Colong Foundation for Wilderness

The Greater Blue Mountains were listed as a World Heritage Area on 29 November 2000. A million hectares of rugged sandstone escarpments, pagoda towers, meandering rivers and remote wilderness areas cloaked in dry eucalypt forests is now recognised as one of the most biodiverse and beautiful places on the planet. The Colong Foundation for Wilderness was the first to propose World Heritage listing, in 1987, and had actively pursued the goal ever since.

For many staunch conservationists, like 92 year old Alex Colley O.A.M., of the Colong Foundation for Wilderness, it is the culmination of a life's work. "If we hadn’t fought like tigers for the protection of the Blue Mountains they wouldn’t have been worth listing and preserving," said Alex.

Over more than 30 years the Foundation, working closely with many other conservationists, has defeated devastating proposals for limestone mining, coal mining, power stations, dams, airports, clearfelling for pine plantations, super highways, bad tourism developments, 4WD hooligans access, urban sprawl and water pollution. They have been instrumental in achieving six national parks and four wilderness areas which form the heart of the region listed.

The Foundation congratulates all the many, many conservationists who have fought to protect and preserve the Greater Blue Mountains.

The World Heritage list records the Earth’s greatest cultural and natural treasures.

Inscription of the Blue Mountains on the World Heritage list of properties gives international recognition to the area’s outstanding values and also helps to ensure its best possible protection.

In day-to-day terms this means that the parks would be managed as one unit - the Greater Blue Mountains National Park to an improved standard. It would help to ensure those development proposals such as dams; cliff-top development or coal mining are not permitted to damage the world heritage property.

Australia’s newest World Heritage property, the Greater Blue Mountains area, contains over a million hectares of eucalypt forests that are entirely protected within the publicly owned parks — the Blue Mountains, Wollemi, Nattai, Gardens of Stone and Thirlmere National Parks, and the Jenolan Caves Karst Reserve. It contains the Nattai, Kanangra-Boyd, Grose, Yengo and Wollemi wilderness areas, totalling over 650,000 hectares. The area embodies the highest wilderness qualities in the temperate region of mainland Australia and includes Wollemi, which at 361,000 hectares, is the largest eucalypt forest wilderness in the world.

Recognition of the outstanding universal value of the Sydney Sandstone upland geomorphology was not pursued by Australia, but it was foreshadowed that it may be revisited at a later date.

Private lands within the property were excluded. These areas should be acquired and added to the World Heritage area as a priority. Except for Jenolan Caves and the Emirates Resort, tourism establishments are located well outside the park boundaries, on adjoining private lands. Several adjacent national parks, state recreation areas and regional parks offer further protection.

The simple answer to the above is that the area has outstanding universal heritage values which deserve the highest level of protection. These values are summarised as:

The site has the most diverse forest of the sclerophyll type in the world. The eucalypt vegetation has the highest number of eucalypt species and the ecological processes at work in it are outstanding.

A joint letter of support signed by Dr Peter H Raven of the Missouri Botanical Garden, Emeritus Professor T H Clifford of the Queensland Museum, Emeritus Professor Charles Birch of Sydney University, Dr M. Brooker CSIRO Plant Industry, Australian National Herbarium and Dr Barbara G Briggs of the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney expressed support for Australia's Blue Mountains nomination and for the independence of the Australian Government to chose how it presents its nominations.

Professor Sir Robert May, AC, Chief Science Adviser to the Government of the UK and past President of the Royal Society, Professor Harold A. Mooney of Standford University, Emeritus Professor R O Slatyer AC of the Australian National University, Emeritus Professor Carrick Chambers of the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, Dr Bryan A Barlow of the Australian National Herbarium, Professor John Dodson of the University of Western Australia, and Dr Rod Peakall of the Australian National University are other internationally renowned scientists who have provided supporting statements for the nomination, establishing the merits of listing the Blue Mountains on its eucalypt diversity and as an outstanding example of the evolution of Australian flora.

Professor Jamie Kirkpatrick of the University of Tasmania prepared the case for inscription of the Blue Mountains on its outstanding universal natural values for the Australian Government.

No Australian World Heritage nomination has enjoyed more comprehensive Australian support than the nomination of the Greater Blue Mountains Area from each level of government and opposition political parties.

Non-government environment groups, including The Colong Foundation for Wilderness, The Wilderness Society, the World Wide Fund for Nature Australia and the Australian Conservation Foundation Blue Mountains Conservation Society and the former Hawkesbury-Nepean Catchment Management Trust support the nomination.

The World Heritage assessors' criticism of the large number of inholdings in the nomination area is understandable. The World Heritage Bureau correctly views enclaves in parks as the targets for inappropriate development, including mines.

