Revising the Draft Recovery Plan

Abstract

The Draft Recovery Plan (1996) for O. richmondia was prepared following the enthusiasm by members of the community to become involved in practical recovery activities. By around that time, awareness of the butterfly’s increasingly parlous status and its conservation need had become widespread. The CSIRO Double Helix Science Club (Chap. 6) had introduced conservation projects for the butterfly to more than 300 schools in south-eastern Queensland and northern New South Wales and students pursued a range of experiments with the food plant, which itself had become rare and attracted conservation concerns. The plan was designed to promote coordination of community groups, state government and other interest groups in the expectation that this would lead to a practical and sustainable conservation plan for the Richmond birdwing butterfly, and promote action to address the conservation issues then deemed important. In the sense implied here, ‘Recovery’ is ‘the process by which the decline of an endangered, threatened or extirpated species is arrested or reversed, and threats are removed or reduced to improve the likelihood of a species’ ‘persistence in the wild’ (BCIRT 2008), ideally using a recovery strategy that ‘reflects the best available knowledge and experience, setting recovery goals and objectives, and recommending approaches to recover the species’.