Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities

By Sarah Legge and David B. Lindenmayer

Monitoring is integral to all aspects of policy and management for threatened biodiversity. It is fundamental to assessing the conservation status and trends of listed species and ecological communities. Monitoring data can be used to diagnose the causes of decline, to measure management effectiveness and to report on investment. It is also a valuable public engagement tool. Yet in Australia, monitoring threatened biodiversity is not always optimally managed.

Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities aims to improve the standard of monitoring for Australia's threatened biodiversity. It gathers insights from some of the most experienced managers and scientists involved with monitoring programs for threatened species and ecological communities in Australia, and evaluates current monitoring programs, establishing a baseline against which the quality of future monitoring activity can be managed. Case studies provide examples of practical pathways to improve the quality of biodiversity monitoring, and guidelines to improve future programs are proposed.

This book will benefit scientists, conservation managers, policy makers and those with an interest in threatened species monitoring and management.

Joint recipient of the 2018 Whitley Certificate of Commendation for Conservation Zoology

• Language: English
• Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
• Release date: Jan 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781486307739

Book preview

1

Introduction: making it count

Sarah Legge, David B. Lindenmayer, Natasha M. Robinson, Benjamin C. Scheele, Darren M. Southwell, Brendan A. Wintle, John C.Z. Woinarski and Elisa Bayraktarov

Biodiversity is monitored very poorly in Australia. This is despite an enormous literature on monitoring (Lindenmayer and Gibbons 2012; Lindenmayer and Likens 2010); copious institutional rhetoric about its importance to environmental management, management evaluation and public engagement; and the inclusion of explicit targets to develop national monitoring programs in key national and international policy documents (Convention on Biological Diversity 2010; Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council 2010). Our failure to monitor biodiversity effectively is recorded and lamented in successive State of the Environment reports (Cresswell and Murphy 2017; State of the Environment Committee 2011) and reviews of national biodiversity conservation policy (Commonwealth of Australia 2016).

Monitoring is an essential element of the conservation management of threatened species and ecological communities. Monitoring data underpin assessments of a species’ or ecological community’s conservation status, thus threading the species or ecological community into policy frameworks for legislative protection. Monitoring is crucial for understanding drivers of decline, and for identifying research priorities. It is used to evaluate management effectiveness (and thus justify investment, or non-investment, in that management), and to provide evidence to support policy. Finally, monitoring can be a powerful tool for engaging different sectors of the community.

Despite the multiple potential benefits of monitoring, few of these benefits are realised. There certainly are examples of very good monitoring programs for some species and populations (e.g. Chapters 11, 12, 22). However, in general, the status and trends for most threatened species and ecological communities are unclear, the relationships between population and/or distributional trends and threatening processes are often conjectural, and the effectiveness of management to recover threatened biodiversity is rarely measured and understood. The outcomes of the accumulated investment in the conservation of threatened biodiversity can rarely be reported to decision makers at any level, nor to the public. To a large extent, this obfuscating fog is contributing to the growing lists of species and ecological communities that are threatened with extinction (Cresswell and Murphy 2017). The hapless state of monitoring for threatened biodiversity is welded to our failure to tackle biodiversity conservation, and biodiversity monitoring, more broadly.

What constrains the implementation of meaningful monitoring for threatened biodiversity? A tangle of methodological (sampling and analytical) challenges, cross-institutional blockages, within-institutional impediments, policy/legislative deficiencies, and funding shortfalls contribute to this impasse. In this introductory chapter, we provide a brief overview of the characteristics of monitoring for threatened biodiversity that set it apart from general monitoring, and describe the specific policy and legal context in Australia within which monitoring occurs. We outline the national leadership required to resolve the current impasse. Finally, we explain the aim of the book, its ontogeny, and describe how the book is structured.

Key features of effective monitoring of threatened biodiversity

Monitoring design should be bespoke

Two key characteristics distinguish monitoring for threatened biodiversity from general biodiversity monitoring, which, in many cases, make the former more difficult. First, monitoring of threatened biodiversity is often more technically and logistically challenging. Species rarity and/or rapid declines create a range of sampling design problems, which in turn may have repercussions for resourcing monitoring programs. Second, there is often a stronger imperative for a robust connection with management and policy, given the species (or ecological community) may be declining rapidly (Lindenmayer et al. 2013), be subject to (sometimes experimental) management interventions, and could have a high public profile. For these reasons, monitoring for threatened species and ecological communities usually needs to be bespoke; generic approaches are likely to be ill-fitting.

