Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L01713:body:0:p17
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L01713
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 118587–121324

the Daly River (Redhead & McKean 1975; Magnusson et al. 1976; Woinarski 2000; Woinarski et al. 2000).
In southern New Guinea, the water mouse is recorded from Wando Village in the Tonda Wildlife Management Area (Hitchcock 1998; Hitchcock and Gabriel 2015). Wando Village is on a floodplain of the Bensbach/Torassi River at the northern extent of a vast lowland coastal floodplain that covers much of southern New Guinea including areas adjacent to the islands of the Torres Strait in far north Queensland (Paijmans et al. 1971; Hitchcock 2010).
The water mouse is predicted to occur in additional coastal and subcoastal areas of north Queensland, southern New Guinea and the Northern Territory (Magnusson et al. 1976; Ovington 1978; Dickman et al. 2000; Ball 2004). It is unlikely to be detected during general fauna survey programs (Ball et al. 2004) and most of its modelled distribution is in remote areas that can be challenging to access and survey (Van Dyck 1994; Ball 2004). Targeted surveys for water mouse in remote Australia over the last 20 years have been limited to a few of the historical detection locations in the Northern Territory (Woinarski et al. 2000; Low Choy & Fegan 2012; ASRAC 2017), opportunistic additions to general flora and fauna survey programs in the Torres Strait (Fell et al. 2018; Reis et al. 2018, 2020), a targeted survey near the Cairns airport following an incidental report (Ball & Mitchell 2018), and surveys for development approvals in Gladstone, Darwin Harbour and around Cairns. No targeted water mouse surveys are known to have occurred in Cape York, the Gulf of Carpentaria or New Guinea.
The western limit of the water mouse distribution is unclear. The most westerly records are from the Daly River area in the northwest Northern Territory (Redhead & McKean 1975). However, there are coastal areas with the potential to harbour water mouse habitat between the Daly River and the west Kimberley coast in Western Australia (Ovington 1978; Morris 2000). No targeted water mouse surveys are known to have occurred in Western Australia.
Unsuccessful targeted searches for water mouse have occurred along the northern New South Wales coast from the Richmond River at Ballina to just north of the Queensland border (Van Dyck & Gynther 2003). This suggests Coomera River and South Stradbroke Island in Queensland may be the southern limits of the water mouse distribution along the east Australian coast (Van Dyck & Gynther 2003; Adkins 2021 pers. comm.).
There are records of water mouse occurring in non-tidal areas up to 15 km inland in southern Queensland (Dwyer et al. 1979; Kaluza et al. 2016), 20-25 km inland in the Northern Territory (Redhead & McKean 1975; Magnusson et al. 1976) and 30