Wooroonooran Nature Refuge, QLD. VAST-2: Tracking the Transformation of Australia's Vegetated Landscapes

The aim of this project is to compile land use and management practices and their observed and measured impacts and effects on vegetation condition. The results provide land managers and researchers with a tool for reporting and monitoring spatial and temporal transformations of Australia’s native vegetated landscapes due to changes in land use and management practices. Following are the details for the Wooroonooran Nature Refuge.

Pre-European benchmark-analogue vegetation: the original vegetation for the site was a complex mesophyll vine forest on basaltic red loams on wet uplands, altitude 720 m with 4.421 mm rainfall (av annual records for the period 1993-2011, source: Peter Stanton).

Brief chronology of changes in land use and management:
1800: Indigenous management of mesophyll rainforest by Ngadyan people
1924: Start of selective logging of high value timber species
1930: Finish of selective logging of high value timber species - intent to convert rainforest to pasture
1931: Start of land clearing of the previously logged forest - intent to convert rainforest to pasture
1938: End of land clearing of the previously logged forest - forest trash burnt
1939: Start of intensive soil and pasture management - soil not ploughed - aggressive pasture grasses sown into ash bed
1940: Start of grazing - pasture for dairying
1958: End of grazing, planted pasture for dairying. Pastures infertile. All livestock removed
1959: Start of land abandonment and minimal use
1983: Commenced large scale spraying and poisoning and physical removal of lantana
1993: Regrowth rainforest (complex mesophyll vine forest) in gullies and on lower slopes - 50% of lot 2
1994: Continued large scale spraying and poisoning of lantana and carpet grass
2003: Site formally gazetted as Wooroonooran Nature Refuge by WTMA
2011: Site continues to be manage for multiple values: timber reserve, biodiversity and habitat values.