74 Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities
However, it is not a straightforward exercise to identify and assess the extent of
monitoring programs for Australian threatened reptile species. Monitoring activity
for threatened reptiles is rarely documented in the peer-reviewed literature, and
monitoring data are rarely made publicly available. This assessment has taken a
broad interpretation of monitoring to include any activity that seeks to assess trends
over time in abundance or other biological parameters relevant to conservation.
Evidence of monitoring activity was sought through a comprehensive search of all
relevant recovery plans, the conservation and listing advices provided for most
species on the Department of the Environment and Energy’s website, websites and
publication lists of most state and territory agencies, the IUCN Red List site, Google
scholar, reviews of Australian biodiversity monitoring programs (Lindenmayer and
Gibbons 2012) and personal communications with many Australian herpetologists.
However, given the low public profile of some monitoring activities, this search
effort may have failed to locate some monitoring actions.
The results of this assessment demonstrate that monitoring of Australia’s
threatened reptile species is highly variable in scale, duration and application (Fig.
6.1, Table 6.1). There is adequate monitoring for only a small set of Australian
threatened reptile species. The five most abundant marine turtles (loggerhead
turtle Caretta caretta, green turtle Chelonia mydas, hawksbill turtle Eretmochelys
imbricata, olive ridley Lepidochelys olivacea and f latback turtle Natator depressus)
comprise a high proportion of these relatively well monitored species; monitoring
programs for these turtles have been long-standing, reasonably comprehensive,
and closely tied to assessments of some threats and measurement of the efficacy of
(and ongoing refinement for) some management actions. There is also an
exemplary monitoring program for the highly localised western swamp tortoise
Fig. 6.1. Summary of the extent and adequacy of monitoring for the 69 threatened Australian reptile taxa.
Shading on each horizontal bar (representing the named metric) indicates the percentage of species in each
score class, from 0 (no monitoring, palest shading) to 5 (optimal monitoring, darkest shading).