Near Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Photograph by © WWF-Canon/Michèle DEPRAZ   East coast of Australia Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests   85,800 square miles (222,100 square kilometers) -- about twice the size of Louisiana Critical/Endangered

· Blue Mountains
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
More Photos

Blue Mountains

West of Sydney, the magnificent Blue Mountains form a dissected sandstone plateau where waterfalls plunge down spectacular cliffs. Windswept heaths grow on cliff edges and rainforest vegetation thrives in deep gorges. But open forest, dominated by tall, hard-leaved peppermint eucalyptus trees, covers most of the area, and the forests teem with wildlife.

Special Features

The Blue Mountains get their name from a distinctive blue haze caused by the oil released by the eucalyptus trees. The finely dispersed droplets of oil combine with dust particles and water vapor to scatter blue light. Varying soil fertility and rainfall help to create a wide variety of landscapes and habitats. Rain forest vegetation grows in the areas with the highest rainfall and the best soils. Rare Wollemi pines grow only in one rugged gorge in the Blue Mountains. Discovered in 1994, these 131-foot-tall (40 m) trees are ancient conifers, closely related to plants that existed 50 million years ago. In areas with poorer soils but adequate rainfall, tall eucalyptus trees tower over acacias, ferns, and cycads, an ancient type of palm. In areas with poor soils and little rainfall, the vegetation becomes shorter, with low open forests and woodlands dominated by eucalyptus trees. Finally, heaths or shrubs grow in harsh environments with thin soils and high winds.

	Velvet worms--furry little invertebrates that live under damp soil and logs and have 14 or more pairs of stumpy legs--have been around for 500 million years. To eat a meal, the velvet worm entangles its prey in a sticky fluid that it excretes through its antennae, makes a single puncture in the prey, and then sucks out its victim’s soft insides.

Wild Side

Here, the raucous laughter of the kookaburra can be heard as you catch glimpses of gang gang cockatoos and crimson rosellas. Overhead, small striated thornbills prey on insects in the canopy. An agile swimmer, the duck-billed platypus is endemic to Australia and one of three monotreme (mammals that lay eggs) species in the world. Another monotreme, the echidna or spiny anteater, lives on the forest floor. The echidna has a long snout and a long sticky tongue it uses to eat insects. When the sun goes down, the opossums, wallabies, wombats, koalas, and bandicoots become active. Female brush-tailed wallabies leave their shared dens. Squirrel gliders and the larger yellow-bellied gliders glide from tree to tree, hunted by the fierce spotted-tailed quoll, the largest carnivorous marsupial.

Cause for Concern

Land clearing and drainage for industrial and urban development, landfills, invasive plants, feral animals, and human-caused fires all pose serious threats to this ecoregion’s vegetation.

For more information on this ecoregion, go to the World Wildlife Fund Scientific Report.