Conservation of the critically endangered Box-gum grassy woodlands with ecosystem accounting in Australia

Abstract

Biodiversity conservation is a global imperative, and many national and international actions aim to halt and reverse biodiversity decline. This study tests how ecosystem accounting, as standardised in the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting, could be used to integrate ecological and economic (e.g. environmental protection expenditure) data needed for biodiversity conservation using the example of the critically endangered Box-gum grassy woodlands (dominated by Eucalyptus spp.) in Australia. Despite data limitations, ecosystem extent accounts were produced and indicated that the likely extent of Box-gum grassy woodlands increased by 54,000 ha or 1.5 % over 16 years to 3.5 million ha in 2017. However, the possible extent decreased by more than one million ha, reflecting uncertainty in the estimate and the limitations of remotely-sensed information for estimating ecosystem extent. There was large regional variation in the changes, and the reasons for change, which are allocated to anthropogenic and natural changes in accounting, were not identified owing to a lack of information. As such, we could not determine if illegal activities or the ecosystem's recovery plan had any effect. This study showed that ecosystem accounting has the potential to assist biodiversity conservation by providing information that could support adaptive management by, for example, evaluating the causes of changes in the extent of threatened ecosystems and applying this learning to guide the allocation of resources to more effective conversation interventions. To achieve this potential, better data and regular and standardised reporting are needed, which will require cooperation between all agencies involved in biodiversity conservation.