Vegetation and floristic diversity in Gibraltar Range and part of Washpool National Parks, New South Wales

The vegetation of Gibraltar Range National Park and adjoining parts of eastern Washpool National Park, 65 km east of Glen Innes (29° 31’S 152° 18’E) on the eastern escarpment of New South Wales is described. In total 124, 20m x 50m full vascular plant floristic sites were recorded and information from an additional 53 sites was collated. Thirteen vegetation assemblages are defined based on flexible UPGMA analysis of cover-abundance scores of all vascular plant taxa. Many of the vegetation communities are typical of what is found along the north eastern escarpment of NSW. Three communities are considered to be rare and two vulnerable. A total of 878 vascular plant taxa from 138 families were recorded, of which only 21 (2%) were of introduced origin and 81 (9%) were found to be of conservation significance. Pattern diversity, species density, species accumulation and average geographic range size, along with general measures of richness and diversity, were analysed for all communities. Each of the communities described varied considerably in the diversity attributes measured. Communities with a high number of shrubs had greater constancy between sites compared to those that contained a high number of closed forest species. The community from rock outcrops had the largest average geographical range size

Economic Issues in the Management of Plants Invading Natural Environments: Scotch Broom in Barrington Tops National Park

Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius, L.), is an exotic leguminous shrub, native to Europe, which invades pastoral and woodland ecosystems and adjoining river systems in cool, high rainfall regions of southeastern Australia. Broom has invaded 10,000 hectares of eucalypt woodland at Barrington Tops National Park in New South Wales, and is having a major impact on the natural ecology of the sub-alpine environment. It is extremely competitive with the native flora, retarding their growth and in many areas blanketing the ground and preventing growth of many understorey species in open forest areas. An active program to manage this invasion is being implemented by the National Parks and Wildlife Service. The management issues include whether eradication or containment is economically desirable, and when biological control is economically desirable. Management choices depend on the marginal costs of increments of government intervention, effects of uncertain budgets on the control of broom, choice of control measures and effects of uncertain values of biodiversity. These issues are addressed through the application of a detailed bioeconomic model of broom management.Scotch broom, economic issues, management issues, natural environments, bioeconomic model, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Towards a climate change adaptation strategy for national parks: Adaptive management pathways under dynamic risk

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Government seeks to manage public protected areas, such as national parks, to conserve high-quality wildlife habitats and provide essential ecosystems services at risk of permanent damage or extinction from climate change. The complexity of the organizational structure required to deliver this breadth of functions, coupled to uncertainty surrounding the onset and severity of climate impacts at local scale, impedes planning for climate change. This paper describes the development of an adaptation planning tool and its application in a pilot planning process for the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the agency of the New South Wales (NSW) Government (Australia) responsible for management of national parks and public conservation reserves. The process involved close engagement in knowledge co-production in participatory workshops, and employed two complementary techniques, adaptive pathways and risk assessment. It successfully elicited tacit knowledge of agency staff about the range of interventions available, the need for management practices to evolve, and of discontinuities in management pathways in a dynamic risk environment. Findings suggest that management effort across the NSW reserve system will increase as climate risk rises. Consequently, government will need to respond to increased demand for resources, for better targeting of those resources, and for management innovation in how resources are deployed to support adaptation that is both anticipatory and transformative

New South Wales Vegetation classification and Assessment: Part 3, plant communities of the NSW Brigalow Belt South, Nandewar and west New England Bioregions and update of NSW Western Plains and South-western Slopes plant communities, Version 3 of the NSWVCA database

