Notification: Parks and Wildlife Service is part of the new Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA).
An ecological community is a naturally occurring group of plants, animals and other organisms interacting in a unique habitat. The complex range of interactions between the component species provides an important level of biological diversity in addition to genetics and species.
Because ecosystems and the links between their community members are so complex, it is important to identify, maintain and manage whole ecosystems, their processes and communities (including the many thousands of species of invertebrates, non-flowering plants like fungi and seaweeds, and micro-organisms), rather than just on a species by species basis.
It is also more cost-effective and efficient to prevent species from becoming threatened by conserving them as part of viable, functioning communities than it is to attempt to manage individual species.
The Minister for Environment may currently list an ecological community as being threatened through a non-statutory process if the community is presumed to be totally destroyed or at risk of becoming totally destroyed. The Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 will provide for the statutory listing of threatened ecological communities (TECs) by the Minister when the relevant Parts of the Act are proclaimed following the preparation of enabling Regulations. The new legislation also describes statutory processes for preparing recovery plans for TECs, the registration of their critical habitat, and penalties for unauthorised modification of TECs.
The department has been identifying and listing threatened ecological communities since 1994 through the non-statutory process.
As at June 2017, an additional 391 ecological communities (community types and sub-types) with insufficient information available to be considered a TEC, or which are rare but not currently threatened, have been placed on the Priority list and referred to as priority ecological communities (PECs).
TEC and PEC occurences are entered into the threatened and priority ecological community database.
This is one of the main tools for monitoring threatened ecological communites in Western Australia.
Send report forms to:
Species and Communities Branchor email to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Recovery plans outline the actions that we need to take to help threatened species or ecological communities survive and 'recover' to a healthy level.
Interim recovery plans are preliminary versions of recovery plans that are prepared where full information is not available.
Recovery plans and interim recovery plans are prepared for threatened species and ecological communities on a priority basis, commencing with those ranked for conservation action by the Minister for Environment as ‘Critically Endangered’.
They are developed with a range of stakeholders, and are generally current for a term of 10 years, but remain in operation until revised. They are modified when changes in knowledge occur. They provide an assessment of the current status, and detailed information and guidance for the management and protection, of threatened ecological communities.
interim recovery plans are used to manage and protect threatened or harvested species, threatened ecological communities or other species in need of management where a plan is required urgently but where there are insufficient data available to prepare a full recovery plan.
Recovery plans prepared by the department may be adopted by the Australian Government, and are then referred to as national recovery plans.
Examples of monitoring protocols for a selection of threatened ecological communities are provided below.