DRAFT Conservation Advice1 for the Eastern Mallee Bird Community This document combines the approved conservation advice and listing assessment for the threatened ecological community. It provides a foundation for conservation action and further planning. Malleefowl (Leipoa ocellata) [centre]; Gilbert’s Whistler (Pachycephala inornata) [top left]; Black-eared Miner (Manorina melanotis) [right]; White-fronted Honeyeater (Purnella albifrons) [bottom left]. All images © Brian Furby, used with permission. Conservation Status The Eastern Mallee Bird Community was nominated for listing on the threatened ecological communities list under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). At the time of this advice, the ecological community corresponds in part with the Victorian Mallee Bird Community, listed as threatened in Victoria. Some member species of the ecological community are individually listed as threatened by jurisdictions that overlap with the community’s extent. The ecological community was assessed by the Threatened Species Scientific Committee, with a preliminary recommendation that the ecological community may merit listing as Endangered and that a recovery plan is not required for the ecological community at this time. The Committee’s preliminary assessment of the eligibility against each of the listing criteria is: Criteria 1: Eligible as Vulnerable Criterion 4: Eligible as Vulnerable to Endangered Criterion 2: Not eligible Criteria 5: Eligible as Vulnerable; Criterion 3: Eligible as Vulnerable to Endangered Criterion 6: Insufficient data. The Committee’s full preliminary assessment and recommendations are at Section 6. The main factors that make the threatened ecological community eligible for listing in the Endangered category are the severe declines in multiple functionally significant birds and loss of ecological integrity, primarily due to fragmentation of mallee habitats and the impacts of altered fire regimes and pest animals across parts of the Eastern Mallee. These have resulted in reduced abundance, shifts in the composition of prominent birds, and localised extinctions of component bird species. 1 The Conservation Advice is a statutory document as per section 266B of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. Draft Conservation Advice – Eastern Mallee Bird Community 1 CONTENTS 1 Conservation objective .................................................................................................................... 2 Description of the Ecological Community and the Area it Inhabits ................................................. 2.1 Description ............................................................................................................................... 2.2 Cultural and community significance ………………………………………………………...….. 3 Threats ............................................................................................................................................ 3.1 Threat table .............................................................................................................................. 3.2 Key threatning processes ........................................................................................................ 4 Existing protection ........................................................................................................................... 4.1 Existing protection in reserves ............................................................................................ 23 4.2 Existing protection under state laws ........................................................................................ 4.3 Existing management plans ..................................................................................................... 5 Conservation of the ecological community ..................................................................................... 5.1 Identification of the ecological community ............................................................................... 5.2 Regulated areas of the ecological community ......................................................................... 5.3 Priority conservation and research actions .............................................................................. 6 Listing assessment .......................................................................................................................... 6.1 Eligibility for listing against the EPBC Act criteria .................................................................... 6.2 Recovery plan recommendation .............................................................................................. 7 Appendix A - Species lists ............................................................................................................... 8 Appendix B - Relationship to other classifications and protection .................................................. 9 Appendix C - Indigenous information …………………………………………………………………… 10 References ...................................................................................................................................... Draft Conservation Advice – Eastern Mallee Bird Community 2 1 CONSERVATION OBJECTIVE The objective of this conservation advice is to: - mitigate the risk of extinction of the Eastern Mallee Bird Community and help recover its biodiversity and function through protecting it from significant impacts as a Matter of National Environmental Significance under national environmental law; and - guide implementation of its management and recovery, consistent with the recommended priority conservation and research actions set out in this advice. This Conservation Advice contains information relevant to the objective by: • describing the ecological community and where it can be found (section 2); • identifying the key threats to the ecological community (section 3); • summarising the existing protections for the ecological community (section 4); • outlining information to guide its identification and conservation, including the key diagnostic features, condition thresholds and classes, and additional information to identify the ecological community, and the priority conservation and research actions to stop its decline and support its recovery (section 5); and • presenting evidence to explain why the ecological community merits listing as nationally threatened under national environment law (section 6). Draft Conservation Advice – Eastern Mallee Bird Community 3 2 DESCRIPTION OF THE ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITY AND THE AREA IT INHABITS 2.1 Description The ecological community described in this conservation advice is a type of faunal community. It is an assemblage of birds associated with mallee vegetation in the semi-arid areas of New South Wales (NSW), South Australia (SA) and Victoria. This section describes the assemblage of bird species that comprise the ecological community, plus their habitats, and noting that many occurrences or observations of this community are now likely to be in a modified state with a depauperate species composition and habitat features. Key diagnostic characteristics and any condition requirements for this community are outlined in Section 5. 2.1.1 Name The ecological community was originally nominated as the ‘Woodland and Heathland Bird Community of the Murray Mallee Bioregion’. The nomination was based on a threatened ecological community listed in Victoria under the name, Victorian Mallee Bird Community, with a distribution limited to the Murray Mallee region of north-western Victoria and south-eastern SA. However, an analysis of the bird fauna of the Eastern Mallee by Birdlife Australia (2015a) identified a larger bird assemblage dependent on mallee with a broader range that encompasses the Eyre-Yorke Block bioregion as well as the Murray Mallee. The same eastern assemblage of birds is associated with mallee woodlands across both these regions. It is this assemblage on which the national ecological community is based (see Appendix A). The name of the ecological community is the Eastern Mallee Bird Community (hereafter referred to as the “Eastern Mallee Birds” or “the ecological community”). The name refers to an assemblage of native bird species that has a strong association with mallee woodlands and shrublands in south-eastern Australia. It also aligns with the name applied by Birdlife Australia (2015a) to a woodland bird assemblage in the ‘Eastern Mallee’ region (see 2.1.2, below). The term ‘Mallee’ is defined here as: “a growth habit in which several woody stems arise separately from a lignotuber (usually applied to shrubby eucalypts); a plant having the above growth habit; vegetation dominated by such plants.” (McCusker, 1999). It is applied here solely to species of eucalypts that naturally show this growth habit and are indigenous to the Eastern Mallee region. 2.1.2 Location and climate Mallee vegetation occurs in the drier, semi-arid parts of Australia, generally south of the arid zone (Yates et al., 2017) in Western Australia, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria (Figure 2.1). It is not continuous across this broad range due to variations in landscape and climate. The Nullarbor Plain represents a substantial gap that separates the Western Australian mallee from the eastern mallee. The Flinders Ranges represents another, smaller gap in distribution between formerly extensive areas of mallee on the Eyre and Yorke Peninsulas from those around the lower Murray. The distribution of the