This fourth paper in the NSW Vegetation Classification and Assessment series covers the Brigalow Belt South-/1(BBS) and Nandewar (NAN) Bioregions and the western half of the New England Bioregion (NET), an area of 9.3 million hectares being 11.6% of NSW. It completes the NSWVCA coverage for the Border Rivers-Gwydir and Namoi CMA areas and records plant communities in the Central West and Hunter–Central Rivers CMA areas. In total, 585 plant communities are now classified in the NSWVCA covering 11.5 of the 18 Bioregions in NSW (78% of the State). Of these 226 communities are in the NSW Western Plains and 416 are in the NSW Western Slopes. 315 plant communities are classified in the BBS, NAN and west-NET Bioregions including 267 new descriptions since Version 2 was published in 2008. Descriptions of the 315 communities are provided in a 919 page report on the DVD accompanying this paper along with updated reports on other inland NSW bioregions and nine Catchment Management Authority areas fully or partly classified in the NSWVCA to date. A read-only version of Version 3 of the NSWVCA database is on the DVD for use on personal computers. A feature of the BBS and NAN Bioregions is the array of ironbark and bloodwood Eucalyptusdominated shrubby woodlands on sandstone and acid volcanic substrates extending from Dubbo to Queensland. This includes iconic natural areas such as Warrumbungle and Mount Kaputar National Parks and the 500,000 ha Pilliga Scrub forests. Large expanses of basalt-derived soils support grassy box woodland and native grasslands including those on the Liverpool Plains; near Moree; and around Inverell, most of which are cleared and threatened. Wetlands occur on sodic soils near Yetman and in large clay gilgais in the Pilliga region. Sedgelands are rare but occupy impeded creeks. Aeolian lunettes occur at Narran Lake and near Gilgandra. Areas of deep sand contain Allocasuarina, eucalypt mallee and Melaleuca uncinata heath. Tall grassy or ferny open forests occur on mountain ranges above 1000m elevation in the New England Bioregion and on the Liverpool Range while grassy box woodlands occupy lower elevations with lower rainfall and higher temperatures. The vegetation classification and assessment is based on over 100 published and unpublished vegetation surveys and map unit descriptions, expert advice, extra plot sampling and data analysis and over 25 000 km of road traverse with field checking at 805 sites. Key sources of data included floristic analyses produced in western regional forest assessments in the BBS and NAN Bioregions, floristic analyses in over 60 surveys of conservation reserves and analysis of plot data in the western NET Bioregion and covering parts of the Namoi and Border Rivers- Gwydir CMA areas. Approximately 60% of the woody native vegetation in the study area has been cleared resulting in large areas of “derived” native grasslands. As of June 2010, 7% of the area was in 136 protected areas and 127 of the 315 plant communities were assessed to be adequately protected in reserves. Using the NSWVCA database threat criteria, 15 plant communities were assessed as being Critically Endangered, 59 Endangered, 60 Vulnerable, 99 Near Threatened and 82 Least Concern. 61 of these communities are assessed as part of NSW or Commonwealth-listed Threatened Ecological Communities. Current threats include expanding dryland and irrigated cropping on alluvial plains, floodplains and gently undulating topography at lower elevations; over-grazing of steep hills; altered water tables and flooding regimes; localized mining; and the spread of exotic species, notably Coolatai Grass (Hyparrhenia hirta)

Floristics and distribution of Wattle Dry Sclerophyll Forests and Scrubs in north-eastern New South Wales

Acacia blakei forests and scrubs of north-eastern NSW are described and compared to similar vegetation found in the south-east of the state, primarily dominated by Acacia silvestris. Like those in the south, Northern Wattle Dry Sclerophyll Forests form often discrete stands with abrupt margins on steep slopes in rugged terrain on shallow often rocky soils. The structure is usually of a cohort with stems of an even height and size up to 20 m tall, and a sparse understorey with few grasses, herbs or shrubs. These systems are potentially maintained by infrequent extreme fire events. Notes are made on their management and conservation

The NSW Crown Lands Review: Risks and Opportunities for Aboriginal People in New South Wales

The Crown Land Estate in New South Wales (NSW), managed by the Department of Primary Industries – Lands, totals 33 million hectares, covers 42% of the state, and is valued at approximately $11 billion. It does not include national parks and state forests managed by other government departments. By far the largest component (more than 30 million hectares) is the Western Division leasehold land, which is mostly under grazing and pastoral leases. The remaining lands comprise 34 000 reserves, including beach and estuary areas, rivers and other waterways, community and cultural facilities, sports and recreation reserves, caravan parks, and land used for grazing and as travelling stock reserves (TSRs). In June 2012, the NSW Government began an internal interagency Crown Lands Management Review. Its stated aims were to ‘improve the management of Crown land and increase the benefits and returns from Crown land to the community’ (NSW Trade & Investment 2014a:vii)... This paper explains the importance of Crown lands to Aboriginal communities in NSW and how certain elements of the review may affect land of significance to Aboriginal people, indicating risks as well as opportunities

Rare or threatened vascular plant species of Wollemi National Park, central eastern New South Wales

Wollemi National Park (c. 32o 20’– 33o 30’S, 150o– 151oE), approximately 100 km north-west of Sydney, conserves over 500 000 ha of the Triassic sandstone environments of the Central Coast and Tablelands of New South Wales, and occupies approximately 25% of the Sydney Basin biogeographical region. 94 taxa of conservation significance have been recorded and Wollemi is recognised as an important reservoir of rare and uncommon plant taxa, conserving more than 20% of all listed threatened species for the Central Coast, Central Tablelands and Central Western Slopes botanical divisions. For a land area occupying only 0.05% of these divisions, Wollemi is of paramount importance in regional conservation. Surveys within Wollemi National Park over the last decade have recorded several new populations of significant vascular plant species, including some sizeable range extensions. This paper summarises the current status of all rare or threatened taxa, describes habitat and associated species for many of these and proposes IUCN (2001) codes for all, as well as suggesting revisions to current conservation risk codes for some species. For Wollemi National Park 37 species are currently listed as Endangered (15 species) or Vulnerable (22 species) under the New South Wales Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995. An additional 50 species are currently listed as nationally rare under the Briggs and Leigh (1996) classification, or have been suggested as such by various workers. Seven species are awaiting further taxonomic investigation, including Eucalyptus sp. ‘Howes Swamp Creek’ (Doherty 26), known from a single location within the park, and Pultenaea sp. (Olinda) from Dunns Swamp – both these species remain undescribed, but are listed as endangered species. After applying IUCN criteria to the 94 taxa, 2 are considered Critically Endangered; 11 are considered Endangered; 23 are considered Vulnerable; 3 are considered Near Threatened; 19 are considered Data Deficient; and 36 are considered of Least Concern. It is likely that additional highly restricted plant taxa await discovery in remote locations

