Proceedings of an International Year of Mountains - Australian Alps ...

diversity of cool temperate and tropical rainforests to tall wet eucalypt forests, dry open forests,
heathlands, wetlands, swamps, woodlands and grassland communities (Worboys 1996a).
The Great Escarpment, with its very diverse range of habitats, is particularly species rich and parallels in
biodiversity conservation importance with the flora and fauna communities of south west Western
Australian. It supports very high numbers of birds, mammals, reptiles and other species (Pianka and
Schall 1981; State of the Environment Advisory Council 1996). This species richness which included the
presence of over 90 Eucalypt species (NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service1998) was internationally
recognised by the inscription of the Greater Blue Mountains area onto the World Heritage list in 2000 ).
The southern extent of the Great Escarpment has a number of interconnected protected areas in Victoria
and NSW currently forming a north-south conservation corridor of over 350 kilometres. It is these
reserves which form the current conservation corridor. The linking of this conservation corridor and its
several connections to the coast and tablands has only been achieved since 1997 (see Table 1).
The Australian Alps conservation corridor
The Australian Alps conservation corridor extends north-south along the spine of the watershed of the
Great Dividing Range of Australia (Figures 1 and 3). It stretches 690 km south from Wee Jasper through
the Brindabella Range on the Australian Capital Territory/NSW border, through the Snowy Mountains of
NSW and along the Great Dividing Range through Victoria. The Alps form a 1,657,570 hectare
continuous conservation corridor of nine protected areas crossing State and Territory borders along the
highest parts of the Australian continent.
The protected area network of the Australian Alps has developed gradually since 1906. In 1944, the
former Premier of NSW, Sir William McKell, responding to growing pressure caused by the impact on
catchments of alpine grazing as well as the needs of the proposed Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric
Scheme, established the first great alpine park in Australia (Byles and Dunphy 1966; Stanley 1983)
(Figure 2). It contains the continent’s highest mountain (Mt Kosciuszko - 2228m) as well as including the
entire alpine and most of the subalpine areas in NSW. It also encompasses a wide variety of montane
eucalypt forest, open woodland, rain forest, heathlands, wetlands and dry semi arid callitris forests.
In Victoria, smaller icon parks were initially established. These were then linked by the Victorian
Government to create the Alpine National Park (646,000ha) in 1989 from the controversial
recommendations of the Land Conservation Council. Further work of the Council resulted in the creation
of additional parks such as Avon Wilderness and Snowy River in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Alpine, Snowy
River and Avon Wilderness National Parks extend to the south and south west and contain the alpine
areas, subalpine woodland, heathlands and montane forests of the Victoria Alps (Figure 2).
The declarations of Namadgi National Park in the ACT in 1984 and Brindabella National Park in NSW
(1996) extended the corridor of Australian Alps protected areas. north from the core of the Alps (Figure
2). Together these parks are now managed under a tri-state Australian Alps Parks Memorandum of
Understanding for Cooperative Management.
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Celebrating Mountains – An International Year of Mountains Conference
Jindabyne, New South Wales, Australia