- Government and society
- Cultural life
Plant and animal life
Western Australia supports a wealth of flora and fauna, especially in the southwestern region—which is considered a particularly fertile “hot spot” of biodiversity. More than 10,000 species of vascular plants have been documented in the state, and some one-third of these, including many carnivorous varieties, are endemic to the area.
The Kimberley region is sparsely wooded, primarily with eucalypts, but also with the distinctive, moisture-storing boab (which has close affinities to the Indian and African baobabs). Spinifex grass is ubiquitous, as is generally the case throughout the portion of the state that lies north of the Tropic of Capricorn. The deserts of the state’s central and eastern regions are partly vegetated by spinifex and various eucalypts; some mulga trees grow in the swales between the dunes. In the Pilbara area mulga and acacia shrublands are interspersed with eucalypt woodlands and spinifex grasslands. In the southeast the Nullarbor Plain is textured with bluebush and saltbush shrubs, acacias, eucalypts, and mallee scrubland.
The state’s only true forests are found in the Yilgarn block. These consist of eucalypts, and there is an extremely rich understory. The dominant trees are jarrah (E. marginata), marri (E. calophylla), and the spectacular, tall (up to 275 feet [85 metres]) karri. These forests are protected in vast state reserves and in surface-water catchments.
Western Australia is host to some 150 species of mammals and several hundred species of birds and reptiles. Common marsupials include kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, possums, and bandicoots. Some three dozen species each of bats and small rodents also inhabit the state’s diverse landscape. Dugongs, dolphins, and whales are found in coastal waters. Many of the offshore islands have seal and penguin populations. Waterbirds, including ducks, plovers, terns, egrets, herons, and others, are abundant in the wetlands of the southwest. Eagles and other raptors are prominent inland, as are cuckoos, nearly two dozen types of parrots, and a spectrum of smaller birds such as finches, wrens, honeyeaters, and flycatchers. Skinks and snakes, each represented by well in excess of 100 species, are the most plentiful of Western Australia’s reptiles. Dozens of species of geckoes, other lizards, and amphibians have also been recorded. Freshwater and marine turtles live in coastal and inland waters.
Clearing (mostly for agriculture), the introduction of predators such as foxes and feral cats, and competition for food and degradation of habitat by domestic sheep, goats and cattle, camels, donkeys, horses, pigs, and feral rabbits have had severe effects on the state’s fauna and flora. Hundreds of species of plants are rare or threatened, and many have become extinct. More than half of the medium-sized mammals have disappeared from the Wheatbelt since European settlement, and many of their populations have also disappeared or declined drastically from the arid pastoral lands and from the central, sandy deserts. The Department of Environment and Conservation, established in 2006, has been charged with implementing government policies to aid in preserving the state’s biodiversity.
When the first permanent European settlers arrived at Perth in 1829, they encountered an Aboriginal population that had occupied the lands of Western Australia for tens of thousands of years. As European settlements spread across the colony, however, the Aboriginal communities were decimated by shooting, poisoning, starvation, and disease. Although their numbers recovered over the next two centuries, Aboriginal peoples (and Torres Strait Islanders) have continued to constitute less than 5 percent of the state’s population. The largest—and growing—single concentration of Aboriginal peoples is in the Greater Perth area.
The great majority of the remainder of Western Australia’s population is of English descent. There are also significant communities of Scottish, Irish, and Italian ancestry, as well as a sizeable combined community of German and Dutch heritage. A small but notable Chinese population lives primarily in or near Perth.
English is the only language spoken in the vast majority of households in Western Australia. The next largest language communities, each constituting a tiny portion of the population, are Chinese and Italian. Australian Aboriginal languages are spoken by an even smaller fraction of the population.
Christianity is the dominant religion in Western Australia, with Christians constituting about three-fifths of the population. Numbers of Roman Catholics and Anglicans are roughly equivalent and together constitute about three-fourths of the Christian community. Buddhists and Muslims are the next largest religious groups, but each accounts for only a tiny portion of the population. A sizable minority of Western Australians do not identify with a particular religion; mirroring a national trend, this proportion has been growing.
1Mainland and island areas only; excludes coastal water.
|Total area1 (sq mi)||976,790|
|Total area1 (sq km)||2,529,875|
|Premier||Colin Barnett (Liberal Party)|
|Date of admission||1900|
|State bird||black swan|
|State flower||red-and-green kangaroo-paw|
|Seats in federal House of Representatives||15 (of 150)|
|Time zone||Australian Western Standard Time (GMT + 8)|