Yourka Reserve is a 43,500–

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...

nature reserve A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, or features of geological or ...

Far North Queensland Far North Queensland (FNQ) is the northernmost part of the Australian state of Queensland. Its largest city is Cairns and it is dominated geographically by Cape York Peninsula, which stretches north to the Torres Strait, and west to the Gulf C ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. It is a former

cattle station In Australia and New Zealand, a cattle station is a large farm ( station is equivalent to the American ranch), the main activity of which is the rearing of cattle. The owner of a cattle station is called a '' grazier''. The largest cattle stati ...

in the Einasleigh Uplands

bioregion A bioregion is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a biogeographic realm, but larger than an ecoregion or an ecosystem, in the World Wide Fund for Nature classification scheme. There is also an attempt to use the ...

on the western edge of the

Wet Tropics of Queensland The Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Site consists of approximately 8,940 km2 of Australian wet tropical forests growing along the north-east Queensland portion of the Great Dividing Range. The Wet Tropics of Queensland meets all f ...

World Heritage Site A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for h ...

, 130 km south of

Cairns Cairns (, ) is a city in Queensland, Australia, on the tropical north east coast of Far North Queensland. The population in June 2019 was 153,952, having grown on average 1.02% annually over the preceding five years. The city is the 5th-most-p ...

, with the nearest town being

Ravenshoe Ravenshoe ( ) is a rural town and locality in the Tablelands Region, Queensland, Australia. In the , Ravenshoe had a population of 1,400 people. Geography Ravenshoe is on the Atherton Tableland in Far North Queensland. It is located south w ...

. It is owned and managed by

Bush Heritage Australia Bush Heritage Australia is a non-profit organisation with headquarters in Melbourne, Australia, that operates throughout Australia. It was previously known as the Australian Bush Heritage Fund, which is still its legal name. It's vision is: Heal ...

(BHA), by which it was purchased in 2007.BHA: Yourka Reserve
/ref>

Landscape and vegetation

Yourka has a diverse topography and soils, ranging in altitude from 500 to 900 m

asl American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is express ...

with the highest and wettest land in the eastern part of the reserve. Its vegetation includes wet

eucalypt Eucalypt is a descriptive name for woody plants with capsule fruiting bodies belonging to seven closely related genera (of the tribe Eucalypteae) found across Australasia: ''Eucalyptus'', '' Corymbia'', '' Angophora'', ''Stockwellia'', ''Allosyn ...

forest communities in the east, changing to drier eucalypt

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (see ...

s in the west. The upper

Herbert River The Herbert River is a river located in Far North Queensland, Australia. The southernmost of Queensland's wet tropics river systems, it was named in 1864 by George Elphinstone Dalrymple explorer, after Robert George Wyndham Herbert, the first ...

and various creeks flow through the property. A huge fire raged through the reserve in December 2019 as part of the particularly severe 2019-20 Australian bushfire season, destroying a lot of vegetation, but it had helped to reduce dense tree foliage which had prevented the growth of native grasses such as

cockatoo grass ''Alloteropsis semialata'', known commonly as black seed grass, cockatoo grass, ''donkersaad gras'', ''swartsaadgras'', ''tweevingergras'', and ''isi quinti'', is a perennial grass distributed across much of tropical and subtropical Africa, Asia ...

and

kangaroo grass } ''Themeda triandra'' is a species of perennial tussock-forming grass widespread in Africa, Australia, Asia and the Pacific. In Australia it is commonly known as kangaroo grass and in East Africa and South Africa it is known as red grass and re ...

. Cool burning is conducted regularly in the reserve to help maintain the native grasses and other plants.

Fauna

Threatened mammal species likely to be found on the property include the

rufous bettong The rufous rat-kangaroo or rufous bettong (''Aepyprymnus rufescens'') is a small, jumping, rat-like mammal native to eastern Australia. It is the only species in the genus ''Aepyprymnus''. The largest member of the rat-kangaroo family (Potoroida ...

and the

greater glider The greater gliders are three species of large gliding marsupials in the genus ''Petauroides'', all of which are found in eastern Australia. Until 2020 they were considered to be one species, '' Petauroides volans''. In 2020 morphological and gen ...

. Birds include

masked owl Masked owl or masked-owl refers to various owls in the genus ''Tyto'', including: * Australian masked owl (''Tyto novaehollandiae'') ** Tasmanian masked owl (''Tyto novaehollandiae castanops'') * Golden masked owl (''Tyto aurantia'') * Manus masked ...

and

red goshawk The red goshawk (''Erythrotriorchis radiatus'') is probably the rarest Australian bird of prey. It is found mainly in the savanna woodlands of northern Australia, particularly near watercourses. It takes a broad range of live prey, mostly birds. ...

. A major management issue is the need to control

feral A feral () animal or plant is one that lives in the wild but is descended from domesticated individuals. As with an introduced species, the introduction of feral animals or plants to non-native regions may disrupt ecosystems and has, in some ...

animals. The

Mareeba rock-wallaby The Mareeba rock-wallaby (''Petrogale mareeba'') is a rare species of rock-wallaby found around Mareeba in northeastern Queensland, Australia. Taxonomy The Mareeba rock-wallaby is a member of a group of seven very closely related species withi ...

has staged a comeback after the December 2019 fire.

References

External links

Bush Heritage Australia
{{BHA Reserves Bush Heritage Australia reserves Nature reserves in Queensland 2007 establishments in Australia