The Recovery Areas on government-owned land are formally defined in the Restoration Agreement signed between ARCS and our partner, the Queensland Government, in 2008 and amended in 2011 to meet requirements on transfer of Crown Freehold to National Park (Recovery) tenure. This Agreement can be accessed on the Reports page of this web site.
The Recovery Areas are also defined in the Regeneration Plan Springbrook National Park (recovery) March 2011, made under Division 3A of the Nature Conservation Act 1992. The Plan can be downloaded at http://www.nprsr.qld.gov.au/parks/springbrook/pdf/regeneration-plan-web.pdf.
The Recovery Areas within National Park (recovery) comprise 10 properties totalling 176 hectares in six catchments (Boy-ull, Ee-jung and Mundora flowing into the Little Nerang (East Branch) Creek and Cave Creek in the high country; and the upper Purling Brook catchment at mid-altitudes).
Restoration efforts during the current reporting period are primarily focussed on three properties in the high country, Warblers, Ashmiha and Pallida, which total 48 hectares and constitute the most serious connectivity bottlenecks and the most urgent restoration challenges. Work is also being done at Ankuna, a small but strategically important property on Springbrook Road about 1.5 km north of Pallida, and which is also seriously infested with one of the most pernicious new generation weeds emerging globally — Aristea ecklonii. All of these areas have been gazetted as National Park (Recovery).
National Park (Recovery) areas in the remaining catchments (Cave Creek and Purling Brook) are more able to recover naturally with much less active intervention. Cleared areas are small compared with the balance of each property. Exotic species are removed in order of their potential to harm or impede restoration.
A small number of properties have not yet been transferred to National Park (Recovery) are either in the process of being transferred or leased to third parties or to ARCS to provide accommodation to volunteers or to paying guests at commercial businesses owned by ARCS (Springbrook Lyrebird Retreat and Koonjewarre) to help fund the Springbrook Rescue Project. Cleared areas on properties for which ARCS is responsible are progressively being restored.
Outside of the Restoration Agreement relating to properties purchased by the Queensland Government, ARCS is also carrying out restoration work on Ankida, the property donated to ARCS by Geoffrey and Shirley Miller.
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