High levels of coordination and management

There are a small number of effective monitoring programs for threatened species that provide accurate data on national trends, are linked to management (e.g. plans, responses, triggers), and whose results are reported publicly and regularly. Examples of these successful programs are presented in this book (see e.g. Chapters 11–14) and elsewhere (e.g. Lindenmayer and Gibbons 2012). These successful programs often share certain characteristics (summarised in detail in Chapters 3–9): they tend to involve species with small distributions, occurring at accessible sites, and that are reasonably easy to detect. In contrast, species with large distributions, substantial methodological challenges (e.g. poor detectability, irruptive, highly mobile/migratory), and in relatively inaccessible locations, are less likely to be monitored well (e.g. princess parrots Polytelis alexandrae, bilbies Macrotis lagotis, Gouldian finches Erythrura gouldiae). The key difference here is that for species with small ranges, or that are easily detectable, monitoring can be conducted by a single ‘project’ (conducted by just one individual or institution), while species with large ranges or methodological challenges require coordination among several parties. High public profile can sometimes cut across this generalisation, by promoting support for monitoring of ‘difficult’ species. However, even in these cases, there is usually one or a few individuals that champion the program, ensuring continuity of funding, implementation and reporting (e.g. migratory shorebirds, Chapter 11; malleefowl, Chapter 31). These patterns highlight genuine challenges of coordinating monitoring across institutions, jurisdictions and projects.

National systems for roll-up and reporting

Assuming that threatened species and ecological communities were monitored well enough to discern national trends or to understand the benefits of widely applied conservation actions, there are no systems or institutions in place to promote data consistency and quality, and to enable the aggregation of data, its analysis and reporting. To assess trends in threatened biodiversity, national overviews still tend to use simple changes in the tallies of threatened taxa and ecological communities (Cresswell and Murphy 2017), which is widely acknowledged to be misleading (Possingham et al. 2002; Chapter 10). Previous policy directives to establish national biodiversity programs (Commonwealth of Australia 2016; Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council 2010) have failed to manifest, partly because other priorities (within an environment of rapidly diminishing funds) have often appeared to be more urgent. However, there are isolated examples of national commitments for long-term funding for monitoring components of biodiversity (e.g. the Long-term Ecological Research Network, http://tern.org.au/; although even this has recently lost its funding). Also, there are examples of non-government programs for national monitoring, delivered via partnerships between government, scientists, managers and citizen scientists, particularly from BirdLife Australia (e.g. The Bird Atlas Project, Shorebirds 2020). Finally, the Atlas of Living Australia (www.ala.org.au), which has become a valuable central point for national biodiversity data, has managed to overcome many of the challenges of gathering fragmented and disparate datasets that would similarly affect biodiversity monitoring data. However, these programs do not deliver the sort of information necessary to properly prioritise, trigger and inform actions to recover threatened species.

A current research project, funded by the National Environmental Science Programme (Threatened Species Recovery Hub) is attempting to develop a National Threatened Species Index (initially, for birds) that will track changes in population-level data over time, by collating disparate information from multiple sources (http://www.nespthreatenedspecies.edu.au/projects/national-and-regional-monitoring-for-threatened-species). If sufficient monitoring data are available to be mined, the Index could become an indicator of the status of biodiversity analogous to existing economic indicators, such as GDP. Although the Index will not solve the underlying problems of the scarcity of monitoring data and the lack of coordination among monitoring programs, it should promote improvements in national monitoring by highlighting current deficiencies.

Robust policy/legislative support

The importance of monitoring, in a general sense, is recognised in Australia’s overarching national biodiversity policy. Australia’s first national biodiversity policy (Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council 1996) included a target to implement ‘a nationally coordinated program for long-term monitoring of the state of Australia’s biological diversity and the impact of threatening processes’ by 2000. This target was not met. Australia’s second (and current) Biodiversity Conservation Strategy (2010–30) (Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council 2010) again recognised the importance of monitoring for biodiversity conservation, and again included a target to establish national long-term biodiversity monitoring by 2015. Once again, this target was not met (Commonwealth of Australia 2016). Neither of these successive policy documents singled out threatened biodiversity and the critical contribution that monitoring can make to supporting, and documenting, recovery.

