Rare or Threatened Australian Plants, usually abbreviated to ROTAP, is a list of rare or threatened

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

plant Plants are the eukaryotes that form the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with c ...

taxa. Developed and maintained by the

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency that is responsible for scientific research and its commercial and industrial applications. CSIRO works with leading organisations arou ...

(CSIRO), the most recent edition lists 5031 taxa. The list uses a binary coding system based on the

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological ...

categories for "Presumed Extinct", "Endangered", "Vulnerable", "Rare" or "Poorly Known". However, it also provides for additional information such as geographic range and occurrence in protected areas. It was first compiled in 1979, and published in 1981, with revisions published in 1988 and 1996. In its early days it was the only nationally recognised list of threatened plants, although it had no legal status. When the ''Endangered Species Protection Act 1992'' was proclaimed, the ROTAP list was used as a basis for the publication of schedules to the Act. A third list was produced by ANZECC from 1996. In 2000, the ''

Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 The ''Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999'' (Cth) is an Act of the Parliament of Australia that provides a framework for protection of the Australian environment, including its biodiversity and its natural and cult ...

'' (EPBC Act) was proclaimed. This superseded the ''Endangered Species Protection Act 1992'', and published a single list of threatened flora which largely superseded the three lists then current. As the EPBC list has legal force, the ROTAP list is now little used. It continues to be maintained, however, and is often used and referred to in scientific publications.

References

* {{threatened species Botany in Australia Nature conservation in Australia Endangered species

See also

References