The Cape York Peninsula is a diverse and important region of tropical Australia covering 13,720,000 hectares. The Cape York Peninsula Land Use Strategy (CYPLUS) was establisehd in 1992 as a joint initiative of the Queensland and Commonwealth Govermnents to provide a vehicle for the establishment of objectives for the use of land and land-related natural resources within the guidelines of the Australian and Queensland Ecologoically Sustainable Development (ESD) policy. The CYPLUS process contains 3 stages. Stage 1 which incorporated date collection, issue identification, and analyisis of opportunities and constraints for existing and future land use. Stage 2 involved the development of strategic directions for land and resource use in the form of principles, policies, and mechanisms for their implementation which will be recommended for govermnent approval. Stage 3 was the strategy implementation phase.

Stage 1 consisted of three thematic reports; Nautral Resource and Ecology, Land Use and Economy, and Society and Culture and trhese three reports were then combined into this overview report.