Inholdings are being acquired by the NPWS but more should be done, particularly in the north-east in Yengo National Park and in the Burragorang Valley. Acquisitions include the 320 hectare Duggan property on the Jenolan River and Budthingaroo on the Boyd Plateau (with generous financial assistance from the Blue Mountains Conservation Society), as well as other inholdings in the Nattai wilderness.

Bob Debus, former NSW Environment Minister, must be congratulated for ensuring that over 77,000 hectares of private land, previously acquired in the southern Blue Mountains for the preservation of water supplies were transferred to the National Parks and Wildlife Service. This greatly improved the integrity of the World Heritage Area.

The Clarence Colliery on the Newnes Plateau in the upper Blue Mountains continues to discharge 14 megalitres a day of polluted water to the Wollangambe River and 18 megalitres a day at peak times. The upper reaches of the river are coated in black muck and the discharge is putting at risk the ecological integrity of this otherwise pristine river in the Wollemi wilderness within the World Heritage area.

Centennial coal, the mine's owner, has obtained a major extension of the mining operation over state forest land within the Gardens of Stone National Park proposal. Centennial Coal has been told to stop the pollution of the river but no definite plan to remove all the pollution from the World Heritage area has been developed following the failure of an initial water transfer trial.

See Blue Mountains Mining Threat for more information and suggestions for actions you can take to stop this threats to the World Heritage area.

The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage area contains a natural history story of antiquity, diversity, beauty and human attachment. The ecology of the Sydney sandstone plateaus is characterised by its development under a long period of geological stability and continental biological isolation.

The Evergreen Sclerophyllous Forests, Shrubs and Woodlands is one of the fourteen biomes of the world. Outside Australia, only the Mediterranean once had sclerophyll forests but this has been reduced to scrub by human influences. Inside Australia, the Blue Mountains are within the Eastern Sclerophyll Open Forest biogeographical region and represents its most diverse expression.

There are 152 plant families and 484 genera in the nominated area. The area lists 92 eucalypt tree species found and 127 rare or threatened plant species found in the area. In addition, the area contains 132 vascular plants that are found nowhere else on Earth, as typified by the living fossil, the Wollemi Pine, whose history dates back 100 million years.

By way of comparison with other World Heritage properties in the Eastern Sclerophyll Open Forest biographical region, the Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves World Heritage Property represents rainforests that does not cover the variety of species and forest types of the Blue Mountains. The areas has outstanding levels of plant diversity, containing more vascular plant species than the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area, the latter being also a rainforest property of the region. Fraser Island is listed for its geomorphological properties, rather than its eucalypt vegetation, which is not outstanding for the region. The Alps and South East Forests is outstanding for its vertical array of eucalypt communities and would complement the Blue Mountains well.

The Blue Mountains is a living laboratory of landforms and ecosystems. Its gorges, complete with Gonwanic rainforests, were already millions of years old when the Grand Canyon (in the U.S. of A.) began to form, six million years ago. Outside its deepest recesses, fire has driven the evolutionary clock forward, with the result that the plateau areas of the area are clothed with fire-adapted, sclerophyll vegetation types, making the Greater Blue Mountains one of the most fire-prone regions in the world. The infertility of its sandstone derived soils also facilitated the competition amongst plant species and encouraged the development of scleromorphy (typically hard, thickened leaves and pronounced leaf cuticle development).

The Blue Mountains is the best example of modern scleromorph diversity with the added interest of being juxtaposed with the original Gondwanan vegetation. That the Blue Mountains is the centre of eucalypt diversity is an expression of adaptation to low nutrient soils, global climatic changes of the late Tertiary and the Quaternary, increased fire, and stable landforms. The Greater Blue Mountains provides an outstanding example of the dynamic interactions between eucalypt trees, its species-rich shrubby understorey, environment and fire. The eucalypt forests types range from those that co-exist with rainforest where fire is rare, to mallee (multi-stemmed) eucalypts, which co-exist in heath lands where fire is frequent. There is no doubt that the Blue Mountains contain the world’s most outstanding representation of eucalypt-dominated plant communities.

The diversity and beauty of the sclerophyll vegetation is also an integral component of the aesthetic value of the World Heritage area. On a landscape scale, the area is famous for its blue-tinted hues that are an expression of its scleromorphy. The Greater Blue Mountains are great because of their broad acres of panoramic beauty, over a million hectares in size. They are also blue, produced by the diffraction of light by fine droplets of eucalyptus oil. The area is actually a plateau-like upland and are only mountains in the historical sense that they formed an impenetrable barrier to European settlement for over a quarter of a century.

