Arguments in favour of protective legislation include:

• It provides a means of controlling (stopping or reducing) the illegal killing or collecting of listed species;

• Invertebrate animals should be given the same legislative protection that vertebrates have benefited from;

• It provides an impetus for obtaining more accurate data, enabling the development and implementation of relevant recovery plans;

• Protected invertebrates could be used as “flagship” taxa to raise awareness of invertebrate conservation; and

• Lists of threatened invertebrates can raise public awareness of the diversity and conservation needs of invertebrates.

Arguments against protective legislation include:

• Protection will not be effective unless relevant habitat is protected or unless threatening processes causing decline are stopped and the decline reversed;

• A management focus regarding listed species is to protect them from collectors, but there is little evidence to prove that properly controlled collecting will cause serious decline in most invertebrate species;

• It can create a black market trade in genuinely rare species in those groups of interest to collectors (notably some mollusc species);

• Trade in invertebrates is more difficult to control because they are easily transportable and identifications are easily falsified because they are difficult to identify; and

• Because of the large number of invertebrate species, there is the danger of long lists of protected invertebrate species eventuating. This would  (a) be politically difficult to accept, (b) be practically difficult to enforce, and (c) discourage useful gathering of information by scientific collectors.