One of the purposes of the Biodiversity Conservation Strategy is to align national policy with international agreements, and the omission of explicit reference to threatened species (and their management and monitoring) in our successive biodiversity strategies creates a point of dissonance for Australia’s international reporting obligations. For example, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (www.cbd.int/sp/default.shtml) includes a target relating to threatened species and their monitoring that is not matched in Australia’ national policy setting (Aitchi Target 12: ‘By 2020 the extinction of known threatened species has been prevented and their conservation status, particularly of those most in decline, has been improved and sustained’, www.cbd.int/sp/targets/default.shtml).

The omission of explicit reference to threatened species (and their monitoring) in our guiding national biodiversity policy document has been partially remedied in the inaugural Threatened Species Strategy (Commonwealth of Australia 2015). This Strategy acknowledges the critical role that monitoring makes to species recovery, and indeed the Strategy relies on the existence of such monitoring data for reporting against the targets in its own action plan. However, this policy advance is not yet accompanied by any additional Commonwealth funding to initiate (or improve existing) programs for threatened species monitoring; that funding is expected to eventuate from other government and non-government sources, but these sources (to date) have not typically supported investments in monitoring.

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) is Australia’s national legislation for protecting biodiversity, environment and heritage, with a focus on threatened species and ecological communities. The EPBC Act sets out the statutory processes to list species and ecological communities, and the regulatory and approval processes to protect listed entities. The Act also guides the preparation of Commonwealth-approved Recovery Plans that aim to improve the conservation status of nationally listed species and ecological communities. However, not all listed species/ecological communities have an approved Recovery Plan (many have Conservation Advices instead, which have less regulatory muscle; some listed entities have neither), there is no legal requirement to enact these Plans (other than on Commonwealth land), and the Plans are not accompanied by Commonwealth funding for implementation. The management and monitoring of threatened biodiversity is mostly conducted by state and territory governments, because biodiversity management falls within their constitutional responsibilities. Recovery Plans include a section on monitoring activities, but these are of variable utility. Plans often omit detail about monitoring methods; they often fail to clearly outline responsibilities for delivery and pathways to implementation; they usually fail to articulate the links between monitoring and management/reporting; and they usually omit guidance on the management response if pre-defined thresholds of change are observed (trigger points) (Lindenmayer et al. 2013). Perhaps unsurprisingly then, Recovery Plans appear to be ineffectual at improving the conservation status of listed entities, although the widespread lack of monitoring data makes it hard to assess whether recovery planning processes aid population recovery or not (Bottrill et al. 2011). See Chapter 10 for more detail on the national policy framework for monitoring threatened biodiversity.

Improving monitoring for threatened biodiversity

The opening section of this book (Chapters 2–9) presents the first systematic attempt to assess the extent and adequacy of monitoring for a substantial proportion of Australia’s threatened species and ecological communities. This assessment reveals some severe deficiencies, but it also provides a foundation for the development of more comprehensive and adequate monitoring programs generally, and indicates a set of best-practice principles that should be considered in developing new programs. Existing site-based monitoring programs for threatened taxa and ecological communities in Australia have been initiated by a range of different stakeholders, for a range of different purposes (as part of a research program, to fulfil regulatory requirement, because of public interest, to inform management). That situation will continue, because disparate contributors will always have idiosyncratic agendas. However, that very diversity, which includes foci on different taxa, in different regions, carried out by different stakeholders, with different values, objectives and skills, could be turned to advantage. To build the current ad hoc, ephemeral, mostly suboptimal and limited set of existing monitoring projects into to an enduring strategic national monitoring program for threatened species, we need national leadership to:

•reform our national biodiversity policy documents, to include explicit reference to threatened species and ecological communities as targets for action, with monitoring embedded as a critical component of their recovery

•establish a national institution for storing, analysing and interpreting monitoring data, and making information on management effectiveness and conservation priorities available to the public, policy makers and managers

