6 – The extent and adequacy of monitoring for Australian threatened reptile species^81● (^) There is a marked lack of national focus on, integration of, and public reporting
of data from, biodiversity monitoring programs in Australia. This
characteristic is very evident for threatened reptile species, and there is
apparently no monitoring activity for 38% of these species. This shortcoming is
likely to severely diminish understanding of biodiversity trends and
conservation priorities, and reduce capability to recover threatened species.
Furthermore, the shortcoming is likely to be more pronounced than is reported
in these figures, given that there are undoubtedly many more actually
threatened species than the small set currently formally recognised as
threatened, and many of these unlisted threatened species are poorly known
and have not been the subject of monitoring programs (Clemann 2015).
● (^) Monitoring is particularly inadequate for threatened species that lack recovery
plans, probably because such plans provide a framework within which
monitoring can most usefully integrate with management.
Acknowledgements
I thank the editors for inviting this contribution, Nick Clemann, Mark Cowan,
Graeme Gillespie, Sarah Legge, Craig Moritz and Eric Vanderduys for information
and comments that helped form this chapter, and Hayley Geyle for preparing the
figure.
References
Andrew P, Cogger H, Driscoll D, Flakus S, Harlow P, Maple D, et al. (in press) Some-
what saved: a captive breeding programme for two endemic Christmas Island
lizard species, now extinct in the wild. Oryx.
Atkins Z, Clemann N, Robert KA (2015) Does shelter site selection aid persistence of a
threatened alpine lizard? Assessing Liopholis guthega populations a decade after
severe fire in southeastern Australia. Journal of Herpetology 49 , 222–229.
doi:10.1670/13-194
Brown GP, Greenlees MJ, Phillips BL, Shine R (2013) Road transect surveys do not
reveal any consistent effects of a toxic invasive species on tropical reptiles. Biologi-
cal Invasions 15 , 1005–1015. doi:10.1007/s10530-012-0346-2
Bull CM, Hutchinson MN (2018) Saving the pygmy bluetongue lizard. In Recovery of
Australia’s Threatened Species: A Book of Hope. (Eds ST Garnett, P Latch, DB
Lindenmayer and JCZ Woinarski) pp. 65–74. CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne.
Chaloupka M, Limpus C (2005) Estimates of sex-and age-class-specific survival
probabilities for a southern Great Barrier Reef green sea turtle population. Marine
Biology 14 6, 1251–1261. doi:10.1007/s00227-004-1512-6
Chapman AD (2009) Numbers of Living Species in Australia and the World. Australian
Biological Resources Study, Canberra.