Flora and Fauna in Local Government Areas

We tend to think of native plants and animals as living in the bush, most of which is on public land.  National parks and other conservation reserves are the key areas that have been set aside for the purposes of maintaining Victoria's biodiversity - that's where conservation is done.  Public land and biodiversity conservation are both legislative responsibilities of state government; local government has no formal role in these areas.  Yet public land occupies only a third of the total area of the state while parks and reserves are around one half of that.  Nearly 70% of Victorian land is privately owned and most of it has been cleared for agriculture, horticulture, mining, urban development and roads.  Not the stuff of conservation.  Nevertheless, more than 90% of all native plant and animal species have been recorded, at some time, on private land - slightly more than for public land and significantly more than for conservation reserves.  In addition, about 15% of all natives, and 20% of rare or threatened species, are known only from private property.

Clearly local government has an important role to play in conservation on private land but our knowledge of the flora and fauna within LGAs is very uneven across the state and the information available for some is very sketchy.  The associated web pages provide an analysis of Victorian local government areas derived from Viridans software packages using a range of biodiversity and conservation parameters.  Each page provides an overall conservation and data adequacy rating in addition to 22 biodiversity parameters (compared with standardised statewide averages), a locality map, an area statement, population density, simple climate profile and broad public/private land ratios.  There is also a photograph of a typical tree species, rare plant and local animal species for each.  The data are supplemented by explanatory and interpretive notes on the analysis.

For further information on these analyses and other services that Viridans can provide contact us at flora.fauna@viridans.com.