Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L00432:reg:5:p6
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2023L00432
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 5 (pt 6/8)
Character Range: 74634–77707

in mortality from predation (Leahy et al. 2016).
Fire weather risk is difficult to predict over much of the Greater Bilby's range (CSIRO & BOM 2020) however for areas influenced by monsoonal weather fire behaviour will be more extreme.
Planting and invasion of habitat by buffel grass is believed to be a significant threat to habitat by changing fire intensity and regimes (DotE 2015), affecting food availability, structural suitability, predator behaviour, and susceptibility to predation.
In pre-colonial times evidence suggests that the use of fire was primarily intensive, controlled and focussed, while the transition to European fire regimes has resulted in more widespread fires. During this transition, the size of fires across the spinifex-dominated deserts of central and western Australia have increased. The effect of increased fire size in the spinifex deserts and trend towards landscape fire age homogeny is linked with the broad decrease in desert biodiversity (Catt 2013). Where there was consistent use of fire, associated with indigenous occupation of country, maintained pyro-diversity and buffered landscapes against severe wildfire impacts. The size of fires continues to increase, with one fire in the Great Sandy Desert in 2017 reaching approximately 3.8 million hectares (Gareth Catt pers. comm. 2020).
Fire regimes that cause biodiversity decline has been nominated as a key threatening process under the EPBC Act (DAWE 2020). In the context of predation from foxes and feral cats, altered fire regimes and reduction in pyro–diversity are a threat to the Greater Bilby.

5.6                 Loss of Traditional Owner knowledge and land management
The majority of wild bilby occurrences in the NT and WA are on Indigenous-managed lands (Walsh and Custodians of the Bilby 2016; Bradley et al. 2015). The application of traditional ecological knowledge by Indigenous people managing their country, particularly fire, may influence   the local persistence of bilbies. Loss of this knowledge, or reduction in traditional management, may therefore contribute to the local extinction of bilbies and management actions have the potential to be less effective if this local and traditional knowledge is not incorporated.
Indigenous people who have both experience of local environmental conditions and traditional ecological knowledge of bilbies also have capacity for research and management and can inform management actions to make them more locally effective. It is therefore critical to the conservation of the Greater Bilby that plans, policies and programs encourage the inter-generational retention of traditional ecological knowledge and facilitate increased land management by Indigenous people.
Photo: Bilby footprints © Rick Southgate 2018.

5.7                 Reduction in population resilience and genetic fitness in wild and intensively managed populations
A species whose population size is small and fragmented is more susceptible to extinction than a species whose population size is large and inter-connected. This elevated extinction