For thousands of years, the Aboriginal Tasmanians deliberately set regular fires, which transformed much of the landscape into open savanna and woodland of fire-adapted plants dominated by species of Eucalyptus.

These settlers ceased the regular burning of the landscape, and many of the open savannas and woodlands grew into shrubby forests.

European settlers also altered the landscape by grazing livestock, logging forests for timber, and establishing forestry plantations of exotic trees.

[1] Wet eucalypt forest is found on the higher slopes of Ben Lomond and the wetter areas of King Island.

[1] Tasmania and the Bass Strait islands were connected to Australia during the ice ages when sea levels were lower, and shared a marsupial mammal fauna.

The largest carnivores were the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), which was hunted to extinction by the early 20th century, and the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii).

Other mammals include the long-nosed potoroo (Potorous tridactylus), Tasmanian bettong (Bettongia gaimardi), Tasmanian pygmy possum (Cercartetus lepidus), eastern barred bandicoot (Perameles gunnii), tiger quoll (Dasyurus maculatus), and eastern quoll (D.

[1] Many native birds are limited to Tasmania and the Bass Strait islands, including the forty-spotted pardalote (Pardalotus quadragintus), Tasmanian native hen (Gallinula mortierii), black-headed honeyeater (Melithreptus affinis), yellow wattlebird (Anthochaera paradoxa), green rosella (Platycercus caledonicus), Tasmanian scrubwren (Sericornis humilis), and yellow-throated honeyeater (Nesoptilotis flavicollis).

[1] There are about ten native species of lizards, including the mountain dragon (Rankinia diemensis) and the endemic Rawlinson's window-eyed skink (Pseudemoia rawlinsoni).