•achieve greater recognition among land-managers, policy makers, researchers and funding bodies that monitoring is an essential ingredient for the recovery of threatened species, that funding for important monitoring should be long-term and secure, and that monitoring should be a mandated accompaniment to management activity

•better acknowledge that monitoring is also a cost-effective mechanism for providing early warning of species decline, therefore allowing the opportunity to prevent a species from becoming eligible for listing as threatened

•make data availability/reporting a requirement of regulatory approvals that include monitoring as a condition of approval

•motivate a heart-starting injection of funding for the preparation and coordinated implementation of national Recovery Plans

•recognise, nurture and enhance the monitoring capabilities of key groups that could contribute meaningfully to national threatened species monitoring, including citizen scientists ( Chapters 11 , 14 , 26 – 28 , 31 ), Indigenous groups ( Chapters 25 , 27 ) and environmental consultants ( Chapter 8 ).

To a limited extent, national Recovery Teams have delivered taxon-specific aspects of national leadership. However, even that contribution has dwindled over the past decade as funding and policy support for the development and implementation of Recovery Plans has diminished. As mentioned above, national policy directives to establish national monitoring programs (Commonwealth of Australia 2016; Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council 2010) have not resulted in meaningful action. To tackle this stalemate, we suggest ‘starting small’ with a two-pronged approach:

1. Establish a national monitoring program for a relatively small group of threatened species or ecological communities. This group could include some Priority Species identified in the Government’s Threatened Species Strategy (Commonwealth of Australia 2015), with species and/or a monitoring context that are of interest to the broader public and potential funders for co-investment (to augment core Government funding). The purpose of this program is not to act as a surrogate for threatened biodiversity monitoring more generally, but to provide proof of concept. An example for such an initiative could be a monitoring program for threatened vertebrates (and their main threats: invasive species and fire) across Australia’s arid and semi-arid zones, based partly on sand plot monitoring that is already being carried out by Indigenous groups who are particularly skilled in this technique, and who are responsible for the land management of much of this vast area.

2. Develop a pragmatic and low-cost program to assimilate and analyse qualitative information on trends in threatened species and ecological communities and the effectiveness of conservation interventions, as a complement to more formal monitoring programs, which tend to have a relatively narrow taxonomic and/or geographic scope. This could be achieved using a simple and consistent reporting template to harvest qualitative information regularly (e.g. every 2 years) on trends for each species or ecological community from all relevant experts and stakeholders (in state agencies, NGOs, community groups and Indigenous groups) (Burgman 2015). This harvest of information could take place via online inputs and be managed by the Commonwealth Department of Environment and Energy. It would provide some assessments of population trends for most species, and also indicate those species for which no reliable information about trends is available (and hence for which more scrutiny is required). This program cannot substitute for a nationally coordinated and standardised program based on field sampling, but it could ‘fill the gap’ until such a national monitoring program is established, and it could highlight some of the key issues that a national monitoring program would need to consider.

The first program would generate focused quantitative data on several threatened species, with associated data on the impacts of threats and management interventions. The second program would provide continental-scale information on trends in threatened species, ecological communities and threats, and on management effectiveness. These programs are feasible and achievable, and would highlight the organisational requirements (for funding, data storage and management, analysis and reporting) necessary in a national more highly coordinated and managed monitoring program.

Aim of the book

The book aims to improve the standard of monitoring for Australia’s threatened biodiversity. It gathers the insights of some of the most experienced managers and scientists involved with monitoring programs for threatened species and communities in Australia, and focuses this experience in three ways:

1. The book presents assessments of the extent and adequacy of current monitoring activity across several species groups and ecological communities, thus establishing a baseline against which future performance in monitoring activity can be compared.

2. Using real case studies, the book chapters present practical advice to scientists and managers to improve the quality of threatened biodiversity monitoring by:

demonstrating the benefits of monitoring (to decision makers, the public, funders and managers)

improving the design of monitoring at the organisational and program level

engaging constructively with different sectors of the community

ensuring that monitoring is integrated appropriately with management.

3. The book presents an overview of the variation in organisational perspectives to threatened monitoring programs, and outlines guiding principles to improve the effectiveness of monitoring of threatened biodiversity.

