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Topic Grassland ecosystems
Question How do we know if grasslands are ‘healthy’? Can we measure this?
Expert Neville Walsh
Neville Walsh is Senior Conservation Botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne. His work involves both plant identification and classification, and, conservation. Neville's roles include naming and describing new plant species and investigating how rare species can be conserved.
The presence of lots of native species other than the grasses is usually a good sign of health. This means that there’s a wide variety of food species for animals that live in the grasslands, and a range of plant structures where they might shelter or nest. Weeds are a big problem in grasslands, so, areas that have low numbers of weeds, that is plants that aren’t native to that particular area, are usually considered to be healthy as long as there’s diversity beyond just the grass species.
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