From: Martin on 01/15/2002 09:24 AM
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cc:
Subject: Visiting Bass Strait islands
Simon Mustoe asks about visiting Bass Strait islands. I have the following
thoughts which may be of interest.
Late last year a superb new book was published on Tasmania's islands:
Tasmania's offshore islands : seabirds and other natural features / Nigel
Brothers [with] David Pemberton, Helen Pryor, Vanessa Halley.
Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery: Hobart. 2001
The book has wonderful photographs plus species lists and other information
gathered during the author's trips to the many islands over several years. It's
a glossy production and probably not cheap, but well worth checking for anyone
planning island visits in Bass Strait.
It's important to note that most Bass Strait islands are under Tasmanian
jurisdiction and many of the smaller islands are in nature reserves where
permission is required from the Tasmanian Parks & Wildlife Service. In fact
when one is at the end of the Lighthouse Track at the southern end of the Prom,
most islands you can see are in Tasmania.
In 1997 I was part of a team of biologists to visit Wilson's Promontory on a so
called '10-islands' trip where we had intended to visit a few nearby (Victorian)
islands and record flora and fauna, adding to that already published in old
issues of Corella in the 1980s. Unfortunately the weather was never really
suitable for the zodiac run by Parks Victoria at the time so we spent time
trapping mammals and carrying out bird and flora surveys. We nearly tripled the
known species of microbats and added many new localities for various other
mammals and birds. Since that time we've also recorded Grey-headed Flying-foxes
from Millers Landing in the far north of the park and greatly increased the data
on various marine, aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates.
Most of this information has been recently published in a new book by Oxford on
the 'Flora and Fauna of Wilson's Promontory' (by David Meagher and Michele
Kohout). Well worth purchasing if you're going to the Prom.
cheers, Martin
Martin O'Brien
Scientific Advisory Committee
Department of Natural Resources and Environment
4/250 Victoria Pde., East Melbourne 3002
Tel: 9412 4567 Fax: 9412 4586
(prefixes: Interstate 03 International 613)
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