Blue Lake, South Australia Photograph by Michael Thompson   Eastern part of the southern coast of Australia Mediterranean Forests, Woodlands, and Scrub   10,600 square miles (27,500 square kilometers) -- about the size of Maryland and Rhode Island combined Critical/Endangered

· Land of Running Water
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
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Land of Running Water

Stretching along the coast from Victoria to Adelaide, this ecoregion has a long pioneer past, with settlement dating from the 1840s. As a result, much of the vegetation has been cleared for agriculture. The climate is cool and moist, with most rain falling in the winter. Eucalyptus trees include the swamp gum--a small tree with smooth, gray or pinkish-gray bark--and the river red gum--a tall tree with spreading branches, normally found along watercourses. This area remains rich in wildlife, from water birds in the swamps and lagoons to possums, gliders, and other small marsupials.

Special Features

Evidence of almost 100 vertebrates from the Pleistocene are remarkably well preserved in Victoria Fossil Cave, Australia’s largest and best fossil deposit. The vertebrates range from buffalo-sized marsupials to tiny frogs. These fossils provide important information about the Australian Ice-Age megafauna and about modern species such as the now-extinct Tasmanian thylacine (a wolf-like marsupial) and the regionally extirpated Tasmanian devil. Fossils of wallabies, possums, bettongs, mice, bats, snakes, parrots, turtles, lizards, and frogs have all been found in this UNESCO World Heritage site. In historic times, Aboriginal people called this area Naracoorte, which means the land of running water. Ample rainfall is one of the main reasons Europeans were able to settle here.

	The endemic Naracoorte Cave cricket is a small insect that spends its entire life inside the caves. Cave crickets show a number of adaptations to life in the dark: They are blind, have long feelers, and are colorless--color serves no purpose in the dark.

Wild Side

This ecoregion’s lagoons are important sites for water birds, where large numbers of black swans, gray teals, and pacific black ducks can be seen preening, splashing in the water, and eating. Breeding colonies of sacred and straw-necked ibises often have in excess of 50,000 birds. Amphibians also depend on these lagoons and temporary water sources. The pale gray-and-olive marbled Sudell’s frog is normally seen only after the seasonal rains, when it breeds in grassy marshes or temporary pools. Throughout the woodland at night, small marsupials such as gliders, possums, and dunnarts can be seen. The rabbit-sized southern brown bandicoot uses its forefeet to dig holes and then probes with its snout to locate insects and larvae. Red-tailed black cockatoos fly overhead in noisy flocks. The striped legless lizard (Delma impar) may be seen hunting for invertebrate prey. The Naracoorte Caves support unique cave fauna as well. Bent-winged bats live in giant colonies here. In a nursery cave, the young bats may be massed together at densities of 2,500 per square yard (3,000 per square meter). Every day at sunset, all the bats leave the caves in a massive outpouring, heading out in search of insects.

Cause for Concern

Most of the vegetation has already been cleared for agriculture, so that remaining vegetation is fragmented and often on private lands. Feral and invasive animals also pose threats. The lagoons receive agricultural runoff. As a result, nutrients, salts, and pesticides accumulate in the lagoons.

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