The perspective of this book is ‘grass roots’: the chapters are contributed by managers and scientists actively engaged with threatened biodiversity monitoring. However, the collective experience and discussion presented in this book is relevant also to policy makers and anyone with an interest in environmental management more broadly. Most chapters focus on threatened species, but the learnings from these chapters can also be applied to threatened ecological communities.

Structure of the book

The book arose from a workshop, hosted by the National Environmental Science Programme’s Threatened Species Recovery Hub, which brought together almost 30 people with experience in threatened biodiversity monitoring (Fig. 1.1). The workshop participants included scientists and managers, government and non-government; their expertise covered a broad range of taxa (terrestrial plants, vertebrate groups; however, expertise in invertebrates and non-mammalian marine species was missing). During the workshop, discussion and short presentations were arranged to follow the book’s aims. The book follows a similar structure, with six sections (each with multiple chapters) on:

Fig. 1.1.    Participants from a range of organisations gathered in late 2016 at North Head, Sydney, to discuss ways of improving the monitoring of threatened biodiversity. The workshop was hosted by the National Environmental Science Programme’s Threatened Species Recovery Hub. Photo: D. Salt / TSR Hub.

•monitoring extent and adequacy

•the value of monitoring

•monitoring frameworks

•monitoring program design

•community participation

•monitoring and adaptive management.

The chapters follow a reasonably flexible template, but they all have a feature called ‘Lessons learned’, which summarises the key points/messages of the contribution. At the end of each section, the key learnings and implications from the section’s constituent chapters are brought together in a concise ‘Summary’ (but Sections 3 and 4 have a combined summary, being Chapter 24).

The last section of the book comprises two chapters. Chapter 34 summarises the different individual and organisational perspectives of scientists and managers engaged in monitoring, and looks for commonalities and differences between various monitoring practitioners. The final chapter (35) synthesises the collective experiences discussed at the workshop and presented in the book, and distils the key ingredients (principles) for developing a successful monitoring program.

References

Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council (1996) ‘National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia’s Biological Diversity’. Department of the Environment, Sport and Territories, Canberra.

Bottrill MC, Walsh JC, Watson JE, Joseph LN, Ortega-Argueta A, Possingham HP (2011) Does recovery planning improve the status of threatened species? Biological Conservation 144, 1595–1601. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2011.02.008

Burgman MA (2015) Trusting Judgements: How to Get the Best Out of Experts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Commonwealth of Australia (2015) ‘Threatened species strategy’. Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra.

Commonwealth of Australia (2016) ‘Report on the Review of the first five years of Australia’s Biodiversity Conservation Strategy 2010–2030’. Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra.

Convention on Biological Diversity (2010) ‘Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets’. UNEP/CBD/COP/DEC/X/2.

Cresswell I, Murphy H (2017) ‘Australia state of the environment 2016: biodiversity. Independent report to the Australian Government Minister for the Environment and Energy’. Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy, Canberra.

Lindenmayer D, Gibbons P (2012) Biodiversity Monitoring in Australia. CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne.

Lindenmayer D, Likens G (2010) Effective Ecological Monitoring. CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne.

Lindenmayer DB, Piggott MP, Wintle BA (2013) Counting the books while the library burns: why conservation monitoring programs need a plan for action. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 11, 549–555. doi:10.1890/120220

Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council (2010) ‘Australia’s Biodiversity Conservation Strategy 2010–2030’. Australian Government, Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Canberra.

Possingham HP, Andelman SJ, Burgman MA, Medellín RA, Master LL, Keith DA (2002) Limits to the use of threatened species lists. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 17, 503–507. doi:10.1016/S0169-5347(02)02614-9

State of the Environment Committee (2011) ‘Australia State of the Environment 2011. Independent report to the Australian Government’. Department for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Canberra.

SECTION 1

Monitoring extent and adequacy

2

A framework for evaluating the adequacy of monitoring programs for threatened species

John C.Z. Woinarski

Summary

Recognising that monitoring can contribute to, or is a necessary component of, many aspects of threatened species recovery, a framework is developed for assessment of the adequacy of monitoring programs. This framework provides, for any threatened species, a simple 0–5 point scale for nine metrics of monitoring activity.

