Gulf Plains Important Bird Area

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The IBA is an important site for Australian bustards Australian Bustard.jpg
The IBA is an important site for Australian bustards

The Gulf Plains Important Bird Area comprises 8868 km2 of the low-lying coastal plains bordering the south-eastern corner of the Gulf of Carpentaria in north-west Queensland, Australia. It was identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA) because of its importance to global populations of waders and other birds.

Gulf of Carpentaria A large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the Arafura Sea

The Gulf of Carpentaria is a large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the Arafura Sea. The northern boundary is generally defined as a line from Slade Point, Queensland in the northeast, to Cape Arnhem, Northern Territory in the west.

Queensland North-east state of Australia

Queensland is the second-largest and third-most populous state in the Commonwealth of Australia. Situated in the north-east of the country, it is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean. To its north is the Torres Strait, with Papua New Guinea located less than 200 km across it from the mainland. The state is the world's sixth-largest sub-national entity, with an area of 1,852,642 square kilometres (715,309 sq mi).

Australia Country in Oceania

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the largest country in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country by total area. The neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north; the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east. The population of 25 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, and its largest city is Sydney. The country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.

Contents

Description

Most of the region is crown land leased for cattle grazing. There are also permanent fishing camps on the major estuaries. The IBA contains saline mudflats, grasslands, freshwater wetlands and woodlands in an area stretching along the coast from west of Burketown to north of the mouth of the Mitchell River. It is where several river systems – including the Mitchell, Gilbert, Norman, Flinders, Leichhardt and Nicholson Rivers - meet the shallow Gulf of Carpentaria. [1]

Crown land, also known as royal domain or demesne, is a territorial area belonging to the monarch, who personifies the Crown. It is the equivalent of an entailed estate and passes with the monarchy, being inseparable from it. Today, in Commonwealth realms such as Canada and Australia, crown land is considered public land and is apart from the monarch's private estate.

Cattle domesticated form of Aurochs

Cattle—colloquially cows—are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos taurus.

Grazing method of feeding in which a herbivore eats parts of low-growing grasses, forbs or algae

Grazing is a method of feeding in which a herbivore feeds on plants such as grasses, or other multicellular organisms such as algae. In agriculture, grazing is one method used whereby domestic livestock are used to convert grass and other forage into meat, milk and other products.

During the wet season (December to March) much of the area is flooded when the rivers overflow their banks. The rivers are fringed with paperbark woodlands. The floodplain vegetation consists of grassy eucalypt woodlands as well as open-woodlands dominated by Eucalyptus microtheca . The freshwater grasslands are dominated by species of Dichanthium , while floodplain depressions contain Oryza grasslands that are important for birds. Along the coast, tidal inlets are fringed with mangrove forests, while the salt flats support low shrublands and patchy grasslands. [1]

Wet season yearly period of high rainfall, especially in the tropics

The monsoon season is the time of year when most of a region's average annual rainfall occurs. Generally the season lasts at least a month. The term "green season" is also sometimes used as a euphemism by tourist authorities. Areas with wet seasons are dispersed across portions of the tropics and subtropics.

<i>Melaleuca</i> genus of plants

Melaleuca is a genus of nearly 300 species of plants in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae, commonly known as paperbarks, honey-myrtles or tea-trees. They range in size from small shrubs that rarely grow to more than 1 m high, to trees up to 35 m. Their flowers generally occur in groups, forming a “head” or “spike” resembling a brush used for cleaning bottles, containing up to 80 individual flowers. They are superficially like Banksia species, which also have their flowers in a spike, but the structures of individual flowers in the two genera are very different.

Floodplain Land adjacent to a stream or river which is flooded during periods of high discharge

A floodplain or flood plain is an area of land adjacent to a stream or river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge. The soils usually consist of levees, silts, and sands deposited during floods. Levees are the heaviest materials and they are deposited first; silts and sands are finer materials.

Birds

The IBA supports large populations of sarus cranes and over 1% of the world populations of brolgas, Australian bustards, black-tailed godwits, great knots, eastern curlews, sharp-tailed sandpipers, lesser sand plovers, grey-tailed tattlers, little curlews, pied oystercatchers, broad-billed sandpipers, red-necked stints and black-winged stilts. [2]

Sarus crane species of bird

The sarus crane is a large non-migratory crane found in parts of the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and Australia. The tallest of the flying birds, standing at a height of up to 1.8 m, they are a conspicuous species of open wetlands in south Asia, seasonally-flooded Dipterocarp forests in south-east Asia, and Eucalyptus-dominated woodlands and grasslands in Australia.

Brolga species of bird

The brolga, formerly known as the native companion, is a bird in the crane family. It has also been given the name Australian crane, a term coined in 1865 by well-known ornithological artist John Gould in his Birds of Australia.

Australian bustard species of bird

The Australian bustard is a large ground bird inhabiting grassland, woodland and open agricultural country across northern Australia and southern New Guinea. It is also commonly referred to as the plains turkey, and in Central Australia as bush turkey, particularly by Aboriginal people, though this name may also be used for the Australian brushturkey as well as the orange-footed scrubfowl.

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Port McArthur Tidal Wetlands System

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Riverland Mallee Important Bird Area

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Buckley River Important Bird Area Important Bird Area in Queensland, Australia

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Cadell and Blyth Floodplains

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Fog Bay and Finniss River Floodplains

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References

  1. 1 2 BirdLife International (2011) Important Bird Areas factsheet: Gulf Plains. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 01/07/2011
  2. ↑ "IBA: Gulf Plains". Birdata. Birds Australia. Retrieved 2011-06-29.

Coordinates: 17°01′50″S140°41′37″E / 17.03056°S 140.69361°E / -17.03056; 140.69361

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.


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