Nationally threatened?

Small Butterfly, Big Paperwork

A female Mallee Bronze Azure butterfly (Image: Daniel Meier)

An email has arrived from Canberra, and I may have done a small happy dance at my desk.

The Mallee Bronze Azure (Ogyris subterrestris) is a little butterfly that almost nobody has heard of. It's known from only a handful of sites across the Mallee of Victoria and South Australia, and insects rarely get the attention their furry and feathered friends do. But a group of us put our heads together and lodged a public nomination to have it listed as threatened under the national Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (the EPBC Act).

Mallee Bronze Azure butterflies mating (Image: Daniel Meier)

The good news is that the Threatened Species Scientific Committee looked at the nomination, and the Minister for Environment and Water has endorsed it as a priority for assessment.

To be clear, that isn't a listing yet. But it moves our little butterfly from "someone should look at this" to "someone is looking at this,". Victoria’s DEECA biodiversity team had already made a joint recommendation with South Australia asking for the species to be prioritised, so it's had backing from both sides of the border.

This was a real team effort, and I'm grateful to everyone involved: Assoc Prof Michael Braby (ANU and Moths and Butterflies Australasia), Ethan Beaver (ANU), Jess Marsh (Invertebrates Australia), Richard Glatz (D'Estrees Entomology) and Bryan Heywood (Nature Glenelg Trust).

(Image: Daniel Meier)

What happens next?

Experts will get a first look at the draft assessment, and then there'll be a public consultation, most likely in the first half of 2027. We'll let you know as soon as consultation opens.

Small butterfly, slow process, but it's moving in the right direction.

A super-cool butterfly researcher named Jacinta!