Native plants

Our native vegetation is important for controlling salinity, erosion, water quality, providing habitat for our amazing wildlife, aesthetics and cultural values.

Native plants are best suited to our local soils and climate, and play an important role in many of our ecosystem services. We can help retain the integrity of our local vegetation by using native species when revegetating. Learn more about revegetation in our factsheet.

At least 40 plant species are endemic to Eyre Peninsula (occurs nowhere else in the world). These include a number of wattles such as the Alcock’s Wattle, Chalky Wattle, Whibley’s Wattle, Koppio Wattle and Flat-leaved Wattle. The West Coast Mintbush is one of several mintbush species that occurs only on Eyre Peninsula. Five eucalypt species only found on Eyre Peninsula include the Darke Peak Mallee, the Cummins Mallee, the Eyre Peninsula Blue Gum and the Crimson (or Port Lincoln) Mallee.

Forty-three percent of our plants have regional conservation significance which means that unless we change our management practices and address the threats that face these species, we will lose them (they will become extinct).

We have four vegetation communities on Eyre Peninsula that are nationally threatened:

• The Southern Temperate Coastal Saltmarsh (see factsheet)
• Peppermint Box (Eucalyptus odorata)
• Grassy Woodland of SA, Drooping Sheoak (Allocasuarina verticillata) Grassy Woodland on Calcrete of the Eyre Yorke Block Bioregion (read more)
• The Eyre Peninsula Blue Gum communities (see factsheet)

We also closely monitoring Red gum communities as part of our groundwater monitoring program associated with the Water Allocation Plan - read more about it here.

Further information about some of these plants

Wattles

Other species