94 Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities
other species groups. The lack of national monitoring programs for 26 (46%)
nationally threatened (including 15 (39%) EPBC-listed) freshwater fish taxa is a
major deficiency in Australia’s threatened species recovery programs. While the
absence of monitoring for 11 threatened species that do not have the statutory
protection provided by the EPBC Act may be more understandable (because some
of these species have only recently been recognised as threatened and not yet been
nominated for national assessment under the EPBC Act), the lack of monitoring for
the 15 EPBC-listed species does not bode well for the recovery or conservation
management of these species. There is no overarching ‘Action Plan’ for Australian
freshwater fish (sensu Woinarski et al. 2014) that can guide management priorities
or needs, including monitoring, but such a document is sorely needed.
Of the 31 species that had active national monitoring information, five were not
the focal species of monitoring, which also raises questions about the adequacy of
these programs to provide rigorous information for threatened species
management. Of the nine monitoring evaluation metrics assessed, the better
median scores for EPBC-listed taxa in coverage, sampling periodicity and fit-for-
purpose gives hope that broad information on abundance is being collected
nationally in meaningful timeframes. However, the poor scores for design quality
makes it doubtful that changes in abundance or trend can be detected with any
rigour, which has important ramifications for assessing the adequacy of current
management practices. As with other vertebrate groups (see Chapters 3–6), many
monitoring programs have grown out of particular interests of single researchers or
F i g. 7. 2. Gill-netting for Macquarie perch on Cotter reservoir. Photo: U. Lhendup.