Developing an approach to the listing of ecological communities to achieve conservation outcomes

An important mechanism for biodiversity conservation in Australia is the protection of threatened ecological communities under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999(Cth). This article describes the evolution of the approach adopted by the Threatened Species Scientific Committee for defining threatened ecological communities to better account for regional variation and ecological community state and condition in order to optimise environmental outcomes. Definitions now recognise different states of ecological communities, and for each allow up to three condition categories: good quality remnants, degraded but recoverable remnants, and irrecoverable remnants. The new approach seeks to provide more operational and understandable definitions of the entity considered and its variability. It focuses on legislative protection for remnants in the best condition to ensure that they remain intact. It facilitates recovery by encouraging landholders to rehabilitate degraded remnants that have the best potential for improvement to a condition where they can contribute to conservation outcomes. The approach recognises that it is inefficient to direct resources towards remnants that are too changed for any effective recovery of their biodiversity values to occur