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The Willandra Lakes Region is a major tourist attraction in New South Wales, located in Australia’s far West. The Muthi Muthi, Ngiyampaa, & Barkinji Aboriginal clans have traditionally met inside the Willandra Lakes Region. In 1981, the UNESCO World Committee’s fifth Conference placed the 240,000-hectare region as one of the world heritage sites.
The area offers significant cultural and natural elements, such as the world’s oldest burial site and extraordinary evidence of former human civilisation. The Mungo National Park protects a small region of interest, and the region’s World Heritage designation was established and achieved in 1981. On May 21, 2007, the site was added to the Australian National Historic status under the Environmental and Heritage Legislation Amendment Act of 2003.
Willandra Lakes Region: Physical Features
Willandra Lakes Region is a town in New South Wales’ south-western region. The lakes network, which is a relic of the Lachlan River groundwater flow, is about 150 kilometres long & 40 kilometres broad and spans roughly north-south from Mulurulu Lake in the northwest to Lake Pringle there in the southeast. The region is around 600,000 hectares. White sand & clay mounds stand 40 m just above plains adjacent to the eastern shoreline, while wide gullies have indeed been formed through the shoreline sediments. The structure is surrounded by a terrain of short, similar ridges with fine red sands.
Lakes of Willandra inside the semi-arid territory of south-western New South Wales, the Willandra Lakes Region features a relict lake network with sediments, geomorphology, and strata that preserve an impressive record of a reduced, non-glaciated Pleistocene environment. It also has a remarkable history of the early Pleistocene’s glacial-interglacial climate fluctuations, especially in the last 100,000 years.
Willandra Lakes, which ceased to operate as an ecological system 18,500 years ago, provides ideal conditions for documenting life throughout the Pleistocene epoch when people developed into their current form. The pristine stratigraphic environment provides excellent data for reconstructing Homo sapiens’ economic life.
Pyres, flint tools, and clam middens, for example, demonstrate remarkable adaptability to community resources as well as a fascinating connection between human civilisation and the evolving natural habitat. Several well-preserved gigantic marsupial fossils have also been discovered here.
Climate
The weather is subtropical semi-arid in this area. The average February temperature ranges from 17.9°C to 34.6°C at Ivanhoe. The closest meteorological station is 100 kilometres northeast. The average July (winter) maximum temperature is from 3.5°C to 16.4°C. The highest temperature recorded was 48°C, while the lowest was 32°C. Throughout the year, 302.7mm of rain falls equally.
Flora & Fauna in Willandra Lakes Region
There are 22 mammal species, notably red and grey kangaroo representation Gigantes & M. Rufus, brief echidna Tachyglossus aculeatus, forty reptiles and amphibians and several bat organisms. 137 bird species are similar to those found in many similar places, including the emu Dromaius novaehollandiae, the rose cockatoo Cacatua leadbeateri, and the mulga parrot Psephotus varius.
It is now a semi-arid grassland that has been severely damaged by historical overgrazing. However, wherever it is no longer scratched, it is currently recovering. It’s mostly covered with sparse brush, grasslands, and woods, with sandy plains and dunes thrown in. Co-dominant are miniature shrub crape myrtles, oil mallee eucalyptus oleosa, & water mallee eucalyptus dumosa. A white cypress tree callitris columellaris, belah casuarina cristata, & cattle bush.
Protection & Management
Overall, the project’s planning and preservation are pretty compelling. Rural estates rented from the government and managed by the South Wales Crown Lands, Ministry of Infrastructure, Industry & Environment make up most of the region. The Mungo National Park, which expanded from 4.2 % of the world heritage site immediately after its designation to 29.9 % in 2012, is located on the remaining land. Funding, study, surveillance upgrades, and management plan updates can all contribute to enhanced protection and management. To address the concerns provided by degradation, wild creatures, total pasture stress, growing tourist numbers, and climate change, more executive action and study are required.
Conclusion
The Willandra Lakes Region is a collection of dry lakes in a dryland region in south-western New South Wales in Australia. The land has changed dramatically since it was nominated as a world-historic site. Provincial, regional, and particular archaeological site management plans have been produced. Mungo Nature Reserve has grown significantly in recent years, encompassing several of the most important monuments. On private holdings in the world heritage site, pasture and farming continue. Still, the agricultural use pattern in these places has been drastically altered to lessen the impact of grazing on the thin soils and historical values they hold. These activities were taken to improve the preservation of historical resources, and they required long-term and continuing collaboration and preparation between the parties involved.
