Epping Forest is a national park in Queensland, Australia, 855 km northwest of Brisbane. The park is a scientific national park so it is not open to the public. Only scientists, rangers and volunteers may visit the park.
Restricted access is used to ensure Epping Forest remains very much undisturbed as it is the sole remaining natural habitat of the endangered Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat. The last census of the animal estimated there was a population of about 138 of the species. In the 1970s the population was estimated to have reached a low of somewhere between 20 to 30 wombats.
Most of the park is eucalypt woodland with patches of sandy soils that are used by the wombats for burrowing.
Famous quotes containing the words forest, national and/or park:
“How old the world is! I walk between two eternities.... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don’t want to die!”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“Our national experience in Americanizing millions of Europeans whose chief wish was to become Americans has been a heady wine which has made us believe, as perhaps no nation before us has ever believed, that, given the slimmest chance, all peoples will pattern themselves upon our model.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“The park is filled with night and fog,
The veils are drawn about the world,”
—Sara Teasdale (1884–1933)