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.

Data and Resources

Additional Information

Field Value
Published (Metadata Record) 02/03/2026
Last updated 03/03/2026
Organisation Australian Federal Government
License License Not Specified
Update Frequency Unknown