Native Plant Distributions – All regions

Native plant distributions – climate change, bush fires and native plants

The summer of 2019 and 2020 was the worst summer in living memory. Drought and horror bushfires, storms and floods have led to many dead, homes destroyed, countless animals killed, and millions of hectares and their plants incinerated. Soil has been burnt to a considerable depth and in some areas the seed bank may have been destroyed.

We have developed a series of spreadsheets that document the distribution of native plants in eastern Australia, prior to the fires. The data has been assembled over many years from reputable and publicly available sources. The aims of the project are to:

• Promote bottom up activities by APS members
• Ensure APS members know where native plants are
• Quantify floral biodiversity and its potential management
• Provide prompts and benchmarking for bushwalking activities and lists
• Provide prompts and benchmarking for bushfire recovery and climate changes
• Assist activities to conserve Rare and Endangered species, ecosystems and environments
• Augment our traditional stories and pictures with hard data to promote more fruitful communications.

As data which pre-dates the recent fires, we hope it will provide a reference point for recovery, now or in the future. We hope it can be used to monitor, measure and learn. This project is a major work to capture the locations and occurrences of all native vascular plants in Eastern NSW. Data from multiple reputable sources are used. 147 areas are identified that concentrate on reserved and less disturbed parts of the landscape. These are then grouped into 27 Regions and species lists for those Regions prepared. The flora in Areas within each Region are displayed in the lists.

Work continues in regions not yet covered. We hope it will provide a reference point for recovery, now or in the future and can be used to monitor, measure and learn. 

For more information, contact Tony Maxwell, plantlists@austplants.com.au