Action 1.5: Rehabilitate degraded areas to improve integrity of the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area

The Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area has recovered well over the last few decades from historical logging and land clearing that occurred before the Area was declared as World Heritage. Good management has greatly assisted this process—particularly controls on activities within the World Heritage Area under the Wet Tropics Act—as has the rapid expansion of the nature conservation estate in national park and other reserves. The other major factor is the extraordinary efforts of a multitude of community groups, the not-for-profit conservation sector, Rainforest Aboriginal People and others, undertaking restoration and enhancement activities at various scales across the Area. Despite these efforts, significant areas of the Wet Tropics still require further works (e.g. new plantings of native species, enhancement, managing threats such as invasive species, erosion control) to improve the condition and integrity of previously cleared areas, enhance connectivity for the movement of biodiversity, and to contribute to Australia’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions through sequestration of carbon in biodiverse plantings.

The Authority will:

• continue to actively support rehabilitation of degraded areas through:

• finalising a connectivity plan and decision support framework in collaboration with Terrain NRM to prioritise and direct restoration actions

• support threatened species recovery teams to develop and implement connectivity and restoration plans for individual (or groups) of species

• seek to develop and implement a partner driven ‘whole of Wet Tropics’ landscape scale restoration project, through funding from the Queensland Government’s Land Restoration fund or other funding sources yet to be identified.