Why are Ecological Communities Important?

There are many levels that biodiversity can be observed, from as broad as a landscape perspective down to the species or genetic level. Ecological Communities are a useful level of classification for generalising about biodiversity and provide a coarse filter for conservation planning and natural resource management.

Natural resource management

Ecological communities are useful tools in natural resource management as we can make broad generalisations about biodiversity (i.e. fidelity of species, structural properties, inter-dependencies), they have predictable distributions (e.g. environmental relationships, structural properties, remote sensing techniques), and they have predictable ecological processes (e.g. soils, hydrology, fire). Species-level approaches are still essential, but cannot deal effectively with habitats, interactions & ecological processes (Keith, 2007).

Conservation Umbrella

The conservation of ecological communities can be very important as a conservation umbrella for many species, including threatened species. By protecting ecological communities many species that would not usually attract specific conservation action can be protected under the umbrella of the larger ecological community.

Ecosystem Services

The ecological communities that make up the environment are often inter-related, for example, ecological communities such as upland swamps play an important part in filtering and slowing down water before it travels through the stream system to other ecological communities. The loss of upland swamps will impact on water flow and quality, and in turn affect the survival of downstream organisms, including humans!

Intrinsic Value

In the same way that species of animals and plants are unique and should be protected from threats to their extinction, each type of ecological community is also unique and deserves the same kind of protection.

Unique

Some ecological communities contain species that are unique to those habitats such as the Blue Mountains Water Skink, which is indigenous to upland swamps of the Blue Mountains area. There are also plant species that are restricted to some Threatened Ecological Communities, such as the Camden White Gum (Eucalyptus benthamii), which is only found in the endangered ecological community, ‘River-flat Eucalypt Forest on Coastal Floodplains’, in the Camden area.

The Precautionary Principle

The Precautionary Principle states that: "Where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation". This principle should always be applied when information about the nature, magnitude and the likelihood of adverse consequences from particular activities may be uncertain and/or incomplete (Weier and Loke, 2007).