Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2016L00002:front:0:p15
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2016L00002
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 40828–43739

longest historical records of any group of people in the world.
    * The park is a home for Bininj/Mungguy. It represents the oldest culture in the world with continuous occupation over 50,000 years, and is a place where Bininj/Mungguy have the opportunity to live and maintain their culture and pass it on to future generations.
    * The park protects a rich collection of Bininj/Mungguy cultural sites, including sacred and ceremonial sites, and archaeological sites that are some of the oldest occupation sites in Australia.
    * The park includes a collection of historic sites that tell the important story of the park's recent history and represent a way of life and use of country that no longer exist.

Values - continued
Country values
The park is an internationally significant natural landscape (including landforms and biota of great antiquity) comprising outstanding representation of interconnected ecosystems whose extent, intactness and integrity provides for a distinctive and rich biodiversity including viable populations of threatened, endemic and culturally significant species.
   'The park is one big living space ... the stone country is where everything comes from and is connected to the floodplains. It is important for the bush tucker, breeding, but everything is equally important as Kakadu is a living space.'
Jeffrey Lee, Djok clan
The park is a vast and continuous natural environment that comprises four main landscape types, each with distinct natural and cultural values:
    * The rugged, ancient and spectacular stone country within the park comprises a great diversity of native species, including many threatened species, and at least 160 plant species and many animals that occur nowhere else in the world.
    * The freshwater and saltwater country within the park encompasses some of the largest and most diverse river systems in northern Australia, including extensive wetlands, floodplains and mangroves that support vast numbers of waterbirds and other aquatic and marine species.
    * The vast, largely intact and dominant lowland woodlands and open forest in the park represents the largest area of savanna within a protected area in the world and provides habitat for the majority of the park's plants and animals.
     * The rainforest areas within the park contribute a rich set of very different plant and animal species to those otherwise found in the park, including restricted, threatened and culturally significant species.
As a result of these values, the park has great economic, social, research and regional significance.

How Kakadu is significant locally

To Bininj/Mungguy, Kakadu is of particular importance as it is their home and they have important cultural obligations to look after country. Many Bininj/Mungguy consider that they cannot or should not move to other places to live or work. The park is their traditional homeland and it