Australia’s forest-dwelling vascular plant and vertebrate species, their threats, and change over time: Indicators for continental-scale biodiversity assessment

Abstract

Knowledge of forest biodiversity, including species, genetic diversity and threats, is critical for adaptive forest management and monitoring, and supports national and international reporting responsibilities for sustainable forest management. This paper presents a new approach to reporting Australia’s forest-dwelling species using nationally curated data, including records from the Atlas of Living Australia, the forest coverage from the National Forest Inventory, and the Species Profile and Threats Database.

This process identified 1788 forest-dwelling vertebrate fauna species and 13,788 forest-dwelling vascular flora species in Australia. The families Fabaceae and Myrtaceae contribute the most species to forest vegetation, while reptiles and birds are the most species-rich groups of vertebrates in forests.

This process also identified 244 forest-dwelling vertebrate fauna taxa and 983 forest-dwelling vascular flora taxa that were nationally listed as threatened under Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act) as at December 2021 (listing assessment under the EPBC Act is consistent with IUCN Red List Criteria). The most prevalent threat categories were land-use change and/or forest loss, unsuitable fire regimes, and predation and competition from introduced species. Forestry operations is the least prevalent category. Small and fragmented populations were the most prevalent genetic-related threats. The pattern of threat categories varies across broad taxonomic groups: for threatened forest-dwelling amphibians the most prevalent threat categories were disease and/or pathogens, and small or localised populations, whereas for forest-dwelling mammals and birds they were land-use change and/or forest loss, and unsuitable fire regimes. Threat categories for climatic effects, and for disease and/or pathogens, were more prevalent across taxa listed between 2016 and 2021, compared to taxa listed prior to that date.