The Action Plan for Australian Reptiles has been prepared by Dr Hal Cogger and his associates at the Australian Museum under a consultancy to the Australian Nature Conservation Agency. The Plan, which is due for publication at the end of 1993, reviews the conservation status of Australian reptiles, identifies those taxa at greatest risk, and provides conservation profiles — species recovery outlines — for them. This article describes the methods used to develop the Plan, including the compilation and ranking of the list of threatened taxa. The Plan identifies the geographic regions most significant to conserving diversity in endangered and vulnerable Australian reptiles as well as the habitats with the greatest number of those taxa, and the commonest causes of their decline.