DRAFT Tuart Conservation and Management Strategy

1.7 Guiding principles for strategy development
Guiding principles for the development of this draft Tuart Conservation and Management
Strategy are suggested by the Tuart Response Group as follows.
1.7.1 Meeting reserve targets for nominated under-represented tuart
ecosystems
Nationally agreed criteria (JANIS 4 ) for establishing a National Reserves System for forests in
Australia provide for 15 per cent 5 of natural ecosystems to be protected in a comprehensive,
adequate and representative (CAR) reserve system. The criteria also provide for flexibility in
determining the level of formal reservation by: (i) allowing regional circumstances to be taken
into account, and by (ii) ensuring the maximum extent of CAR reserves. The present reserve
status for tuart woodlands (Government of Western Australia 2002) is shown in Table 1.
Extent of tuart woodlands in IUCN reserves (I) to (IV)
Tuart ecosystems
(after Beard 1979 and Hopkins 1996)
Tall woodland:
tuart
Orig.
Pre-
1750
extent
Current extent
IUCN Reserve
Categories
(I) to (IV)
(ha) (%) (ha) (%)
3,155 2,088 66.2 1,451 46.0
Medium woodland: tuart 51,575 19,742 38.3 5,140 10.0
Medium woodland:
54,077 15,998 29.6 1,501 2.8
tuart-jarrah
Medium open woodland: tuart 1,080 778 72/0 256 23.7
Medium open woodland: marri- tuart 1,213 78 6.4 0 0
Mosaic: medium woodlands, tuart with low 509 145 28.5 0 0
woodland, banksia
Total 111,609 38,829 6 34.8 8,348 7.5
Note that regionally significant bushland, including tuart woodlands, has also been identified
on the basis of criteria relating to conservation values as part of the ‘Bush Forever Program’
(Government of Western Australia 2000). Important amongst these is the achievement of a
comprehensive representation of the ecological communities originally occurring in the region
through a protection target of at least 10 per cent of each vegetation complex.
4 The JANIS “criteria apply to all forests, and associated woodlands, within each region for which an RFA is to be
developed." (Commonwealth of Australia 1999). As the Swan Coastal Plain was not included in Western
Australia’s RFA agreement, the criteria would only apply to tuart woodlands after its dominant structural
ecosystems (Hopkins et al. 1996) had been validated by rigorous scientific analysis of ecosystem values, health
and vitality, and productive capacity. For example for an ecosystem to have ‘high conservation value’ it must
exceed a certain threshold of disturbance.
5 A reduction in CAR reserves may occur where the objectives for maintaining biodiversity are demonstrated to be
met with a lesser area, or where it is impractical to purchase land because ecosystems occur largely on private
lands. Alternatively, the 15 per cent formal reservation level of the pre-1750 distribution may be exceeded for rare
and endangered forest ecosystems, where all remaining occurrences require reservation or protection. A rare
ecosystem is one where its ‘geographic distribution involves a total range of generally less than 10,000 hectares, a
total area of generally less than 1,000 hectares or patch sizes of generally less than 100 hectares, where such
patches do not aggregate to significant areas’ (Commonwealth of Australia 1999).
6 The estimate of remnant tuart woodlands mapped by Beard (1979) and Hopkins (1996) is 38, 829 hectares at a
scale of 1:250,000 (Table 1). The estimate of remnant tuart woodlands as mapped by the Tuart Atlas (2003) is
30,317 hectares at a scale of 1:10,000 (Appendix 6.1).
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