The Blue Mountains, when viewed from the Sydney Basin is a great blue-green crescent of tableland that contains on close inspection dramatic yellow sandstone escarpments. It is a landscape that has shaped the perceptions of the country as strongly as the flat inland plains and red deserts of the outback. Its time-weathered sandstone, carpeted by diverse endemic vegetation - the floral diversity responding to every minor change in ecology -produce a wilderness landscape of astounding texture, colour and perfume. Its gorges, bottleneck valleys, slot canyons, limestone caves, plateaux, broad valleys and intricate ‘pagoda’ rock formations add a rich structure to the otherwise bewildering complexity. Its aesthetic strength lies in its ability to touch everyday lives with wonder at the scale, power and fascinating minutiae of nature in the wild.

It is tangibly associated with Aboriginal occupation, and their custodianship over the land, over the millennia (at least 14,000 years). The World Heritage area contains some 700 known Aboriginal occupation sites and rock shelter paintings, as well as rock platform engravings. In no other area of Australia does pigment and engraved art forms occur on such a grand scale. The potential for many more significant sites to be located is enormous. It is a place where ancient custodianship has been replaced by another form of custodianship, significant nonetheless.

The current level of preservation of the area is a testament to the affection that the highly urbanised community of Sydney hold for their bush hinterland. Other outstanding sandstone escarpment landscapes exist in world with higher cliffs and waterfalls, but none are as accessible, in a well-water, forested landscape. None are located within 60 kilometres of a city of 4.5 million people. In this, the Blue Mountains is a uniquely scenic, forested wilderness landscape has resisted the degradation and fragmentation arising from the demands of urban-industrial society, such as mining, logging, clearing for agriculture or for the grazing of stock. Through a custodianship, and voluntary conservation efforts, the area comprises the best open sclerophyll type forest wilderness in the world and, with continuing appropriate management, is of an ample size to continue to function as an ecologically self contained unit indefinitely.

During the 19th century, the health-based movement led to the first conservation efforts in the area, as society considered nature to have restorative powers for ones health and so should be conserved. This also led to waking track systems created with unprecedented improvisation and craftsmanship. These tracks then assisted those who ventured into untracked wilderness and helped create a new visitor to the Blue Mountains - the bushwalker.

Bushwalking developed hand in hand with nature conservation with a visionary park proposal being submitted over 450,000 hectares by a bushwalking conservationist, Myles Dunphy, in 1932. Mr Dunphy also made bushwalking maps to encourage conservation of the proposal areas, and it was bushwalkers who first acted to preserve the Blue Gum Forest in the Grose Valley in the heart of the area. The conservation revival of the 1960s lead to mass public support for the earlier park proposals, and to the defeat of alternative plans to develop the area. Today, the final stage is to consolidate these gains by protecting the nominated area through appropriate management, including the recognition of World Heritage values.

The area is close to pristine, reflecting the very high integrity of the area. Specific objectives of the current park management plans recognise the need to manage the nominated parks as part of the Greater Blue Mountains National Park system.

The World Heritage area is being protected from off park impacts through the progressive acquisition of ‘inholdings’. In the last two years ten private properties have been acquired by the NSW Government in the Nattai, Wollemi, Kanangra-Boyd and Wollemi national parks. Several other parks adjoin the World Heritage property, including Dharug and Goulburn national parks (totalling 86,200 ha), and Bargo, Burragorang, Yerranderie, Nattai and Parr State Recreation Areas (totalling 74,100 ha). Lands owned by the Sydney Catchment Authority and environmental protection zones on private lands in the Blue Mountains also buffer the area and here the legal management responsibilities of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service are growing.

The care and protection of these lands, their historic walking tracks and Aboriginal art sites are managed through the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. Park management maximises peripheral access and enjoyment, yet conserved the remaining million protected hectares.

World Heritage inscription is highly justified by its universal heritage values, that deserve the highest level of recognition and protection. Placing the Blue Mountains on the World Heritage list of properties gives due recognition to the biodiversity of its sclerophyll forests. The natural beauty of its wilderness areas, and to its the cultural associations which date from 14,000 year old rock engravings to the 140 years of continuous effort by modern society to protect and promote the heritage values of the area should also be recognised.

Dr Geoff Mosley’s book Blue Mountains for World Heritage describes the proposal and is available from the Colong Foundation for Wilderness. Price $15.00, including postage.

Alex Colley and Henry Gold's book Blue Mountains World Heritage describes the struggle to protect the Blue Mountains and then inscribe the areas on the World Heritage list of properties. It is abundantly illustrated with Henry's stunning full page colour plates and also the historic black and white images used during the various campaigns for the area. Price $50.00, including postage.