Our Latest News

Planned fuel reduction burn in the southwest

29/10/2009

The Parks and Wildlife Service and Forestry Tasmania are conducting a planned burn in the Southwest National Park and on lands managed by Forestry Tasmania today.
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Volunteer Campground Hosts Sought for Cockle Creek

21/10/2009

The Parks and Wildlife Service (PWS) is seeking people with a passion for the beautiful Cockle Creek area in Tasmania's far south area to be volunteer campground hosts for several weeks during the coming summer.More

Community consultation on Bay of Fires boundaries

16/10/2009

Tasmanians are encouraged to comment on proposed boundaries to define the State's newest national park. In March 2009, the Premier announced the State Government's intention to establish the Bay of Fires National Park on Tasmania's north-east coast.
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Savage River National Park

Introduction

Savage River National Park is a wilderness region in the north west of Tasmania. The park protects the largest contiguous area of cool temperate rainforest surviving in Australia and acts as a refuge for a rich primitive flora, undisturbed river catchments, high quality wilderness, old growth forests, geodiversity and natural landscape values.

The western portion of the park includes the most extensive basalt plateaux in Tasmania that still retains a wholly intact forest ecosystem. The upper Savage River, which lends the park its name, runs through a pristine, rainforested river gorge system. The park contains habitat for a diverse rainforest fauna and is a stronghold for a number of vertebrate species which have suffered population declines elsewhere in Tasmania and mainland Australia.

The parks remoteness from human settlement and mechanised access, its undisturbed hinterland rivers and extensive
rainforest, pristine blanket bog peat soils and isolated, elevated buttongrass moorlands ensure the wilderness character of the park. Like the vast World Heritage listed Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area to its south, the area is one of the few remaining temperate wilderness areas left on Earth.

Unlike other national parks, Savage River National Park remains inaccessible. In keeping with its wilderness character, there are no facilities and no roads or mechanised access to the park. However, the park is surrounded by the Savage River Regional Reserve, in which a number of rough 4WD tracks provide limited access. To the north of the reserve, a number of State Forest Reserves can be accessed by standard vehicles. They offer an insight into the magnificent rainforest ecosystem that lies to the southeast within the Savage River National Park.