Casuarius casuarius -upper body -captive-8a-2c

The Paluma Important Bird Area consists of the southernmost section of the Wet Tropics

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north Queensland North Queensland or the Northern Region is the northern part of the Australian state of Queensland that lies just south of Far North Queensland. Queensland is a massive state, larger than many countries, and its Tropical North Queensland, trop ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

Description

The geology of the 578 km² site is dominated by

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

and

metamorphic rock Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock to new types of rock in a process called metamorphism. The original rock ( protolith) is subjected to temperatures greater than and, often, elevated pressure of or more, caus ...

s, forming a rugged mountainous landscape covered by

tropical rainforest Tropical rainforests are dense and warm rainforests with high rainfall typically found between 10° north and south of the Equator. They are a subset of the tropical forest biome that occurs roughly within the 28° latitudes (in the torrid zo ...

and patches of wet sclerophyll forest. Most of it lies over 800 m above sea level. Much of the site has been selectively logged, though the ecological integrity of the area is still largely intact. It supports almost all the high altitude rainforest bird species

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to Australia's wet tropics, and could serve as an important climate change refuge.BirdLife International. (2011). Important Bird Areas factsheet: Paluma. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 14/09/2011.

Birds

The site has been identified by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding i ...

as an

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

(IBA) because it is a southern outlier for many species and contains a significant population of the vulnerable

southern cassowary The southern cassowary (''Casuarius casuarius''), also known as double-wattled cassowary, Australian cassowary, or two-wattled cassowary, is a large Flightless bird, flightless black bird, found in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and northeastern ...

. It also supports populations of bush stone-curlews, tooth-billed and golden bowerbirds,

lovely fairywren The lovely fairywren (''Malurus amabilis''), or lovely wren, is a species of bird in the Australasian wren family, Maluridae. It is endemic to northeastern Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country c ...

s, Macleay's, white-gaped,

yellow Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In t ...

, bridled and yellow-spotted honeyeaters, fernwrens, mountain thornbills, chowchillas, Bower's shrike-thrushes,

pied monarch The pied monarch (''Arses kaupi'') is a species of bird in the monarch-flycatcher family, Monarchidae. It is endemic to coastal Queensland in Australia. Taxonomy and systematics The pied monarch was described by John Gould in 1851, who delibe ...

s, white-browed and pale-yellow robins, and Victoria's riflebirds.

Other animals

As with birds the IBA forms the southernmost extent of distribution for many other endemic animals, including the green ringtail possum, the limbless snake-tooth skink, Boyd's forest dragon, the four-fingered shade skink, and the

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...

waterfall frog.

References

Important Bird Areas of Queensland North Queensland {{NorthQueensland-geo-stub