Priority setting and the conservation of Western Australia's diverse and highly endemic flora

Abstract

A fundamental role of government conservation agencies is to set priorities for the conservation and management of biodiversity. This is particulary important in an area such as Western Australia which has a rich and highly endemic flora with over 11,000 listed native vascular plants. Legislation provides an initial focus for priority setting through the listing and protection of threatened flora, although this excludes over 1900 Western Australian plant taxa which are poorly known but may be of conservation significance. The priority setting process for the conservation of this flora, discussed herein, focuses on single taxa, groups of taxa within geographic regions, populations and threatening processes. This process is particularly applicable to the highly diverse and endemic flora of the south-west Botanical Province. Within this region there has been extensive habitat loss and degradation over the last 100 years. Currently the prioritisation process has identified 95 critically endangered taxa in the southwest which require immediate remedial action to prevent extinction. Actions such as translocations are already showing promise, but with this number of critically endangered taxa and limited resources there may also need to be some ranking of taxa for immediate translocation. Although the priority setting process outlined here relates primarily to taxa, we emphasise that the conservation of this flora is also addressed at ecosystem and ecological community levels, and that each approach has its merits depending upon land tenure, location within the State and, in particular, the level of land degradation.