Statements
Threatened ecological communities
Statement
Hon Amanda Dorn (6:18 pm): Western Australia is home to some of the most extraordinary ecosystems on earth—living networks of plants, animals, fungi and microbes that sustain life itself. These threatened ecological communities (TECs) are not just habitats; they are life-support systems. When one collapses, the damage is irreversible. From Roebuck Bay to the Stirling Ranges, TECs stretch across the state like scattered jewels, but they are vanishing fast.
Once they are damaged, these ecosystems rarely recover. They do not just bounce back. That is why TECs are protected—to preserve entire systems, not just species—yet that protection is failing. The Auditor General's latest report is a wake-up call. Of the 65 listed threatened ecological communities, 72% are neglected. Another 390 priority threatened ecological communities teeter on the edge. The Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) admits that it lacks the resources to assess them. At current staffing levels, it would take over a century to evaluate them all. This is not conservation; it is collapse in slow motion. Sixty of those unassessed communities are in the Kimberley, one of Australia's richest biological regions.
Despite the WA Biodiversity Conservation Act coming into effect in 2019, progress has been glacial. Interim recovery plans remain unapproved, monitoring is sporadic and although the state posted a $2.4 billion surplus in 2024–25, none of it was directed towards threatened ecological community protection. We do not even know the full extent of the damage. Is cattle grazing degrading ecosystems? Is groundwater extraction pushing them to the brink? Is it climate change? The truth is that we just do not know. The Montane heath and thicket of the eastern Stirling Range is now critically endangered. Botanist Professor Stephen Hopper warns that this is not just a local emergency; it is also a national and global crisis.
These ecosystems are our natural heritage and they are vanishing, but the DBCA is trying. Many staff are passionate and committed, but they are being asked to protect WA's ecological backbone without the tools to do so. Regional planning is underway and funding partnerships are forming, but planning alone will not stop extinctions. We need urgent investment, bold leadership and conservation treated as a core responsibility, not an afterthought, because protecting TECs is not just about saving nature; it is about safeguarding the systems that make life in WA not only possible, but simply extraordinary.
