The town of Anglesea on the west coast of Victoria is famous for its Eastern Grey Kangaroos. However, conflicts have increased between people and kangaroos in the town. Many concerns are centred on the golf course, which can support a population of over 300 kangaroos at times. Roadkills of kangaroos are a major issue for residents, and have apparently increased over the last decade. Residents share a number of other concerns about kangaroos, and are interested in understanding more about them. These issues are being addressed by the development of a community-based kangaroo management program, which may become a blueprint for living with kangaroos in urban areas of Australia.

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.

The Action Plan for Australian frogs was hampered by grossly inadequate information on populations, and problems created by the criteria for recognizing species under threat. Only by the devotion of substantial resources can the plight of Australian frogs be recognized and resolved.

In NSW, threatened species conservation operates through legislation. When the government of NSW introduced these Acts, it integrated the threatened species legislation with the planning legislation and so consideration of threatened species issues became a mandatory part of the planning system. This changed the status of threatened species issues bringing them into the mainstream of planning and development approval, requiring all elements of the community of NSW to take threatened species into account when planning decisions are being made. This has been of great benefit for threatened species but it also requires persons working with threatened species to fully understand the intricacies of the planning system. Recognising that the NSW planning system is very complex, this paper sets out to explain, in straightforward terms, how the planning system operates and how threatened species conservation is integrated into the planning system and how it operates in practice. Some comments on the system are provided.

There has been much discussion about the difference between marine and terrestrial systems and appropriateness of applying terrestrial conservation methods to marine systems. To investigate these issues, 43 criteria were assessed for magnitude of difference and implications for conservation planning. Results suggest that despite distinct differences in the ecology of marine and terrestrial systems, many of the conservation concepts applied in terrestrial systems are relevant and readily transferable to marine systems. Concern that marine systems may be too open and variable to support area-based conservation approaches is quickly abating. This initial misconception was influenced not only by real differences in ecology and scale of the two systems, but also by historic biases in our knowledge and use of these systems. In broad terms, as our understanding of these systems continues to develop, it is increasingly clear that both are subject to a similar suite of conservation issues requiring similar types of responses. In many regards the underlying conservation planning approaches currently applied in these systems are tending to converge towards a ‘landscape’ management approach incorporating on and off-reserve conservation techniques. Increasingly for marine and terrestrial systems, the most important conservation planning objectives include the establishment of secure systems of appropriately located, designed and managed protected areas, and to integrate their application with sustainable management and supplementary conservation management in the off-reserve matrix.

There is growing recognition of the crucial role councils may play in biodiversity conservation. Various problems serve to thwart Local Government’s potential, including fiscal constraints, fragmentation of jurisdiction and outdated values. To date, much attention has focused on development control under the planning system, as recently amended by the Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 (NSW). Closer scrutiny of Local Government planning practice, however, reveals a regime that confers substantial discretion on local decision-makers to welcome development at the expense of habitat retention. Better information, whilst important, does not in itself conserve biodiversity. This paper argues that extension of planning tools beyond regulation will assist Local Government to assume the important role predicted in official documents such as the National Biodiversity Conservation Strategy.

In Australia, invasive terrestrial pest species have been implicated in the decline of a number of threatened species. Under the NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 , pest threats can be listed as Key Threatening Processes which require the preparation of Threat Abatement Plans to ameliorate the threats. This paper presents an overview of how the threat abatement planning process is being used to plan initiatives to reduce the biodiversity impacts of invasive species. The approach taken in four threat abatement plans (foxes Vulpes vulpes , feral cats Felis catus , bitou bush Chrysanthemoides monilifera and gambusia Gambusia holbrooki ) is used to illustrate this process.

Many conservation and policy issues relating to invertebrates and biodiversity conservation focus on state lands, particularly Nature Reserves and National Parks. However, the main threats to biodiversity occur on private land. This paper principally deals with how the Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 amended the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 and resulted in threatened species considerations being integrated into the New South Wales planning system. The main focus of this paper is how threatened species are considered in the development of private land. Special emphasis is given to threatened invertebrates and the way in which these species must be considered in those development applications which affect the habitats and populations of these fauna.

Despite being classified as one of the world's mega-diversity hotspots, the basic biology and ecology of most PNG forest vertebrate species are completely unknown, which hampers sound planning for conservation of PNG's forest fauna. Although almost 70% of PNG still retains its forest cover, PNG supports a surprisingly high proportion of threatened mammals and birds, which are comparable to the proportion of threatened species in Australia - 27% of PNG's mammals and 4% of PNG's birds are considered critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable compared with 22% and 5% respectively of Australia's mammals and birds. Degradation and loss of habitat by the partial or total removal of forest cover (from clear-fell logging, selective logging and clearing for shifting agriculture and oil palm plantations) is the most significant threat currently posed to PNG's forest fauna. Hunting may also pose a threat for some of the larger, highly sort after game species, such as tree kangaroos and cassowaries. An overview is provided of PNG's legislation for protected areas development and we outline our experiences in the facilitation of community planning for Wildlife Management Area establishment and management by local landowners in the Mt Bosavi area of Southern Highlands Province. For Wildlife Management Areas, the ownership of the land, the development of management rules and the enforcement of management rules remains in the hands of the customary landowner. The participatory community planning process that we developed to try to overcome some of the factors which have led to failure of WMAs elsewhere in PNG is outlined in this paper. In our opinion the only successful conservation areas in PNG will be those developed on land still held in customary ownership by landowners committed to conservation. We also believe that the planning process we developed can be used by local communities (with minor alterations) to undertake sustainable land and resource-use planning that can achieve broad scale conservation outcomes that do not necessarily result in the establishment of protected areas. While establishment of conservation areas by committed landowners may be part of the answer to achieving conservation of PNG's forest fauna, we also highlight research priorities which will aid the assessment of the effectiveness of conservation areas, and help to determine what other off-reserve measures may need to be taken to ensure effective conservation of PNG's fauna. We believe that the key to answering some of the fundamental biological and ecological questions necessary for the adequate conservation of PNG's fauna lies in building the capacity of PNG biologists and in securing adequate funds for them to undertake long-term research

The capacity of human activities to have significant impact on marine environments was not regarded as a serious issue until the middle of the 20th century. It is now regarded as a matter of increasing urgency but the evolution of appropriate management measures presents several challenges. This paper discusses the nature and scale of marine ecosystems, their linkage through the water column and how these raise management requirements that are not easily addressed through terrestrial concepts of jurisdictional boundaries and individual rights of access or ownership. It concludes by presenting the case for a marine implementation of multiple use management characterised by a core component of highly protected reference or sanctuary sites within a larger ecosystem-scale area managed for verifiably sustainable use and providing effective buffering for highly protected coresites.