The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) defines a key threatening process as a process that threatens the survival, abundance or evolutionary development of a native species or ecological community, requiring the formal development of a threat abatement plan. A threatening process is eligible to be treated as a key threatening process if (a) it could cause a native species or an ecological community to become eligible for listing in any category, other than conservation dependent, or (b) it could cause a listed threatened species or a listed threatened ecological community to become eligible to be listed in another category representing a higher degree of endangerment, or (c) it adversely affects two or more listed threatened species (other than conservation dependent species) or two or more listed threatened ecological communities.
