Butterfly Community No. 1

Abstract

Victoria’s Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act (FFG) recognises three main categories of entities for formal listing, namely species, communities and threatening processes. It was innovative in extending the extent of formal protection beyond the initial species level, and in addressing measures to counter the major causes of conservation concern. The most difficult of these categories to deal with is ‘ecological communities’, largely because of the difficulties of suitable definition, but is underpinned by the need for the entity to be ecologically defined, rather than simply applying to an individual site defined by place name. ‘Butterfly Community No. 1’ is the only insect-based community so far listed and has demonstrated (and, in some cases, helped to clarify) the many practical problems in definition that can arise, and in deciding the ‘boundaries’ of any such entity. It was nominated (23 October 1989), and listed (22 May 1991), on the presence of a number of ‘rare’ butterflies at Mount Piper, near Broadford in central Victoria (Fig. 9.1), constituting an assemblage that appeared decidedly unusual in both composition and richness.