Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L00432:reg:5:p1
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L00432
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 5 (pt 1/8)
Character Range: 61321–64368

5               Threats
This section describes the known and potential threats that affect the achievement of the recovery objectives. Threat prevalence and intensity vary across the range of the Greater Bilby. Members of the recovery team (pers. comm. 2015) have identified some of these variations:
    * In the absence of traditional burning practices, fires in the monsoonal Kimberley occur as smaller frequent wildfires in early summer, compared to the Pilbara and deserts of WA and NT where comparatively infrequent episodic late summer wildfires risk burning extensive areas of habitat, and both represent threats to habitat quality due to a reduction in the patchiness or heterogeneity of habitat distribution, age, and structure. Fire size, frequency, intensity, and extent varies according to climate, and biogeography.
    * Where established, foxes have eliminated and constrain the re-establishment of bilbies. In areas where foxes are not well established, predation by feral cats remains a significant risk to persistence and re-establishment.  Wild canids (dogs), under some circumstances, may also present a risk to the persistence of bilbies. The distribution and effect of introduced predators varies with historical and current land-use, water availability, climate, and biogeography.
    * The risk of habitat loss or fragmentation from activities such as agriculture or mining related land use, varies with development pressure, weed and pest species, geology, biogeography, and climate.
There is significant interaction between threats. For example, livestock grazing can negate the benefits of fire management for small mammals in Australian tropical savannas (Legge et al. 2019). Fire and grazing can reduce the height and size of vegetation allowing predators to catch prey more easily (McGregor et al. 2015). After extensive fires vast areas of homogeneous regrowth following extensive wildfire may limit foraging, dispersal and re-colonisation by bilbies (Bradley et al. 2015).
This plan includes governance and monitoring actions that aim to minimise the risk of inappropriate conservation actions, rather than identify such activities as a potential threat. Consideration of any possible perverse outcomes from management actions is outside the scope of this plan, but may be considered by the recovery team, governments and land managers when planning and monitoring actions.

5.1                 Predation by foxes and feral cats
Evidence suggests that foxes may have had the single largest negative effect on the conservation of the Greater Bilby (Abbott 2001). Fox predation is a major cause of mammal extinction and decline in Australia (Kinnear et al. 2002), and the presence of foxes is negatively correlated with the presence of bilbies (Southgate 1990a). Foxes are established and more common in the southern part of the Greater Bilby's former range where they exerted more predation pressure than in the central and northern part of the Greater Bilby's range. An abundance of rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus)