Australian Capital Territory Native Woodland Conservation Strategy 2019.

The purpose the Strategy is to guide the management and conservation of lowland and subalpine woodlands in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) for the next 10 years (2019-2029). The Strategy is divided into two main sections, Part A and Part B. Part A outlines the primary objectives for woodland conservation in the ACT, and Part B summarises the relevant literature and details objectives specific to the Endangered Yellow Box–Blakely’s Red Gum Grassy Woodland and fauna and flora species that are dependent on woodlands in the ACT and are listed as threatened under the Nature Conservation Act 2014. This information is provided as a set of self-contained action plans.
The Strategy’s objectives are grouped under three overarching themes: Protect and manage woodland and component species; Collaborate with the community; Monitoring and research. In details the objectives are: 1) Retain and Protect native woodland; 2) Reduce threats to Native woodland biodiversity; 3) enhance resilience, ecosystem function and habitat connectivity; 4) raise awareness, promote community participation and citizen science in woodland conservation (this include rural landholders, community, Aboriginal people); 5)support recreational use of woodland; 6) monitor woodland condition; 7) address knowledge gap in woodland conservation.
The Strategy recognises the importance of maintaining a diversity of woodland habitat features as part of the rural landscape and lists several objectives and priorities to enhance collaboration with rural landholders and make agriculture more sustainable. These include: identifying priority location, identify additional strategies to collaborate on projects, maintaining remnant vegetation were possible, etc.
The Strategy among the threats to woodland conservation lists as well inappropriate fire regime and climate change and sets objectives and priorities to increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters. To mitigate the impact of inappropriate fire regime the Strategy’s initiatives include: undertake strategic prescribed burning and other fuel reduction activities, lead and support research to improve understanding of the responses of fauna and flora to different fire regimes in the ACT, facilitate and support cross-tenure fire management planning and activities (including with rural landholders and NSW land managers), develop weed management strategies for fire management when there is a likelihood of invasive species responding positively to burning, facilitate community education initiatives, undertake robust monitoring and evaluation to assess the ecological outcomes of planned fire management. To mitigate the impact of climate change the Strategy identifies as priorities: improve understanding of the predicted impacts of climate change on woodland-associated fauna and flora, identify management priorities and protect sites identified as significant refugia (and potential colonisation sites) for woodland species. collaborate at all levels and facilitate community awareness raising and knowledge sharing between all parties, monitor the long-term response of species (that are characteristic of woodland communities) to climate change. Use monitoring data to inform the selection of thresholds above or below which management actions should be triggered