PARENT SESSION
Poster Session 19: Biodiversity
Wednesday, August 10, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM, Exhibit Hall 220 A-E, Level 2, Palais des congrès de Montréal
When have we looked hard enough? Incorporating plant detectability and sampling effort into threatened species legislation.
Garrard, Georgia*,1, Wintle, Brendan, Bekessy, Sarah1, Baran, Natalie2, 1 RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia2 University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
ABSTRACT- Urbanisation presents one of the greatest threats to biodiversity in Australia. Land earmarked for potential development within urban fringe areas often supports high levels of native biodiversity, including species or communities listed as threatened under Australia's national Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999. This is the most important piece of biodiversity legislation in Australia, however it is currently limited in its capacity to protect biodiversity by its failure to adequately specify survey standards for impact assessments. This has major implications for the protection of biodiversity, as listed species may go undetected and, therefore, remain unprotected from development impacts. To highlight this point, we analyse plant species detectabilities in a forest area close to Melbourne and summarise similar work already conducted for fauna species. We present a framework under which survey standards and minimum sampling effort can be specified in biodiversity legislation, thereby allowing a more transparent and thorough assessment process for governments, ecologists and planners.
Key words: biodiversity, threatened species, detectability, urban ecology