Survey and conservation assessment of the land snail fauna of Coolah Tops National Park in the Hunter Valley area of New South Wales, Australia

ABSTRACT

Coolah Tops is an isolated high elevation mesic refuge on the dry western slopes of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales, eastern Australia. Field surveys of the land snail fauna of Coolah Tops National Park in 2000–2001 and 2018 sampled 28 sites between 556 and 1234 m elevation (Australian Height Datum). Over 1200 specimens in total were collected and were assigned to 29 species or morpho-species in six families. Seven taxa are currently known only from Coolah Tops. Preliminary assessment of five of these concluded they meet IUCN criteria for endangered status. The land snail community of the Coolah Tops highland area is threatened by anthropogenic climate change and is considered to be of outstanding conservation value.

KEYWORDS:

• Anthropogenic climate change
• endemism
• escalator effect
• highland refugia
• invertebrate conservation
• land snail community
• Liverpool Range

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the late Peter Mallesch (Australian Museum volunteer) for sorting leaf litter samples, Dave Wurst and Rita Enke (NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service) for assistance with fieldwork at sites M18–M20, Amanda Reid (Australian Museum) for accepting the specimens into the Australian Museum collection, Alison Miller (Australian Museum) for databasing the specimens, Des Beechey (Australian Museum) for assistance with photography and John Stanisic and Don Colgan for constructive comments on an earlier manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).