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Australia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area (or 29.4% of its land area) and, with almost 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population. |
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| Barrow Island, about 60 km off WA's North- West coast, is a ruggedly beautiful refuge for some of WA's most threatened species. WA's second-largest island, Barrow has internationally significant biodiversity values that will be jeopardised or lost forever without a concerted effort to regulate and limit human access and activities.
There are 24 known species or subspecies that occur only on Barrow Island. This exceptional assemblage includes five forms of mammal, two reptiles, one bird and 16 invertebrates.
The island is also a refuge for the magnificent Perentie, which at lengths of over two metres is the world's second largest lizard.
Rising sea levels separated Barrow Island from the mainland at least 6,000 years ago.
'Discovered' by Europeans in 1818, it was under relatively little pressure for grazing as it had so few permanent water holes. That relative absence of human intervention allowed Barrow Island to maintain its environmental values and, in 1910, Barrow was declared a Class A Nature Reserve. This classification is the highest form of conservation protection available in WA.
Barrow Island first came to public prominence with Harry Butler's "In the Wild" programs on the ABC in the early 1970s. It has also been under the sustainability microscope since the 1950s, when developers were allowed strictly controlled access to the nature reserve to explore for oil. Since drilling began in 1964, over 900 wells have been drilled, with over 400 still producing today.
There has not yet been a comprehensive, independent study to assess whether the presence of a producing oil field has jeopardised this sensitive area, or has the potential to do so. While there are signs of degradation, it can be said that the island's ecology has been relatively unharmed by feral animals and weeds, which have been the scourge of mainland ecosystems.
In many ways, Barrow Island is a living record of how parts of mainland Australia might have been prior to European occupation.
To date, 350 plant species have been recorded on Barrow Island. The vegetation on Barrow is not only very different form that of the Pilbara, but it is also different from the vegetation of any other island off the Pilbara coast.
Despite the oil industry's existing quarantine procedures 13 environmental weed species are known to have reached Barrow, with seven species contained but still remaining.
Barrow Island's major environmental asset is its terrestrial and subterranean fauna. The current absence of cats, foxes and black rats has allowed the island to remain a haven for a number of species that are extinct, or whose populations have declined, on the mainland.
Barrow supports 14 forms of terrestrial mammal, six of which have special Federal and/or State recognition as threatened species.
All but the Black-footed Rock-wallaby occur nowhere else in the world.
Barrow Island is the only home of the Barrow Island Black and White Fairy-wren, which is on Federal and State threatened species lists. Over 100 other bird species have been recorded on Barrow, of which 32 are known to breed there.
Eleven of the 28 species of subterranean invertebrate fauna known on Barrow, such as the Barrow Island millipede, are listed under the Wildlife Conservation Act. A comprehensive study of the species and distributions of subterranean invertebrates on Barrow Island has never been undertaken and is urgently needed.
Barrow Island is home to mangroves, regionally significant coral communities and intertidal flats; only a small percentage of which are specially protected within the proposed Barrow-Montebello Marine Conservation Reserve. Whales, dolphins and dugongs live in, or migrate through, the surrounding waters. Green, flatback and hawksbill turtles nest on Barrow's beaches.
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