Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2016L00045:body:0:p12
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2016L00045
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 31062–34142

community is dependent on the maintenance of local hydrological conditions, particularly ground water. The limited distribution and scattered nature of the ecological community, together with the importance of each occurrence to the catchment they occur within, mean that all occurrences are of high conservation value and therefore considered important. In addition, the overall health of local catchments is important to the survival of the ecological community.

Factors important to the survival of the ecological community include:
    * the area of occupancy of known occurrences
    * habitat adjacent to known occurrences (within approximately 200 m), including vegetation communities or peatlands with similar structure/hydrology and/or species composition
    * remnant native vegetation that surrounds or links several occurrences (that provide habitat for pollinators or allow them to move between occurrences).

3.2 Areas of the ecological community under particular pressure for survival

The likelihood of persistence of the ecological community can be impacted by one or more of the following factors:

    * fire impacts

    * grazing and trampling from domestic stock

    * wallowing, grazing and trampling from feral horses, pigs and deer

    * localised impacts from weed infestation,

    * localised impacts from infrastructure and associated activities, and from timber harvesting.

These threats are discussed further in Section 4 - Threats.

Priority sites for protection in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory are listed in a Technical report prepared for the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (Hope et al., 2012). In Victoria, priority sites and actions are identified in the Victorian Alpine Peatlands Spatial Action Plan (VEPI in prep.). Priority sites in Tasmania include those within the Central Plateau.

Indicative distribution maps of the ecological community across each state and territory are on pages 13-15 (Maps 1, 2 and 3).

Map 1: Indicative distribution of the ecological community in ACT and NSW

    Map 2: Indicative distribution of the ecological community in Victoria

Map 3: Indicative distribution of the ecological community in Tasmania

  4.           Threats

Alpine vegetation is particularly vulnerable to disturbances, due in part to the restricted growing season of the alpine and subalpine regions, but also the very fragile nature of some systems, particularly alpine snowpatch vegetation and the Alpine Sphagnum Bogs and Associated Fens ecological community (Ashton and Williams, 1989).

The effects of a range of threats impacting on the integrity of the ecological community are complex, long lasting and may have serious implications for persistence of the ecological community in some locations. Where damage has occurred, the recovery of structure and function is likely to take several decades (McDougall, 2007). Furthermore, if Sphagnum has been completely lost from a site, both the Sphagnum and the bogs that depend on it for the development of permanently moist conditions, may become