Abstract:
Australian rangelands are important for the diverse assemblages of native plants and animals that they support as well as for the wide variety of products and services that they provide. These assemblages are of national and international, cultural, social, ecological and economic significance. Woinarski (2001) identified several processes that are threatening the biodiversity of Australian rangelands, including grazing pressure, the proliferation of artificial watering points, vegetation clearing, predation by introduced animals and inappropriate fire regimes. His review also highlighted the importance of invasion by non-native plant species, a threatening process for ecosystems in other parts of Australia and around the world. Biological invasions pose a major risk for individual native species, communities and the ecological processes upon which they depend. The papers in this Special Issue of The Rangeland Journal consider non-native plant species in relation to the threats that they pose to the biodiversity of Australian rangelands and how those threats may be managed.