Stephen, I hope not to disappoint you but I have had two reports returned with notations to comply with the Style Guide (one report was edited by DEWHA and the other by WA DEC). Their main concern was the use of capital letters for species common names. To be honest we really should not be discussing this issue at all. As you have rightly pointed out, the reports are "international" publications. As such they need to be of the standards that apply to the preparation of journal articles.

Edward has quite rightly pointed out the inconsistency of accepted styles for common names. English names of birds in the international literature are capitalised (as per Rule No. 1 of International Ornithologists Committee, IOC), whereas those of other animal groups generally aren't unless they are proper names. The Australian Style Guide seems to overlook the IOC rule and does not recommend capiltalisation of common names of any (animal and plant)species unless they are proper names.

My feeling is that any written reports should be regarded as international literature (even site-specific consultants' reports) because they usually end up, or have the potential of appearing, on the internet. Therefore, I follow the prescribed styles of international bodies such as the IOC. But I'm sure that a consent or compliance authority, or client, is not going to mind what style you choose!

According to the Australian Style Guide common names do not need to be capitalised unless they include a proper name (i.e., Lewin's honeyeater is correct, as is red-tailed black-cockatoo). There are many other quirks in the style guide that reflect a dumbing down of the use of the english language and grammar in writing. Pretty soon they will be removing punctuation although, given some of the reports I have read, it seems to have started already. By the way, I am ignoring much of the style guide.

Although clumsy, sometimes wrong and inconsistent, I have tried to always use the common name of threatened species as they are listed, as this is the legal entity.

And don't start me on common names for plants! It seems that the Atlas is just making them up to dumb it down. Common names are rubbish in botanical circles. I vote we try and get rid of them.

There's a great discussion on Wikipedia about the variety of conventions used for vernacular names of other fauna groups and a call for international standardisation. Check it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk: Naming_conventions_(fauna)

Many consultants apear to be confused about how to spell correctly the common names of bird species. For instance, I have seen the correctly spelled Bar-tailed Godwit variously written as Bar-Tailed Godwit, bar-tailed godwit, Bar Tailed Godwit, Bar tailed Godwit, bar tailed godwit, Bartailed Godwit, bartailed godwit and even BarTailed Godwit.

The spelling rules used by the International Ornithological Congress (IOC) in its list of bird species of the world are listed below:

Spelling Rules

1. Official Englsih names of birds must be capitalized (e.g. Yellow-throated Scrubwren);

2. Patronyms must be used in the possessive case (e.g. Smith's, Ross's)

3. Names must not include diacritical marks.

4. Geographical words in a name may be in noun or adjective form but must be consistent for that location (e.g. Australia Shelduck should not be a substitute for Australian Shelduck).

5. Use of hyphens in compound group names to indicate relationships between species should be minimised. (This rule is sometimes ignored in naming Australian birds, e.g. the Black-Cockatoos).

6. Hyphens should be used in compound names only to connect two names that are birds or bird families (e.g. Cuckoo-shrike) or when the named would otherwise be difficult to read (e.g. White-eye)