Environmental Challenges: Plant Conservation in Australia

This report provides a comprehensive overview of plant conservation issues in Australia, addressing the challenges faced by the country's unique flora. It begins with a background on Australia's plant diversity and the factors contributing to its evolution, including the impact of Gondwana's breakup and subsequent environmental changes. The report highlights the current situation, emphasizing the loss and degradation of plant diversity due to habitat destruction, invasive species, and climate change. It explores the management of Australia's biota, the role of government agencies, and the complexities of aligning conservation efforts across different jurisdictions. Key considerations such as funding discrepancies between plant and animal conservation are examined, along with new initiatives aimed at advancing cross-jurisdictional determinations. The report also addresses critical challenges like a lack of public awareness and insufficient taxonomic knowledge, which hinder effective plant protection. It concludes with recommendations for informing policymakers, subsidy organizations, and the public about the importance of plant conservation, emphasizing the need for long-term strategic commitment and proactive information gathering to ensure the future of Australia's plant life.

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Ministerial Briefing on Australian Plant Conservation
Purpose
Australia is an outsized, old and flat island continent which gradually became isolated
after the collapse of the Gondwanan super continent. After almost 50 million years of
independent evolution, more or less 65,000-70,000 species have their home in Australia. As per
reports of Broadhurst and Coates (2017), over 21,000 of these species are plants with around
84% of these being rife. Although there are strict protection and conservation of Plant taxa and
are managed under a set of legislation at the State- and Territory-level along with Federally for
subjects of national significance, this tends to give rise to issues related to misalignment amongst
endangered species lists. However, usually there can be viewed collaboration amongst
conservation organizations in order to reduce misalignments and further to accomplish species
regardless of jurisdictional limitations. Moreover, irrespective of major investment in programs
have been made in order to aid the rescue of Australian biodiversity, there has been witnessed
plenty of endangered plants in specific which appear to be declining at rapid rate. Such decline
can be linked to array of critical factors that include key hostile procedures related to habitat
damage and invasive species, significant absence of communal consciousness of the ethnic
and socio-economic worth of plant preservation and Australia’s comparatively meagre
consideration of basic species classification and biology (Environment.gov.au 2019). These
species are those, which constitute of specific connections with pollinators, symbionts as well
as herbivores.

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Background
After the separation from Gondwana in the Miocene, Australia started to become dry
land and this stage in time overlaps with the evolution of several vital plant lineages for example
Acacia or the wattles and Eucalyptus or gum trees. However, on the contrary to northern
hemisphere where ice sheets have prevailed to numerous terrestrial environments, Australia has
continued to be predominantly free of ice. Studies revealed that growth of arid zone species as
well as arid-adapted taxa from mesic-adapted ancestors has been witnessed during this particular
period (Silcock and Fensham 2019). Furthermore, on the contradiction, mesic habitats
constricted resulting in the extermination of several lineages, particularly in tropical forest
communities, while these groups encountered settlement from northern neighbours. Reports
revealed by Millennium Ecosystem Assessment mentioned that roughly 60% of the ecosystem
facilities, which have been assessed, have shown significant degradation or has been used
indefensibly. The dilapidation of ecosystem facilities has been causing major harm to human
welfare and has been representing decline of natural possession or wealth of Australia
(Lindenmayer et al. 2015). The evaluation further highlighted persistent weakening in the
prominence of provisioning ecological services, particularly in domains of wild foods, genetic
resources, wood-fuel, timber, cotton as well as medication. Thus, it has become quite certain that
the overall development for plant diversity in Australia is deteriorating.
Current situation
Management of Australia’s biota
Loss and deteriorations in plant diversity is arising because of certain critical factors
which involves growth of inhabitants, elevated rates of change in habitat and rapid deforestation

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in addition to the spread of disturbing alien species, toxic waste and climate change. Major
proportion of Australia’s land environment is administered by State and Territory agencies who
have the accountability of managing public land of several contracts, leases, family along with
pastoral businesses and Indigenous Australians. As per the reports, almost 25% of Australia is
primarily managed for land preservation while issues related to plant conservation has given rise
on the implication whether the present National Reserve System can exhibit utmost
appropriateness under climate change (Kendal et al. 2017). According to Novoa et al. (2017),
Australia has been known as a participant for number of universal contracts for preserving
species such as the Convention on Wetlands in addition to local policies for example, the East
Asian-Australian Flyway Partnership intended for migrating birds. However, studies have
mentioned that misalignments of species entries across a number of State, Territory and Federal
authorities have shown its significance with substantial benevolence between the interventions
mainly designed for preservation of these species lists in order to decrease misalignments at the
effective level. In the view of Broadhurst and Coates (2017), such lack of alignments tend to
arise due to underlying factors related to changes in the established risk groupings of the several
land preservation Acts in addition to the determination of the EPBC Act. The Act aims to shed
light on areas of national implication while the State and Territory governments are liable for
preservation matters within their individual areas.
Key consideration
As per reports, the Australian Federal government has capitalized on the development of
biodiversity across Australia. This venture is done by raising fund for set of important initiatives
since the late 1980s after the introduction of the National Land care Program Considerable

