Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage natural criteria

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Key finding

The Wet Tropics of Queensland meets all four World Heritage natural criteria, displaying: features of exceptional natural beauty; outstanding examples of the major stages in the earth's evolutionary history; outstanding examples of ongoing ecological processes and biological evolution; and is a centre of biological diversity and the only habitat for numerous threatened species.

Wet Tropics of Queensland (information applies statewide, map locations are for reference only)

The 894,420ha Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area is extremely important for its rich and unique biodiversity, it was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1988.

It also presents an unparalleled record of the ecological and evolutionary processes that shaped the flora and fauna of Australia, containing relicts of the Gondwanan forest that covered Australia 50 to 100 million years ago.

All of Australia’s unique marsupials, and most of its other animals, originated in rainforest ecosystems, and their closest surviving relatives occur in the Wet Tropics. These living relicts of the Gondwanan era and their subsequent diversification provide unique insights into the process of evolution. They provide us with important information for the interpretation of fossils of plants and animals found elsewhere in Australia, and about the evolution of Australia’s dry adapted sclerophyll (hard leaf) flora and marsupial fauna in particular.

More information:

Indicator: Area reflects the scope and breadth of world heritage natural criteria

Wet Tropics of Queensland world heritage natural criteria identified by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Heritage Convention.

Wet Tropics of Queensland world heritage natural criteria

World heritage natural criteria Criteria summary

Download data from Queensland Government data