Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L01713:body:0:p22
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L01713
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 132083–135092

al. 1976).
Daly River: Receding grassy ephemeral freshwater lagoons surrounded by Melaleuca sp. and freshwater mangrove (Barringtonia acutangula) with a good cover of introduced para grass (Urochloa mutica) (Redhead & McKean 1975).
A sizeable mud mound shelter housing three water mice was found interlocked within the buttress of a small-flowered orange mangrove tree on Melville Island off the Northern Territory coast (Magnusson et al. 1976). This is the only confirmed water mouse shelter from along the Australia and New Guinea coastlines north of Cannonvale (near Mackay).
Recorded habitat: New Guinea (near Torres Strait)
The New Guinea detections were both at the same location, within 20 m of a seasonally inundated sedge-grass swamp dominated by Eleocharis spp. and melaleuca, and within 100 m of swamp grassland floodplains of the Bensbach/Torassi River (Hitchcock 1998). The river meanders from this point through the extensive coastal plain to reach the coast. The coastal plain is comparable to the low-lying floodplains of Kakadu National Park: it is inundated in the wet season and consists of mainly sedge-grasslands with scattered Pandanus, and permanent and seasonal swamps with reeds and tall sedges, swamp grassland, and Melaleuca swamp forest, i.e. reported water mouse habitat elsewhere. The tidal flats fringing the coastal plain harbour mangrove forests (Paijmans et al. 1971; Hitchcock 1998; Hitchcock 2010).
There is no recorded information about water mouse shelters in New Guinea.
Figure 5: Water mouse habitat at Wando village on the Bensbach/Torassi River floodplain in southern New Guinea.
Source: © Garrick Hitchcock (left @ Wando village detection site in 1997; right @ adjacent swamp in 1995).
Areas with potential habitat
The majority of the modelled water mouse distribution contains remote unsurveyed areas with the potential to be habitat for this species. These areas are expansive and linearly distributed along the northern coastline from Mackay to the west Kimberley. There is currently insufficient knowledge about water mouse distribution and ecology in northern Australia to infer how much of this area is likely to be occupied.
Figure 6: Examples of extensive mixed mangroves/saltmarsh, brackish and freshwater floodplain, and mangroves that may support undetected water mouse populations.
Source: © Melissa Bruton (top left @ Illeda/Walcott Inlet WA in 2020; top right @ East Alligator River NT in 2013; bottom @ Boigu Qld in 2022).
Areas with water mouse habitat attributes that occur within the modelled distribution of the water mouse that have been surveyed without confirmed detections may be habitat that is temporarily unoccupied (see Section 3.12). A greater understanding about water mouse patterns of occurrence, response to prolonged inundation and other dynamic perturbations, population dynamics and dispersal, and detectability is required before these areas can be classed as unoccupied or unsuitable.
Areas supporting recovery
Unobstructed areas