Thus, there are 0.9 million hectares of tropical rainforest, 2.1 million hectares of warm temperate and 0.6 million hectares of cool temperate rainforest. In all, there are about 3.6 million hectares of rainforest in Australia, which is about 2 per cent of the forest estate. Australia's tropical rainforests constitute less than 1 per cent of the world's total area. Nevertheless, these forests are particularly significant because parts of them are the only remaining relicts of forest that once dominated Australia when areas of high rainfall were far more widespread than they are today. The latter are commonly called vine thickets and scrubs.
Palms are often present, as are various climbing plants, epiphytes and ferns.
Cool temperate rainforests are found only in Australia, New Zealand, southern South America and the northeast coasts of North America. The table shows the distribution of rainforest in Australia by State and Territory, and the figure shows the regions of the continent in which rainforest is found. The nature of the available data on rainforest distribution does not allow a breakdown by tenure category for the three rainforests types of tropical, warm temperate and cool temperate. The table shows the tenure of all rainforest in Australia.