Updated June 07

Before European settlement the Big Scrub Rainforest was the largest continuous expanse of lowland sub-tropical rainforest in Australia. This rainforest occurs on the red soils originating from Mount Warning in North Eastern NSW. Big Scrub vegetation is part of an Endangered Ecological community (lowland rainforest in the New South Wales North Coast and Sydney Bioregions) listed under the NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act.

This area stretched from the Nightcap range in the North to Meerschaum Vale in the South and from Ballina in the East to Lismore in the West (BSRLG,1998).

The Big Scrub Rainforest covered 75,000 hectares.  For thousands of years the Aboriginal people made use of the abundance of food in the Big Scrub rainforest.  The rainforest was also spiritually significant to the Aborigines who used it for Corroborees and other ceremonial purposes (Adam, 1987).

Unfortunately since European settlement the Big Scrub Rainforest has been reduced to less than 1% of its original size.

The Big Scrub was cleared for agriculture, development and other purposes. Now only small scattered remnants of Rainforest remain (Stubbs, 1996), most are less than five hectares in area.  These remnants in total would cover less than 700 hectares in area.