Cunninghamia : A Journal of Plant Ecology for Eastern Australia, Volume 9, Issue 3 (2006)
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For the Western Plains of New South Wales, 213 plant communities are classified and described and their protected area and threat status assessed. The communities are listed on the NSW Vegetation Classification and Assessment database (NSWVCA). The full description of the communities is placed on an accompanying CD together with a read-only version of the NSWVCA database.
The NSW Western Plains is 45.5 million hectares in size and covers 57% of NSW. The vegetation descriptions are based on over 250 published and unpublished vegetation surveys and maps produced over the last 50 years (listed in a bibliography), rapid field checks and the expert knowledge on the vegetation. The 213 communities occur over eight Australian bioregions and eight NSW Catchment Management Authority areas. As of December 2005, 3.7% of the Western Plains was protected in 83 protected areas comprising 62 public conservation reserves and 21 secure property agreements. Only one of the eight bioregions has greater than 10% of its area represented in protected areas. 31 or 15% of the communities are not recorded from protected areas. 136 or 64% have less than 5% of their pre-European extent in protected areas. Only 52 or 24% of the communities have greater than 10% of their original extent protected, thus meeting international guidelines for representation in protected areas. 71 or 33% of the plant communities are threatened, that is, judged as being ‘critically endangered’, ‘endangered’ or ‘vulnerable’.
While 80 communities are recorded as being of ‘least concern’ most of these are degraded by lack of regeneration of key species due to grazing pressure and loss of top soil and some may be reassessed as being threatened in the future. Threatening processes include vegetation clearing on higher nutrient soils in wetter regions, altered hydrological regimes due to draw-off of water from river systems and aquifers, high continuous grazing pressure by domestic stock, feral goats and rabbits, and in some places native herbivores — preventing regeneration of key plant species, exotic weed invasion along rivers and in fragmented vegetation, increased salinity, and over the long term, climate change.
To address these threats, more public reserves and secure property agreements are required, vegetation clearing should cease, re-vegetation is required to increase habitat corridors and improve the condition of native vegetation, environmental flows to regulated river systems are required to protect inland wetlands, over-grazing by domestic stock should be avoided and goat and rabbit numbers should be controlled and reduced. Conservation action should concentrate on protecting plant communities that are threatened or are poorly represented in protected areas.
Foreword
(2006)
This issue of Cunninghamia contains the first two papers of a project involving the classification and assessment of the native vegetation of New South Wales, Australia (NSWVCA). Besides developing a comprehensive typology of the vegetation, the project aims to assess the protected area and threat status of the State’s vegetation. It collates information on vegetation composition, geographic distribution of plant communities, physiographic features, threats, aspects of condition, planning and management and representation in protected areas into a single database system. A photographic library is also being collated for use with the database and use in publications and education programs.
A vegetation classification titled, NSW Vegetation Classification and Assessment (NSWVCA), is described. It aims to classify the native vegetation of New South Wales, Australia covering 80 million hectares distributed across 18 Australian bioregions. It is estimated that between 800 and 1200 plant communities will be described. The best available data is used to establish the classification including vegetation map descriptions, floristic groups derived from plot data and expert advice. Extensive field checking assists with the classification and status assessments. Plant communities are listed under five hierarchical levels and are recorded on a database containing 90 fields supported by 45 tables and 64 forms. 39 database reports list plant communities for several types of planning regions and under State and national broad vegetation classifications. Database fields include plant community scientific name, common name, three layers of characteristic species, an ‘Authority’ field that cites references supporting the definition of a community, substrate, soils, landform, distribution by various regions including bioregions and Catchment Management Authority areas, descriptions and lists of threatening processes and aspects of condition. Estimates of pre-European extent, current extent and areas in public reserves and secure property agreements are recorded and qualified with accuracy levels. One of five threat categories: ‘critically endangered’, ‘endangered’, ‘vulnerable’, ‘near threatened’ or ‘least concern’ is assigned to each plant community based on the application of six criteria including: the proportion of remaining extent compared to an estimated pre-European extent, loss of key species and plant community integrity.
The NSWVCA will progress over four geographical sections of NSW commencing with the mainly arid and semi-arid Western Plains (this volume), progressing eastwards to the Western Slopes, the Tablelands and finally the biologically complex Coast and Escarpment. The NSWVCA will assist with: selecting new protected areas, guiding incentive payments and land use decisions in the NSW property vegetation planning process, site assessment in environmental impact assessments, assisting with nominations and definitions of threatened ecological communities in State and Federal laws, prioritizing CMA and other regional targets for the protection and restoration of vegetation and assisting in public education about native vegetation.
A CD accompanying the paper contains a read-only version of the database and outputs of Part 1 of the NSWVCA project – the vegetation of the NSW Western Plains.