Current list of Threatened Flora (5 August 2008) (335.56 kB)

Current list of Threatened Fauna (5 August 2008) (335.64 kB)

 Current Threatened and Priority Fauna Rankings (5 February 2009) (52.82 kB)

Current list of Threatened Ecological Communities (88.53 kB)

The Department of Environment and Conservation has developed rigorous procedures for the conservation of threatened species and ecological communities.

Coordination of threatened species and ecological community conservation is carried out by DEC's Species and Communities Branch.

The branch is also custodian of databases providing distributional data on threatened taxa. This information is particularly useful to persons planning developments or other activities in areas that may impinge on threatened wildlife, or who wish to study field populations. Administrative charges are imposed for provision of information from these databases.

The Species and Communities Branch provides a service (free to DEC staff and not-for-profit organisations) that allows you to find out if there are any Threatened Fauna, Declared Rare Flora (DRF) or Threatened Ecological Communities (TECs) at a particular location you are working at or planning to visit. The service also covers Priority Flora and Fauna species and some Priority Ecological Communities. Download Flora, Fauna and Ecological Community Data Searches (  69.62 Kb)

The recovery process

The 'recovery process' provides the overall framework for the conservation of threatened species and communities. It can be summarised as:

• review the conservation status of all taxa and ecological communities,
• prepare conservation priority lists of threatened taxa and ecological communities,
• where insufficient information exists to prescribe conservation actions, conduct the necessary research,
• produce costed Recovery Plans, and
• for each Recovery Plan, obtain funding, implement, and monitor and review implementation.

See Briefing Paper "Conservation of Threatened Species and Threatened Ecological Communities"

This process can be followed at national, State or local levels. In DEC, we are concerned with the State level, but we often liaise and work with the Australian Government Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and Arts, the Commonwealth nature conservation agency, as well as other State and Territory conservation agencies.

Priorities

Methods used to decide priorities for conservation action for threatened species are described in the department's Policy Statement No. 50: Setting priorities for the conservation of Western Australia's threatened flora and fauna. A scoring system is used as a guide to allocating taxa to the IUCN (World Conservation Union) Red Book categories of threat.

An important strategy that DEC is using to assist the listing, prioritising and conservation management of vascular plants, is the development of Regional or District Threatened Flora Management Programs. These review the status of declared threatened flora and of priority taxa in a DEC Region or District, develop local priorities and outline management needs for declared rare and priority taxa.

A process has been developed for ranking threatened ecological communities.

Definitions, Categories and Criteria for Threatened and Priority Ecological Communities (30.17 kB)