is very difficult to think of so much of that area drying out. It will only get worse there and everywhere. Tragic!