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finance to discuss on biodiversity deterioration. It is important to note that these programs
undertook complex approach towards plant preservation starting from funding infrastructure
such as fencing (Novoa et al. 2017). This approach of fencing has been done in order to preserve
stock from grazing remnant flora as well as riparian areas to direct on ground movements
especially related to restoration plantings and species recovery projects. Nevertheless, even with
1307 plant species being registered under the EPBC Act, there has been record of instruction of
magnitude greater than the number of mammals and birds, which had been recorded; there
remains discrepancy in finance between plants and animals. For example, the $60M+
National Environmental Science Programme (NESP) Threatened Species Hub recognized in
2015 has subsidized for over 20 projects so far. On the other hand, currently there are two
projects, which are focused principally on plants thus developing an early-warning mechanism
for plant species, which are highly vulnerable (Taylor et al. 2018).
Furthermore, reports mention that additional five projects will be advantageous for
conservation plants by maintaining vital and endangered habitats along with development of
endangered species in order to offer reliable measure of population developments and refining
charges and policy alternatives for unknown endangered species. Numerous other projects also
tend to recover Australian plant conservation. However, it is challenging to understand the
effectiveness of this assistance from currently available evidences on plant conservation. As per
studies of author, there has been continual funding by State governments with recent enterprises
in NSW that takes into account a security of $100 million for more than five years to safeguard
the State’s threatened species (Hulme et al. 2018). While it is quite indistinct to determine its
effectiveness for the plants, this is on the other hand, viewed as major conservation
resourcefulness. Authors in their studies claim that these new initiatives will certainly allow the

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NSW Saving our Species program to develop in order to cover greater number of species along
with threatened ecological groups in addition to important threatening practice.
Options
Considering aforementioned new initiatives in order to advance cross-jurisdictional
determinations, the = Australian Environment Ministers has approved their funding in order to
aid the National Review of Environmental Regulation in order to facilitate current regulation
reorganizations happening across jurisdictions. According to Van Kleunen et al. 2018), however
number of species sheltered by each State and Territory tends to differentiate noticeably with
Western Australia as well as Victoria being liable for management of largest proportion of
threatened species. While, on the other side, recent Australian State of the Environment Report
has focused on the rising threats to and continuing decline of biodiversity with no existent
developments in key performance indicators since 2011. Thus, it is highly distinct to know that
most of endangered Australian species coincide with agricultural areas and metropolitan
environments where natural sceneries have been extensively improved and vegetation
fragmentation is developed (Wege et al. 2015).
Lack of Public Awareness for plant conservation
A major challenge for effective plant protection in Australia is relayed to the rising public
consciousness about the social, social and monetary value of protecting opulent, distinctive and
diverse plant species and groups of Australia. Authors have noted that currently, the issue of
“plant blindness” has been outstretched by shedding light on the fact that plant conservation
resourcefulness tend to overlook animals, mainly mammals and birds. On the other hand, there
can also be witnessed shortage of funding for plant conservation, irrespective of knowing the

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importance of plant conservation and their role in providing food and shelter for animals along
with awareness that plants can be recuperated from deterioration than animals (York et al. 2017).
These challenges definitely points out to increasing amount of unfairness towards animals along
with an inclination towards among humans to disregard and be unresponsive to plant
conservation in the environment.
Shortage of taxonomy knowledge
Another critical impediment to effective plant conservation is Shortage of taxonomy
knowledge and the competence to successfully recognize plant taxa in the field. According to
Braby (2018), this ineffectiveness is significantly observable in floristically rich regions for
example the southwest as well as Kimberley districts of Western Australia. It has further been
claimed that the degree and entirety of taxonomic awareness in Western Australia can be
determined from the numeral quantity of recognized taxonomic objects, which are yet to receive
official recognition.
Conclusion/Recommendations
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that with progression Australia
will be bombarded with several challenges related plant conservation. Considering the
challenges, one of the most effective attitudinal advancements is to inform policy makers,
subsidy organizations and most importantly the public challenges being faced with multi-
generational transformation and consequences in which framework is typically determined in
support of plant rescue with the welfares to be gained by prospective citizens of Australia.
However, to gain proper success of this strategy long term and strategic commitment will be

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essential which will involve pro-active information pursuing from numerous sources as well as
stakeholders before and during the process of policy development.

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References
Braby, M.F., 2018. Threatened species conservation of invertebrates in Australia: an
overview. Austral Entomology, 57(2), pp.173-181.
Broadhurst, L. and Coates, D., 2017. Plant conservation in Australia: current directions and
future challenges. Plant diversity, 39(6), pp.348-356.
Environment.gov.au.,2019. Australian Government:Department of the Environment and Energy.
[online] Department of the Environment and Energy. Available at:
http://www.environment.gov.au [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019].
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