This is the third of the three documents that comprise Victoria’s Biodiversity Strategy .

The aims of the Strategy are to:

• increase awareness of the need to conserve biodiversity;
• enable continued development of partnerships between the community, industry and government in the custodianship of our biodiversity;
• indicate the mechanisms, existing and proposed, for achieving the objectives of flora and fauna conservation and management in the context of ecological sustainability;
• provide perspectives on advances in flora and fauna conservation and directions for effective future action;
• detail strategic frameworks to prevent further loss of habitat, and a focus for better management of existing habitats and the continuation of natural ecological processes;
• highlight the need for protection and replenishment of the total area of native vegetation, with particular emphasis on threatened or depleted types such as Box-Ironbark forests, grasslands and riparian environments;
• highlight the major threatening processes in each bioregion that must be ameliorated to conserve biodiversity;
• highlight the habitats and environments that require urgent attention.

Our awareness of the environment, and our knowledge of land use and the ecology of our flora and fauna have all increased dramatically over the last two decades. In 1992, the Draft Flora and Fauna Guarantee Strategy was published. The numerous submissions and comments generated were used to help formulate this document. Other events, such as the publication of the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia’s Biological Diversity (see Appendix 1 for objectives), new legislative developments, such as the Catchment and Land Protection Act 1994, and more recently the Natural Heritage Trust Partnership agreement have all emphasised the importance of this strategy and provided further context for its implementation. It fulfils the requirements of the National Strategy and the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988.

This document, Victoria’s Biodiversity – Directions in Management, addresses the critical issues of management and continues to build on achievements of the past. Part I provides a state-wide view and key management approaches in ecological land and water management. Part II describes the biodiversity assets and challenges that characterise each of Victoria’s bioregions. These bioregions nest within the national categorisation for terrestrial environments, the Interim Bioregionalisation for Australia (IBRA), and for marine environments, the Interim Marine and Coastal Regionalisation for Australia (IMCRA).

Natural resource management across the State has changed over time and various responses, institutional, regulatory and voluntary, have been described in Sustaining our Living Wealth.

In some environments the direction forward is clear, in others problems remain ill-defined or the specific responses are not fully developed or implemented. For this reason Part I considers management approaches according to the general conditions at the landscape scale: largely natural; remnant with altered ecological processes; and highly altered with intensive pressures. Common themes within these landscapes are examined. Part I also describes the tools available to us at present and how they can be improved to achieve the best biodiversity outcomes. Information technology offers a good example: Victoria has the best land information and biodiversity databases in Australia; it is important that these, and the products derived from them, are increasingly accessible to all managers, business and the community. This will lead to more informed decisions for the whole community and better outcomes for the Victorian environment.

Part II of Victoria’s Biodiversity – Directions in Management provides details of the biodiversity in each of Victoria’s 21 terrestrial and 6 marine bioregions, and the management responses required for protecting and restoring them. Victoria’s bioregions are an integral part of the national bioregion classification system. Providing information on the natural assets in each bioregion, their current condition and the major management themes makes it possible for all Victorians, wherever they reside, work or spend recreational time, to better appreciate their local areas and the strategic needs of their local biodiversity assets.

The key to an efficient and effective biodiversity program is to take, in cooperation with the community and other stakeholders, systematic preventative action to reduce the causes of decline of native flora and fauna. This strategy emphasises systematic prevention or reduction of the causes of biodiversity decline or loss. It focuses on direct ecologically sustainable management of public lands and waters by government agencies in association with resource-based industries, and on cooperative management of biodiversity on private land, in partnership with landholders, the community and local government.