Recently both Brian Everingham and Margaret Bell have sought clarification about
changes to the list of threatened species.
Briefly, the situation is as follows:
yes the Little Tern and Hooded Plover have been removed from Schedule 1 of the
Commonwealth Endangered Species Protection Act 1992. These are 2 of many
amendments which took effect on 12 Dec 99 when the Minister for Environment and
Heritage signed a Declaration under the act.
The decisions are based upon advice given by the Endangered Species Advisory
Committee, established under that Act. The committee is required to base its
decisions on a national perspective, rather than narrower State or regional
perspectives. Interested persons are free to write to the Minister seeking the
reasons for recommending the changes.
Note that the changes are to listings under the Federal Act only and have no
influence on lists maintained under State legislation. In Victoria, both the
Little Tern and the Hooded Plover are listed under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee
Act and Action Statements are being implemented, and will continue to be
implemented. The main problem with downlisting on the Federal Act is that it
becomes almost impossible to obtain funding from the Endangered Species Program
of NHT for species that are not classified as either Endangered or Critically
Endangered at the national level. Therefore, implementation of species action
plans etc for Little Tern or Hooded Plover will now be reliant on State Govt or
non-Govt sources of $.
Changes to bird listings on the Federal schedules are:
from endangered to not listed: Little Tern
from vulnerable to not listed: Hooded Plover
from not listed to vulnerable: Baudin's Black-Cocky
from endangered to vulnerable: Noisy Scrub-bird, Western Bristlebird, Partridge
Pigeon (subspecies blaauwi), Western Whipbird (western mallee subspecies)
from vulnerable to endangered: Carnaby's Black-Cocky
Hope this helps.
Peter Menkhorst
Flora and Fauna Program
Department of Natural Resources and Environment
Melbourne
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