The Cooneana Olive is a small multi-stemmed evergreen shrub growing up to 1-2 m in height. It is slow-growing, forming large underground lignotubers. It produces very small cream-yellow flowers and its fruit is small, purple and fleshy, surrounding one seed.
Cooneana Olive |
Notelaea ipsviciensis
Status: Critically Endangered on the EPBC Act list
Government evidence of impact of climate change:
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Australian Government, Conservation Advice, Notelaea ipsviciensis
Threats The main identified threats to the Cooneana Olive include gross land disturbance due to open cut coal mining and clay extraction; particularly the dumping of the rock and soil overlying coal seams ( overburden dumping ); exotic weed invasion; inappropriate fire regimes (chiefly excessive frequency of fire) and road building (Lock et al.; 2004 Beyleveld; 2006; 2007).
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Australian Government, Listing Advices, Notelaea ipsviciensis
Exotic weed invasion; inappropriate fire regimes (chiefly excessive frequency of fire); road building and general urbanisation of the region are considered the other drivers of decline.
Any of these; but extreme wildfire events in particular; could potentially extirpate all remaining individuals; due to all known individuals occurring at a single site of 2 km2.