Regional Profile Detail

The Western region is the largest in NSW: larger than Victoria and Tasmania combined. This diverse, semi-arid rangeland supports a range of communities with grazing, dryland and irrigated agriculture, mining and tourism the main land uses.

Our landscape

The Western region encompasses one of the most diverse rangeland areas in Australia, comprised of arid and semi-arid land, mostly unsuitable other than in the southern and eastern parts of the region for intensive agriculture practices because of constraints such as unreliable rainfall and soil type.

Our vegetation

Approximately 95 per cent of the Western region remains uncleared, however, the condition of the landscape is variable due to impacts of total grazing pressure and changes to fire regimes.  Vegetation ranges from mallee and murray pine woodlands in the south, riparian floodplains and wetlands associated with the river systems, chenopod shrublands in the far west, bimble box woodlands in the central parts of the region to mulga woodlands, brigalow gidgee in the north and floodplains of Coolibah black-box in the north east. Invasive native scrub is a major vegetation issue to be managed.

Our threatened species

A range of iconic threatened fauna in the region include the kultarr, malleefowl, yellow-footed rock wallaby, tawny crevice dragon, western pygmy possum, plains wanderer, red-tailed black cockatoo, glossy black cockatoo, pink cockatoo and grey grasswren. The mallee spinifex vegetation communities support the majority of the threatened species in the region.

Our pests

Coordinated programs are undertaken to control wild dogs, rabbits, feral pigs, foxes and feral cats, and in some areas feral donkeys and feral deer, which threaten agricultural productivity, groundcover and native plants and animals as well as presenting a major biosecurity threat.