Filling The Biodiversity Gaps – Connecting the Tweed Coast to the Border Ranges

Up until about 200 years ago much of the Tweed Valley was covered in lush rainforest. This was ancient, old growth forest with 200my old connections to Gondwanaland when the southern continents were one large land mass. The rainforest thrived in the conditions created by the Tweed shield volcano with high rainfall and a warm subtropical climate, whilst in many other parts of Australia the country dried out and the rainforests contracted. Aboriginal people lived throughout the Tweed valley for at least 10,000 years preceding the arrival of Europeans.

Coastal aboriginal people from the Port Macquarie area in the 1920s. Photo: Thomas Dick

The descriptions from the first Europeans to venture into the Tweed Valley in the 1820s suggest that the rainforest was still intact. They noted “A deep rich valley clothed with magnificent trees, the beautiful uniformity of which was only interrupted by the turns and windings of the river, which here and there appeared like small lakes. The background was Mt. Warning. The view was altogether beautiful beyond description. The scenery here exceeded anything I have previously seen in Australia.”

Over a period of 40 years from 1840 to 1880 the early Europeans started the dismantling of the forest. The cedar getters worked to selectively remove Red cedar trees. The most dramatic transformation of the landscape occurred during the years of the Robertson Land Acts of 1861. This act allowed the free selection of blocks from 18 to 150ha if the occupier made improvements. This paved the way for wholesale land clearing and destruction of the original forest that changed the valley forever.

The current Tweed residents benefit from the creation of farmland, but there are concerns about the continued co-existence of threatened species, some of which are only found in the Tweed Caldera, such as Alberts lyrebird are threatened with extinction from further land clearing and pressures from a changing climate such as the recent record-breaking floods.

Private land is becoming increasingly important in the fight to save threatened species. Most National Parks in the Tweed region are on the escarpment country. Properties on the foothills, riparian and valley floors are vital to connecting to the larger National Parks on the higher ranges.

This project aims to restore fragmented habitat along identified fauna and climate change corridors to provide safer movement of fauna and flora across the shire from the Tweed Coast west to the Border Ranges and north-south across the shire potentially to higher altitude.