Booderee National Park: The Jewel Of Jervis Bay

Description

Discover why Booderee National Park is a special part of Australia's natural heritage. Booderee National Park at Jervis Bay, 200km south of Sydney, attracts over 450 000 visitors each year. The park has many special features, including dramatic wave cut platforms and sea caves, some of the whitest beach sands in Australia, and very high densities of native predators such as the Powerful Owl and the Diamond Python. This book outlines the biology and ecology of Booderee National Park. Booderee packs an extraordinary level of biodiversity into a small area (roughly 6500 hectares), with more than 260 species of terrestrial vertebrates and over 625 species of plants. It is home to species of significant conservation concern, such as the globally endangered Eastern Bristlebird for which the park is one of its last and most important strongholds. The diversity of vegetation is also astounding: in some parts of the park, it is possible to walk from ankle-high sedgelands, through woodlands and forest and into subtropical rainforest in less than 150 metres. Chapters are arranged around key ecological processes - predators and predation, herbivores and herbivory, invasive plants and fire - emphasising the interactions between species, between vegetation and animals, and between disturbances and animal and plant responses. The book highlights how Booderee National Park is a functional natural ecosystem and, in turn, how management practices aim to improve environmental conditions and promote biodiversity conservation.

Author description

David Lindenmayer is an ecologist who has led work at Booderee National Park for over a decade. Part of his long-term work has entailed extensive field empirical projects on the predators, prey, henrivores, fire and weeds in Booderee National Park. He has published 35 other books and over 850 scientific articles.

Chris MacGregor is a field-based ecologist who works full-time in Booderee National Park. He has worked for the ANU for 15 years and studies the biology and ecology of mammals.

Nick Dexter is Senior Ecologist at Booderee National Park. He has worked in the park for nearly 7 years and published more than 50 scientific articles.

Martin Fortescue has worked in Booderee National Park for virtually his entire career and has completed 30 years of monitoring of Fairy Penguins in the Jervis Bay area.

Esther Beaton is one of Australia's leading wildlife and natural landscape photographers. She has won numerous awards for her outstanding images.