History and environment of Barrow Island

Abstract

– Barrow Island represents a unique island ecosystem off north-western Australia. It has ecological affinities to the Cape Range region of the Australian mainland, and it also supports an oil and gas resource industry. The island hosts a long-unburnt vegetation complex, and a diverse community of vertebrate and invertebrate fauna occupy the disturbed and undisturbed habitats of the island. In the absence of non-indigenous predators or herbivores, without extensive land clearing, and with an instituted level of island quarantine, these environmental values have persisted to make Barrow Island an important environmental asset for Australia, and an example where island ecology functions in the presence of resource extraction. To date, almost 2,800 species of terrestrial and subterranean species have been consistently recorded from Barrow Island. These include 378 native plant species, 13 mammal species (including two species of bats), at least 119 species of terrestrial and migratory birds, 43 species of terrestrial reptiles, one species of frog, three subterranean vertebrates, at least 34 species of subterranean invertebrates, and the most speciose of all, over 2,200 terrestrial invertebrates.