Identifying conservation priorities and evaluating scenarios of cumulative impacts of mining infrastructure in the Upper Spencer Gulf Region in South Australia

The aim of this work is to analyse the impacts of mining infrastructure scenarios on conservation values in the Upper Spencer Gulf (USG) and associated regions of mining value in South Australia. We map the habitat suitability and distribution of a wide array of Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES), State-listed species and other biodiversity features, such as threatened ecological communities and important RAMSAR-listed wetlands. We then identify areas of high conservation priority in the USG Region and how these areas are currently represented in protected areas with various levels of legislative security. Finally, we assess how the areas of high conservation value are likely to be affected under different development scenarios representing cumulative impacts of infrastructure development related to mine expansion and associated port development. We exclude impacts at the mine sites and focus only on the infrastructure. For each development scenario we report the overlap of areas proposed for development with areas of high conservation priority, expected losses of biodiversity (average proportion of feature distributions within the USG Region that are lost due to development) and maximum impacts on biodiversity (which biodiversity features will be most affected). We evaluate the difference in outcomes if infrastructure eliminates target species, but only at the infrastructure footprint, versus a more realistic evaluation of an infrastructure zone of impact that affects species groups in different ways and with different distances from the immediate area of development.