Regional biodiversity
The region is recognised as having high diversity with a large variety of fauna and flora species and a high proportion of locally endemic species. From a biodiversity perspective, it is one of the richest and most diverse regions for plants and animals in Australia with the NSW North Coast region having one of the highest frog, reptiles, snake and marsupial species diversity in Australia. Diversity of birds in north east NSW is exceeded only by the Queensland wet tropics. The area also contains significant areas of rainforest vegetation which are an important component of the World Heritage listed Gondwana Rainforests of Australia.
The region, however, is also subject to a range of threats that require priority actions for conservation management.
Conserving the biodiversity of the North Rivers region is therefore a major challenge which cannot be achieved solely by the setting aside land in national parks and reserves. It requires a coordinated and strategic involvement of agencies, organisations, communities and individuals in conservation and land management activities across all land tenures and landscape.
Threats to biodiversity in northern NSW
The north-east coast of NSW has seen one of the highest levels of population growth and development in Australia associated with the sub-tropical climate and favourable lifestyle. This development is likely to be on-going, particularly in popular coastal regions, and places further pressure on the already threatened biodiversity.
Whilst 22 per cent of the area is protected under national parks and other reserves, parts of these areas are often also under threat from weeds, pests, fire, recreational use and the potential impacts of climate change.
Across the broader landscape many ecosystems are also under threat from weeds, introduced predators, inappropriate fire regimes, loss of important habitat components such as tree hollows, and altered hydrological processes which affect both aquatic ecosystems as well as water dependent terrestrial habitats. In addition, the predicted effects of climate change may dramatically alter the extent and severity of many of these threats.
Threatened species in the Northern Rivers region
The Northern Rivers region contains a significant and diverse range of threatened species and ecological communities listed under either the Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 (TSC Act), Fisheries Management Act 1994 or the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).
These threatened entities include flora, terrestrial vertebrate fauna, freshwater fin fish, invertebrate fauna and ecological communities. Specifically the plan addresses 298 threatened entities listed on Commonwealth and State legislation (as at March 2009) including 273 species, 20 ecological communities, five endangered populations and 35 key threatening processes. These are listed in the table below. The area contains core habitat for a number of these threatened species which are either endemic (that is, only occur within this area), are disjunct populations (that is, are outlying and isolated populations) or are at the edge of their range or distributional limit.
The region includes remnants of highly cleared and fragmented vegetation types including 17 listed as endangered ecological communities (EECs) under the Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 and high conservation value rainforest remnants such as the Big Scrub near Lismore and small pockets of littoral rainforest along the coastal strip (for example, Iluka Nature Reserve and Bongil Bongil National Park). (Refer to the Border Ranges Rainforest Biodiversity Management Plan (DECCW 2010) for rainforest dependant threatened species and recovery actions).
Summary of threatened entities covered by this Plan (as of March 2009)
| Status |
Commonwealth
EPBC Act |
NSW |
| FM Act |
|
Ecological communities |
|
Critically endangered |
2 |
- |
- |
|
Endangered |
1 |
17 |
- |
|
Vulnerable |
- |
- |
- |
|
Populations |
|
Endangered |
na |
5 |
- |
|
Flora |
|
Critically endangered |
- |
1 |
- |
|
Endangered |
27 |
87 |
- |
|
Vulnerable |
45 |
61 |
- |
|
Fauna |
|
Critically endangered |
- |
- |
- |
|
Endangered |
14 |
25 |
3 |
|
Vulnerable |
14 |
95 |
- |
Page last updated: 11 April 2011
