Greater Blue Mountains

The unique nature and animals that living here relate an astonishing checking account of the progression of Australia's unique eucalypt vegetation and its allied communities, birds and animals. It is an place of breathtaking views, rugged tablelands, sheer cliffs, deep, inaccessible valleys and swamps.

The Greater Blue Mountains was inscribed almost the World Heritage List in 2000.

The Greater Blue Mountains was one of 15 World Heritage places included in the National Heritage List following mention to speaking 21 May 2007.

The Greater Blue Mountains consists of 10,000 km2 of mostly forested landscape upon a sandstone plateau extending 60 to 180 kilometres inland from central Sydney, New South Wales.

The property includes totally extensive areas of a broad range of eucalypt communities and large tracts of wilderness. The high wilderness setting of much of the Greater Blue Mountains constitutes a vital and very significant contribution to its World Heritage value and has ensured the integrity of its ecosystems and the retention and guidance of its lineage values.

The Greater Blue Mountains is an place of breathtaking views, rugged tablelands, sheer cliffs, deep, inaccessible valleys and swamps teeming following simulation. The unique natural world and animals that living in this outstanding natural place relate an astounding bank account of Australia's antiquity, its diversity of vibrancy and its superlative beauty. This is the description of the benefit of Australia's unique eucalypt vegetation and its linked communities, nature and animals.

The property is comprised of eight protected areas in two blocks estranged by a transportation and urban fan the flames of corridor. These protected areas are the Blue Mountains, Wollemi, Yengo, Nattai, Kanangra-Boyd, Gardens of Stone and Thirlmere Lakes National Parks, and the Jenolan Karst Conservation Reserve.

The place is a intensely incised sandstone plateau rising from less than 100 metres above sea level to roughly 1300 metres at the highest narrowing. There are basalt outcrops upon the sophisticated ridges. This plateau is thought to have enabled the relic of a copious diversity of tree-tree-reforest and animal liveliness by providing a refuge from climatic changes during recent geological chronicles. It is particularly noted for its broad and balanced representation of eucalypt communities ranging from damp and temperate sclerophyll to mallee heathlands, as skillfully as localised swamps, wetlands, and grassland. One hundred and one species of eucalypts (on pinnacle of 14 per cent of the global sum) occur in the Greater Blue Mountains. Twelve of these are believed to occur and no-one else in the Sydney sandstone region.

The property has been described as a natural laboratory for studying the progress of eucalypts. The largest place of high diversity of eucalypts upon the continent is located in southeast Australia and the Greater Blue Mountains includes much of this eucalypt diversity.

As quickly as supporting such a significant proportion of the world's eucalypt species, the property provides examples of the range of structural adaptations of the eucalypts to Australian environments. These change from high forests at the margins of rainforest in the deep valleys, through relationships forests and woodlands, to shrublands of stunted mallees upon the exposed tablelands.

In late buildup taking place to its outstanding eucalypts, the Greater Blue Mountains moreover contains ancient, relict species of global significance. The most renowned of these is the recently-discovered Wollemi pine, Wollemia nobilis, a "dynamic fossil" dating mitigation to the age of the dinosaurs. Thought to have been extinct for millions of years, the few enduring trees of this ancient species are known by yourself from three little populations located in cold, inaccessible gorges within the Greater Blue Mountains. The Wollemi pine is one of the world's rarest species.

More than 400 oscillate kinds of animals alive within the rugged gorges and tablelands of the Greater Blue Mountains. These tote occurring threatened or rare species of conservation significance, such as the spotted-tailed quoll, the koala, the orangey-bellied glider, the long-nosed potoroo, the green and golden panic frog and the Blue Mountains water skink. Flora and fauna of conservation significance and their habitats are a major component of the World Heritage values of the place.