A framework for assessing monitoring adequacy

Monitoring is a critical component in efforts to recover threatened species. It may provide the evidence required to enable the assessment of the conservation status of a species, and hence to allow for the formal protection that listing may provide. It may help identify the threats that are driving population decline, and hence help direct and prioritise management response. It may assess the efficacy, and contribute to the ongoing refinement, of management that aims to manage those threats. It may indicate the need for emergency response and provide the evidence that can justify resourcing of such response. It may provide an opportunity for public engagement in conservation effort, and a mechanism to report publicly on the extent of conservation problems and on the relative success, and need for change, in policy and management.

But notwithstanding such a crucial role, there is no or limited monitoring for many threatened species, and – where they exist – monitoring programs for threatened species are often idiosyncratic and of variable quality and utility. This chapter seeks to provide a framework for assessing the adequacy of monitoring activity or programs for threatened species. This framework is based on a set of metrics or characteristics of monitoring activity, recognising that monitoring may relate to, and deliver on, multiple objectives. This framework is adapted from, but extends, an assessment of the extent of monitoring for Australia’s threatened terrestrial mammal species (Woinarski et al. 2014).

The nine evaluation metrics considered – fit-for-purpose, coverage, sampling periodicity, longevity, design quality, coordination, data availability and reporting, management linkage, and demographic parameters – and the grades assigned to them (from 0 least good to 5 most adequate), are described below. Note that it may not necessarily always be the case that all of these metrics need to be well met for monitoring to contribute successfully to threatened species recovery. In some cases, resources may be insufficient to allow for an optimal monitoring program. However, in such cases, it is still worthwhile for managers to consider these dimensions and evaluate where compromises in monitoring adequacy may come at least conservation cost.

Metric 1: Fit-for-purpose

The monitoring protocol and design should have a sampling methodology and timing targeted optimally to detect the species. The detectability of many plant and animal species varies significantly according to survey techniques, and monitoring protocols should use those techniques most apt for the target species.

Furthermore, many species show marked temporal patterns in dispersion (e.g. maternity colonies for some bat and bird species, seasonal migrations of great whales and shorebirds), and monitoring may be most effective at sites where populations are so gathered. Monitoring at breeding sites also provides information on a species’ distinct management units, whereas monitoring at mixed-stock breeding aggregations may not provide such information, although may in some cases be more tractable or useful for other purposes.

Many species may also show marked temporal variation in abundance (e.g. for many smaller dasyurids, almost all males die following mating; many plant species are only apparent in good rainfall years) (Silcock et al. 2014). For such species, monitoring design and data analysis needs to take account of such variation.

A fit-for-purpose monitoring program for a particular threatened species may seem self-evident. However, for many threatened species, the only current monitoring involves generic multi-species or surveillance monitoring, which may simply happen to pick up some abundance information for the threatened species of interest.

Metric 2: Coverage

Monitoring sites should be located representatively across the species’ habitat and distributional extent. Monitoring undertaken at a small number of sites may be markedly unrepresentative of trends across the wider distribution of the species generally, whereas monitoring that more comprehensively samples trends across a species’ geographic and environmental range provides a more robust base for assessment of trends for the species as a whole. Monitoring that is representative across a species’ range is desirable because the array of threats and management actions (and hence a species’ population trends) may vary across the wider distribution. Representative monitoring across a species’ distribution should also include sampling across subspecies and major genetic lineages throughout the range.

Metric 3: Sampling periodicity

Monitoring should occur at appropriate intervals/periodicity. Monitoring episodes should be undertaken frequently enough to be capable of detecting rapid change and of providing timely warning of any need for conservation response. Note that monitoring periodicity should relate in part to the life history of the monitored species – for example, it is likely that there is less need for annual monitoring for long-lived taxa such as some tree species or large marine mammals.

Metric 4: Longevity

Monitoring should occur over appropriate timeframes, with some future security. Monitoring programs should span sufficient duration to help differentiate short-term responses to climatic and other variability from longer term trends, and extend over a long enough period to be able to detect changes that are gradual and incremental but of conservation significance. The longevity of monitoring may be particularly important in Australia, where many species undergo marked fluctuations in abundance and distribution at decadal scales in response to drought and high rainfall years, or in response to fire history (Dickman et al. 2014; Greenville et al. 2016a, 2016b).

