
The Traprock Important Bird Area comprises a 627 km
2 tract of land in the
Darling Downs region of south-eastern
Queensland,
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 ...
.
Description
The site consists of
grassy
woodlands, much of which is grazed by sheep, west of the town of
Warwick in the Nandewar
bioregion. It is defined as an
Important Bird Area
An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations.
IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...
(IBA) by the recent occurrence of
regent honeyeaters, and includes the McIntyre and Durikai
state forests and the upper catchment of McIntyre Brook. It lies in the upper
Murray-Darling basin not far from the state border with
New South Wales. The two state forests contain areas of selectively logged
eucalypt forest and woodlands with
spotted gum and
box–ironbark plant communities.
Geologically, the area is mostly rocky,
metamorphosed sedimentaries and
interbedded volcanics with infertile soils that are not suitable for agriculture. Over 500 km
2 of the land in the IBA is owned by a few major private landowners, with the remainder being state forest.
[BirdLife International. (2011). Important Bird Areas factsheet: Traprock. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 2011-11-13.]
Birds
The site has been identified as an IBA by
BirdLife International
BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...
because it supports a small, regularly breeding population of
endangered regent honeyeaters, as well as significant populations of
diamond firetails at the northern end of their range.
Other birds of conservation concern found in the IBA are
glossy black cockatoos,
turquoise parrots,
black-chinned honeyeaters,
powerful owls,
hooded robins,
grey-crowned babblers and
speckled warblers.
[
Other animals found in the IBA that are listed as threatened under Queensland's Nature Conservation Act 1992 include the border thick-tailed gecko and ]little pied bat
The little pied bat (''Chalinolobus picatus'') is a species of vesper bat in the family Vespertilionidae. It is found only in semi-arid woodlands in eastern Australia.
Description
The little pied bat is the smallest bat of the genus. The coat ...
.[
]
References
Important Bird Areas of Queensland
Darling Downs
Murray-Darling basin
{{Queensland-geo-stub