Esperance Plains - Biogeography

Biogeography

The first biogeographical regionalisation of Western Australia, that of Ludwig Diels in 1906, included a region named "Eyre" that roughly encompassed the present-day Esperance Plains and Mallee regions. Recognition of the Esperance Plains as a distinct biogeographical region appears to have been due to Edward de Courcy Clarke. In 1926, Clarke proposed a regionalisation of Western Australia into "natural regions", including a region that he named "Stirling", which closely matches the present-day Esperance Plains region. In the 1940s and 1950s, Charles Gardner refined Diels' regions, but split Diels' "Eyre" into western and eastern parts.

In 1980, John Stanley Beard published a phytogeographical regionalisation of the state based on data from the Vegetation Survey of Western Australia. This new regionalisation included a district that is essentially identical with the present-day Esperance Plains region, which Beard named "Eyre Botanical District" in honour of Edward John Eyre, first explorer of the area. By 1984, Beard's phytogeographic regions were being presented more generally as "natural regions", and as such were given more widely recognisable names. Thus the "Eyre Botanical District" became "Esperance Plains".

When the IBRA was published in the 1990s, Beard's regionalisation was used as the baseline for Western Australia. The Esperance Plains region was accepted as defined by Beard, and has since survived a number of revisions. Since Version 6.1, Esperance Plains is divided into two subregions, Fitzgerald and Recherche.

Under the World Wildlife Fund's biogeographic regionalisation of the Earth's land into "ecoregions", the Esperance Plains and Mallee regions are combined to form the Esperance mallee ecoregion.