How can these threats be managed?

Protection from city expansion is difficult – the need for land and the keenness for developers to make a profit are hard to resist, but some years ago, the state government introduced a policy of ‘net gain’ which, in theory at least, intended that there should be no loss of quality native vegetation through land clearance, and any clearance that was seen to be inevitable had to be offset by the reservation of similar vegetation on another site. This works to an extent, but the very rare plant communities, like grasslands, there’s just not enough area to be reserved to fill the need for offsets. So, the plan is to create new grasslands in areas that used to support them. As far as weed invasion goes, this needs constant vigilance by land managers, usually with careful and selective use of herbicides. The maintenance of those spaces between the grass tussocks is usually achieved by burning back the grasses when they get too bulky – usually about once every 3 years or so. In some areas though, like near houses, this can be really difficult to do and other methods have to be considered, like using slashing or something like that – it’s very difficult.