page_title: Queenstown, Tasmania
section_title: Ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Queenstown, Tasmania / Ecology
caption_attribution_description: A close-up photo of rock in the mountains surrounding Queenstown, Tasmania.
context_page_description: Queenstown is a town in the West Coast region of the island of Tasmania, Australia. It is in a valley on the western slopes of Mount Owen on the West Coast Range.
  At the 2016 census, Queenstown had a population of 1,755 people.
context_section_description: The mountains surrounding Queenstown have unusual pink and grey hues that come from the conglomerate rocks on the two most adjacent mountains - Mount Lyell and Mount Owen.   The mountains surrounding Queenstown are often snowcapped through winter.  Snow falls a few days out of the year.
  Owing to a combination of tree removal for use in the smelters and the smelter fumes (for about 40 years), and the heavy annual rainfall, the erosion of the shallow horizon topsoil back to the harder rock profile  contributed to the stark state of the mountains for many decades.
  Typical of the successions that occur in fire affected areas in Western Tasmania, the low shrubbery that has revegetated adjacent to hillside creeks is a very early stage of a long recovery for the ecology of the region.
  Some concern by local residents in the 1980s, and since, that the low-level succession of plants might affect the stark 'moonscape' appearance of the southern parts of Mount Lyell, and northern Mount Owen.  Although there are still large areas incapable of sustaining regrowth due to the acute slopes and lack of soil formation, revegtation projects have been stymied.
  The Queen River was for most of the history of the Mount Lyell company the recipient of mining effluent and the Queenstown sewage - which then continued into the King River and consequently the Macquarie Harbour.
  The Mount Lyell Remediation and Research and Demonstration Program scheme has since removed the direct flowing mining waste and local waste from the rivers.
caption: A close-up shot of rock in the mountains surrounding Queenstown
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