New South Wales Vegetation Classification and Assessment : part 1, plant communities of the NSW Western Plains

For the Western Plains of New South Wales, 213 plant communities are classified and described and their protected area and threat status assessed. The communities are listed on the NSW Vegetation Classification and Assessment database (NSWVCA). The full description of the communities is placed on an accompanying CD together with a read-only version of the NSWVCA database. The NSW Western Plains is 45.5 million hectares in size and covers 57% of NSW. The vegetation descriptions are based on over 250 published and unpublished vegetation surveys and maps produced over the last 50 years (listed in a bibliography), rapid field checks and the expert knowledge on the vegetation. The 213 communities occur over eight Australian bioregions and eight NSW Catchment Management Authority areas. As of December 2005, 3.7% of the Western Plains was protected in 83 protected areas comprising 62 public conservation reserves and 21 secure property agreements. Only one of the eight bioregions has greater than 10% of its area represented in protected areas. 31 or 15% of the communities are not recorded from protected areas. 136 or 64% have less than 5% of their pre-European extent in protected areas. Only 52 or 24% of the communities have greater than 10% of their original extent protected, thus meeting international guidelines for representation in protected areas. 71 or 33% of the plant communities are threatened, that is, judged as being ‘critically endangered’, ‘endangered’ or ‘vulnerable’. While 80 communities are recorded as being of ‘least concern’ most of these are degraded by lack of regeneration of key species due to grazing pressure and loss of top soil and some may be reassessed as being threatened in the future. Threatening processes include vegetation clearing on higher nutrient soils in wetter regions, altered hydrological regimes due to draw-off of water from river systems and aquifers, high continuous grazing pressure by domestic stock, feral goats and rabbits, and in some places native herbivores — preventing regeneration of key plant species, exotic weed invasion along rivers and in fragmented vegetation, increased salinity, and over the long term, climate change. To address these threats, more public reserves and secure property agreements are required, vegetation clearing should cease, re-vegetation is required to increase habitat corridors and improve the condition of native vegetation, environmental flows to regulated river systems are required to protect inland wetlands, over-grazing by domestic stock should be avoided and goat and rabbit numbers should be controlled and reduced. Conservation action should concentrate on protecting plant communities that are threatened or are poorly represented in protected areas

Prioritizing the protection of climate refugia: designing a climate-ready protected area network

Protected areas are the primary strategy for maintaining natural landscapes and separating biodiversity features from preventable anthropogenic threats. The Convention on Biological Diversity calls for the coverage of at least 17% of land by protected areas, and the strategic prioritization of important biodiversity areas. Using the spatially explicit reserve design software, Marxan, this study combines climate refugia modelled under future climates in the year 2070 and bioregions to identify priority sites for protected area expansion under climate change in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Priority sites for new protected areas that meet bioregion and climate refugia targets were identified in central-western, northeast and patches of southeast NSW. Seven existing parks, including Kosciuszko National Park, overlapped with regions identified repeatedly as climate refugia under 12 future climate scenarios. The recommendations from this study support policy-makers in prioritizing the protection of biodiversity under a changing and uncertain climate

Vegetation of montane bogs in east-flowing catchments of northern New England, New South Wales

The floristics of the montane bogs in east-flowing catchments of northern New England, north-eastern New South Wales (lat 28° 47’–31° 25’ S; long 151° 50’–152° 30’ E), are described from 62 full floristic survey sites (20 x 20 m in area). Eight vegetation communities are based on flexible UPGMA analysis of cover-abundance scores of vascular plant taxa. Shrub species make up 26% of the flora and herb species 69%, with the remaining taxa trees, climbers or vines. Shrub species were of little diagnostic value, as a few common dominants were shared across most communities. The herbaceous layer was found to be of better circumscriptive value. Communities described (based on dominant herbaceous species) are: (1) Themeda australis – Gonocarpus micranthus, (2) Baumea articulata – Baloskion stenocoleum, (3) Lepidosperma limicola – Baloskion stenocoleum, (4) Baloskion fimbriatum – Lomandra longifolia, (5) Lepyrodia scariosa – Blandfordia grandiflora, (6) Lepidosperma gunnii – Lepidosperma scariosa, (7) Baloskion stenocoleum – Empodisma minus, (8) Lepidosperma limicola – Xyris operculata. The mean annual moisture index was found to account for 26% of the variation in species density. These montane bog systems are some of the richest in Australia, with a high number of rare and restricted taxa. They are vulnerable to both present landuse practices and future changes in climate, are restricted in area, and need further conservation efforts to ensure their long-term survival