EVCs

Ecological Vegetation Classes (EVCs) are benchmark classifications of typical vegetation communities occurring in specific geomorphological and climatic situations. However, one EVC can have different benchmark species depending on which bioregion it is in. Kangaroo Creek runs solely through the Central Victorian Uplands bioregion.

The Department of Sustainability & Environment (as was) put a lot of work into classifying the many bioregions and many more EVCs in the state, in anticipation of a classification and planning scheme that eventually failed to get through parliament.

Below is the DSE map of EVCs in my area. You can work out where my place is by comparing this to the maps in the previous (above) post..

The two EVCs on my place are EVC 23: Herb-rich foothill forest and EVC 164: Creekline herb-rich woodland. My place has been assessed against its EVCs by the Trust for Nature (with whom I have a Conservation Covenant) and the DSE’s Bush Tender programme. It did reasonably well but is missing a lot of smaller sub-story plants. I blame wallabies.

This is what the DSE estimated to be the EVCs in 1750. (This is a closer view than the map above.) For some reason 1750 rather than 1788 is used by ecologists as the cut-off year for the ‘natural’ Australian environment. The type and even the extent of the EVCs on my place is unchanged, but that doesn’t mean that my vegetation actually meets the EVC benchmarks.