Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L00432:reg:2:p1
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L00432
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 2 (pt 1/3)
Character Range: 12482–15545

2               Introduction

2.1                 Introduction to the Greater Bilby and its conservation
The Greater Bilby, Macrotis lagotis (Reid, 1837), is the only remaining member of the Genus Macrotis and sole extant representative of the Family Thylacomyidae (Jackson & Groves 2015) and will be hereafter referred to as 'the Greater Bilby' when referring to the species, or as bilbies or bilby when referring to individual animals. The Greater Bilby is of high spiritual importance to Indigenous people across its present and former range. This plan acknowledges this importance and the significant role Indigenous people play in the conservation of the Greater Bilby.
The Greater Bilby once occupied more than three quarters of Australia – almost all of the drier areas. Overall, the range of the Greater Bilby had been reduced by more than 80 % with bilbies occurring as wild populations now only found in the Northern Territory (NT), central and northern Western Australia (WA), and in small, isolated populations in Queensland (Qld). Bilbies have been reintroduced to islands and enclosures (managed as fenced wild populations) and are managed in zoos and wildlife parks.
More than 70 % of the distribution of bilbies that occur as wild populations are found on Indigenous lands managed by Indigenous people, including Traditional Owners and Indigenous rangers. Training and employment opportunities for Indigenous people, improved access to traditional lands, and maintenance of culture and traditional ecological knowledge are critical for bilby conservation.
Predation by and competition from introduced and feral species, habitat loss and degradation, population size reduction and fragmentation, and changed fire regimes, all continue to threaten the Greater Bilby's long-term chances of survival in nature.
An adaptable and flexible management approach is required to deal with the interdependence and variability of threats across the species' range and the uncertainty about the effectiveness of individual management actions. The potential for incremental loss of traditional ecological knowledge and management in these sparsely populated, harsh and isolated locations, places emphasis on the need to support local communities to implement and coordinate actions locally, whilst exchanging knowledge at regional and national scales. Increasing temperature and extreme weather events from climate change are likely to affect the operation of threats to recovery and potentially create new unforeseen threats.
This recovery plan is based on two key documents:
    * The Greater Bilby recovery summit 2015 report and interim conservation management plan prepared by the Save the Bilby Fund and the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group of the IUCN. This report was a product of a four-day workshop in 2015, consisting of thirty-nine experts representing twenty-nine organisations involved in recovery of the Greater Bilby. This workshop reviewed the conservation activities that had been undertaken since the publication of the Recovery Plan for