| Sheoak Hill Conservation Park South Australia | |
|---|---|
  Sheoak Hill Conservation Park | |
| Nearest town or city | Cowell [2] |
| Coordinates | 33°22′23″S136°49′11″E / 33.3731°S 136.8196°E Coordinates: 33°22′23″S136°49′11″E / 33.3731°S 136.8196°E |
| Established | 30 November 1978 [3] |
| Area | 24.27 km2 (9.4 sq mi) [3] |
| Managing authorities | Department for Environment and Water |
| See also | Protected areas of South Australia |
Sheoak Hill Conservation Park is a protected area in the Australian state of South Australia located on the Eyre Peninsula in the gazetted locality of Miltalie about 35 kilometres (22 mi) north-west of Cowell. [2] [4]
Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural, ecological or cultural values. There are several kinds of protected areas, which vary by level of protection depending on the enabling laws of each country or the regulations of the international organizations involved.
South Australia is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of 983,482 square kilometres (379,725 sq mi), it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, and fifth largest by population. It has a total of 1.7 million people, and its population is the second most highly centralised in Australia, after Western Australia, with more than 77 percent of South Australians living in the capital, Adelaide, or its environs. Other population centres in the state are relatively small; Mount Gambier, the second largest centre, has a population of less than 30,000.
The Eyre Peninsula is a triangular peninsula in South Australia. It is bounded on the east by Spencer Gulf, the west by the Great Australian Bight, and the north by the Gawler Ranges.
Contents
The conservation park consists of two areas of land in the cadastral unit of the Hundred of James which separated by a road connecting the town centres of Cowell in the south-east and Kimba in the north-west. The land on the south-western side of the road which consists of sections 49, 50 and 51, was constituted as a conservation park on 30 November 1978. [5] The land on the north-eastern side of the road which is described in cadastral terms as “allotment 100 of Deposited Plan No. 38006” was dedicated as a conservation reserve known as the Sheoak Hill Conservation Reserve in 11 November 1993. On 6 September 2012, the land within the conservation reserve was added to the conservation park. As of 2014, access permitted under the state’s Mining Act 1971 only applied to the land formerly in the conservation reserve. [6] [7] [4]
The lands administrative divisions of South Australia are the cadastral units of counties and hundreds in South Australia. They are located only in the south-eastern part of the state, and do not cover the whole state. A total of 540 hundreds have been proclaimed, although five were annulled in 1870, and, in some cases, the names reused elsewhere.
Conservation reserves of South Australia is a class of protected area used in the Australian state of South Australia where crown land under the control of the responsible minister has been dedicated for conservation purposes. This class of protected area has been in use as early as 1985 and as of 2016, there are fifteen conservation reserves that cover an area of 194.7 square kilometres or less than 1% of South Australia's land area.
As of 2014, it and three adjacent conservation parks were described by their managing authority as follows: [4]
These parks (sic) are dominated by relatively undisturbed mallee forest, and woodland associations with a Melaleuca shrub understorey. They provide important habitat for Malleefowl populations and contain significant species including Gilbert’s Whistler, Bentham’s Goodenia and the Six-nerve Spine-bush which are listed as rare under the National Parks and Wildlife Act.
Mallee is the growth habit of certain eucalypt species that grow with multiple stems springing from an underground lignotuber, usually to a height of no more than 10 m (33 ft). It is most common in plants of the genus Eucalyptus, many of which naturally grow in a mallee habit, and some of which grow as single-stemmed trees initially, but recover in mallee form if burnt to the ground by bushfire. It also occurs in the closely related genera Corymbia and Angophora. The word "mallee" may also be used as a noun in reference to species or individual plants with a mallee habit.
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.
The malleefowl is a stocky ground-dwelling Australian bird about the size of a domestic chicken. It is notable for the large nesting mounds constructed by the males and lack of parental care after the chicks hatch. It is the only living representative of the genus Leipoa, though the extinct giant malleefowl was a close relative.
The conservation park is classified as an IUCN Category IA protected area. [1]
The International Union for Conservation of Nature is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. It is involved in data gathering and analysis, research, field projects, advocacy, and education. IUCN's mission is to "influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable".
