7

The extent and adequacy of

monitoring for Australian threatened

freshwater fish species

Mark Lintermans and Wayne Robinson

Summary

The extent and adequacy of national monitoring programs for 57 threatened
freshwater fish were reviewed against an evaluation framework with nine metrics.
The review included 38 taxa listed as threatened by the Environment Protection
and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) plus another 19 listed by the
Australian Society for Fish Biology (and likely to be EPBC-listed in the near
future). Only 31 taxa in total and 22 of the EPBC-listed taxa had national
monitoring programs. The monitoring programs that do exist scored best for
coverage, sampling periodicity and being fit-for-purpose. However, monitoring
programs for threatened freshwater fish species in Australia are mostly poor in
data availability and reporting, the inclusion of demographic parameters,
longevity of monitoring program, and design quality (statistical power). EPBC-
listed species have monitoring programs with better data availability and better