It is also important that monitoring programs have some long-term future security, especially so given that climate change is likely to impose additional threats to many species. Hence it is important for managers to get early warning of negative responses to climate change. However, for most existing monitoring programs it is difficult to assess the extent of future commitment.

Metric 5: Design quality

Monitoring design should have sufficient statistical power to detect trends of conservation concern. The monitoring program should be of sufficient intensity and sample size to readily and reliably detect trends that are of conservation significance (Woinarski et al. 2004). In many cases, information on statistical power is not specified in monitoring programs. However, ensuring that a monitoring program has sufficient statistical power to be able to detect small, but ecologically important, declines or responses to management intervention may be particularly important for threatened species, because managers may need early warning of decline, and may need robust evidence in order to justify the imposition of remedial management actions.

Metric 6: Coordination

Monitoring should be coordinated across relevant jurisdictions and stakeholder groups. The design, analysis and reporting of monitoring programs should be effectively integrated across a species’ range, for example, by using consistent methodologies across different areas in different jurisdictions, and databases that can store and integrate results from separate monitoring components. Where they exist, recovery teams may be best placed for such coordination of disparate monitoring activities.

Such coordination is almost default for some highly localised threatened species occurring in only one jurisdiction with only one responsible management agency.

Metric 7: Data availability and reporting

Monitoring data and their interpretation should be readily accessible to all parties, and there should be clear responsibility assigned, and capability, for long-term database management, and capacity and planning for any needed data-migration to future platforms. An accessible and informative standard operating procedure for monitoring should specify monitoring protocols and purpose.

Metric 8: Management linkage

Monitoring should involve, and be meaningful to, relevant managers and be embedded in management planning; it should provide a measure of management effectiveness; and monitoring information should be adopted to enhance management. Particularly for threatened species, whose future may depend upon the sustained imposition of appropriate management, monitoring should be capable of measuring the effectiveness of management interventions, or of assessing the relative impacts of different putative threat factors, and the monitoring program should be a central component of adaptive management. Any monitoring program for threatened species should also have clearly established trigger points (typically involving threshold rate of decline or population size) that are recognised and respected by the relevant management agency. Where monitoring data show that those trigger points have been breached, a heightened management response should be implemented.

Metric 9: Demographic parameters

Monitoring programs should involve assessment of critical demographic parameters, rather than relative abundance alone. Some monitoring programs that consider relative abundance alone may be adequate for the management objective. However, a monitoring program that also measures important life history parameters (such as reproductive success, population age and sex composition, mortality and its causes) may provide substantially more ecological insight and allow management to most acutely target weak points in the species’ biology or identify demographic stages that may most benefit from management intervention.

Acknowledgements

I thank the editors for inviting this contribution, Craig Moritz for comments on a draft, and Andrew Burbidge, Peter Harrison, Stephen Garnett and Sarah Legge for input into these metrics.

References

Dickman CR, Wardle GM, Foulkes JN, de Preu N (2014) Desert complex environments. In: Biodiversity and Environmental Change. (Eds D Lindenmayer, E Burns, N Thurgate and A Lowe) pp. 379–438. CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne.

Greenville AC, Wardle GM, Nguyen V, Dickman CR (2016a) Population dynamics of desert mammals: similarities and contrasts within a multispecies assemblage. Ecosphere 7, e01343. doi:10.1002/ecs2.1343

Greenville AC, Wardle GM, Nguyen V, Dickman CR (2016b) Spatial and temporal synchrony in reptile population dynamics in variable environments. Oecologia 182, 475–485. doi:10.1007/s00442-016-3672-8

Silcock JL, Healy AJ, Fensham RJ (2014) Lost in time and space: re-assessment of conservation status in an arid-zone flora through targeted field survey. Australian Journal of Botany 62, 674–688. doi:10.1071/BT14279

Woinarski JCZ, Armstrong M, Price O, McCartney J, Griffiths AD, Fisher A (2004) The terrestrial vertebrate fauna of Litchfield National Park, Northern Territory: monitoring over a 6-year period and response to fire history. Wildlife Research 31, 587–596. doi:10.1071/WR03077

Woinarski JCZ, Burbidge AA, Harrison PL (2014) The Action Plan for Australian Mammals 2012. CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne.

