Threatened Species Act Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Threatened Species Act - Case Study Example This is also available along the Winburndale Nature Reserve. This tree is found in more than fifty five different locations in New South Wales. The current status of the trees is more that of relicts, though they were pretty wide spread earlier on (Hunter 1998). Due to changes in the environmental condition, there has been an overall depletion of these species. They have been slowly losing ground and the population of the species has been depleting in all the locations. The exact reason for such depletion has not yet been ascertained, though a number of possible causes have been identified. In a similar way, the influence it has on the rest of the flora and fauna in the locality is also not fully identified though most of them and the influence of the tree are also identified in the environment. These trees mostly occur in table lands and on a wide variety of geological soils at reasonable altitudes. Most often these trees occur in foot slopes of hilly terrains, though by nature they can grow on any type of land. This species flowers during the months of January to April. The seeds are spread once they are formed. They travel in air and is carried away by wind. They are not carried to long distances. They are always found in close proximity to the parent tree. They fall due to gravity and get into the soil when the wind blows. While the reproduction is helped by nature, their destruction is also caused mostly by nature. The forest fires are the main reasons for destroying nearly 30% of the saplings when they start sprouting. These also weaken even the adult trees there by causing the trees to wither later. However, many of the mature trees sprout after the forest fires. The Eucalyptus trees have the possum in their leaves which makes them averse for animals that feed on them. This is a defensive mechanism that most of the Eucalyptus species adopt and this species also adopts. This protects itself from the animal kingdom to a large extent making its survival in the forest easier (Jeffrey Harborne, 1999). This is made possible by the presence of phenolic chemical components present in the leaf. It is also found that the trees since they have the stringy bark are not particularly attractive to animals to feed on them. Biologically it has protected itself from grazing animals. However, it maintains a balance of available trees and plants in the location where it has been thriving. Now with the depleting population of these trees this delicate balance is affected. The trees are biologically affected when their hybrids are found in the neighbourhoods with other tree species. This hurts the population of the original species since the hybrids grow in the same region and try to destroy the original species. This is one of the major reasons for the population of the species to come down drastically. The species develops putative hybrids with closely related species. The hybrid populations reach as much as 30% of the species population in certain areas causing large scale reduction in the species population (Ladiges & Humphries, 1986). Social Relationships Apart from the forest fires, land clearing and open cut coal mining continues to be major cause for the destruction of these species. In the case of forest fires, the trees have worked out a methodology to get around these and are able to sprout after a fierce forest fire, they do not hold any chance against human activities of