The Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 (NSW) provides for the listing (and targeted management) of species and ecological communities threatened with extinction in New South Wales. The Act also allows for the listing of threatened populations and key threatening processes, however this website only deals with listed threatened species and ecological communities.
The New South Wales Scientific Committee is responsible for determining which species and ecological communities are listed as threatened. Species and ecological communities can be listed as either Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered, and the Scientific Committee uses specific criteria under the Threatened Species Conservation Regulation 2010 (NSW) to determine which level of threat is appropriate. Upon listing a new species or ecological community (or de-listing or changing the threat category of an existing species or ecological community), the Scientific Committee publishes its Determination, which sets out the scientific evidence assessed and lists the assessment criteria satisfied.
Threatened species and ecological communities are exposed to a number of threats, including habitat fragmentation, exotic plants and animals and climate change. In order to appropriately manage threatened species and communities, especially in the face of climate change, we need to understand the threats to their survival and decide which populations to focus our conservation efforts on.
We collated information from all NSW Scientific Committee Determinations and profiles from the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage website and provide profiles for all threatened species and ecological communities, maps of their distribution and information on any threats identified. This website is a useful first stop for users interested in the management of threatened species and ecological communities in NSW and allows users to search threatened species and communities by name, region and threat type, making it a targeted search-based tool to access information that would otherwise be located across a number of sources.