3

The extent and adequacy of monitoring for Australian threatened mammal species

John C.Z. Woinarski, Andrew A. Burbidge and Peter L. Harrison

Summary

This chapter assesses monitoring activity for Australian mammal taxa of conservation concern. This assessment largely focuses on 167 Australian terrestrial mammals, but also notes briefly the status of monitoring for marine mammals of conservation concern. Information about monitoring programs and their results was difficult to access. No monitoring activity could be located for 21% of the terrestrial mammal taxa, and largely inadequate monitoring for most others. Most monitoring programs were suboptimal in their consideration of demographic parameters, data availability and reporting, coordination, management linkages, coverage and design quality. Monitoring was poorer for bats than for other terrestrial mammals, better for species that are listed as threatened under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 than for unlisted species, and better for species with recovery plans than for those without plans. The most adequate monitoring was for high-profile species with much management investment or species with very few individuals and a localised distribution. Most monitoring was done by state agencies, and less by non-government conservation organisations and university researchers. The current inadequacy of monitoring will lead to poor conservation outcomes. In some cases, monitoring programs have demonstrated the recovery of threatened mammal species in response to effective management, and such evidence of success is instrumental for ongoing investment and community support.

Introduction

Population monitoring is a critical component of threatened species management. Good monitoring programs can: provide the definitive evidence required to assess and review the conservation status of a species; indicate the relative impacts of different putative threats and hence help direct management response; measure the effectiveness of, and hence help refine, management actions; and indicate the level of urgency that is required for management intervention. Monitoring can also provide important opportunities for public involvement in research and management, and provides the basis for public reporting on, and increasing awareness of, the status of threatened species.

Monitoring is particularly important for Australia’s mammal species. This fauna has experienced an exceptionally high rate of extinction and decline (Woinarski et al. 2014, 2015), with many episodes – some recent and ongoing – of very rapid and extensive decline (Woinarski et al. 2001, 2010). Given such propensity for rapid decline, effective monitoring for Australian mammals is particularly important to provide early warnings, to identify the factors responsible for the decline and to position managers to respond before populations become critically low.

However, there are some notable difficulties with the development, implementation and interpretation of monitoring programs for Australian mammal species. Many species are difficult to detect, and this problem is typically exacerbated as a species becomes increasingly rare. Furthermore, many species occur mostly in areas remote from population centres (e.g. beaked whales, marsupial moles). Particularly for such groups of species, monitoring may be expensive, and such cost may be seen by politicians, bureaucrats and managers to be a lower priority than the implementation of management that is assumed to be remedial. In order to interpret trends, many monitoring programs also require the context of long-term consistency and continuity in their implementation, rendering them unattractive to many research institutions and funding sources whose focus is often instead on discrete, short-term projects with more immediate outputs. This problem may be particularly acute for the mammal fauna of arid and semi-arid areas, where populations may show marked fluctuations in response to seasonal conditions, rendering it difficult to decipher long-term trends (Dickman et al. 2014; Chapter 21).

A recent assessment of the conservation status of Australian mammals (Woinarski et al. 2014) sought to assess the extent of monitoring, and interpret monitoring results, for all taxa that were listed as threatened, Near Threatened or Data Deficient by the IUCN, listed as threatened under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, or that may now be eligible for these conservation status categories. Our interest in this monitoring was primarily related to the evidence it provided on rate of decline – a parameter used to assess whether a species is eligible for listing, and if so, at what threatened status. The assessment of the extent and adequacy of monitoring was based on a substantial review of the available published and unpublished literature, and communications with all State and Territory conservation agencies and >200 experts studying and managing these mammal taxa. The evaluation framework of nine metrics described in Chapter 2 were used for assessment of the adequacy of monitoring programs. This chapter reports on that assessment, with focus particularly on the 167 extant native terrestrial mammal taxa (115 species and 52 subspecies) that are clearly not Least Concern (compared with 143 terrestrial mammal taxa that were clearly Least Concern and hence not considered further here).

Although the metrics of this evaluation framework, and most monitoring programs, are based on formal protocols for the quantitative assessment of abundance, much information on the changing status of Australian terrestrial mammals has also been derived from the recording and interpretation of Indigenous knowledge. This source of information on changing status is often less quantitatively precise than more scientifically based monitoring, but often has a valuable and