96 Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities
(Lundquist et al. 2002; Taylor et al. 2005), but the situation in Australia is
unknown. The Tasmanian galaxiid recovery plan (TSS 2006) has been operational
since 1998, is a dedicated ‘fish only’ plan, and appears to deliver good monitoring
outcomes, but this is confounded by endemicity. The community recovery plan for
the Great Artesian Basin (Fensham et al. 2010) includes three threatened fish
species in its scope, but has no dedicated recovery actions for these fish – only a
generic monitoring recommendation – and the plan’s performance remains to be
assessed. The river sharks and sawfish plan (Department of the Environment 2015)
is too recent to adequately assess its performance.
The lack of a significant difference in scores between EPBC-listed and unlisted
species for seven of the nine metrics is surprising, because statutory listing should
improve the quality of monitoring programs. It is encouraging that data availability
and design quality were significantly better for EPBC-listed species, and that
sampling periodicity and longevity also improved, though not quite to a statistically
significant extent. However, it is worrying that there were no differences for
coverage in the representativeness of sampling across the species range, or that the
linkages to management were not higher in EPBC-listed taxa. If we are to arrest the
decline, and ultimately delist taxa, then adaptive management is key.
Although many monitoring programs self-rated themselves as having
reasonable design quality and being fit-for-purpose, the heavy reliance on single
sampling techniques, and single annual sampling events raises concerns for some
species or habitats. For example, boat electrofishing has become the technique of
choice for larger-bodied species in large aquatic habitats (rivers and lakes) (Harris
and Gehrke 1997; Davies et al. 2010). However, almost nothing is known of the
detection efficiency of this technique and how it interacts with environmental
variables such as current velocity, depth, turbidity or temperature (for a notable
exception see Lyon et al. 2014). A lack of knowledge of detection efficiency makes
interpretation of multi-year datasets collected under a range of environmental
conditions difficult, and analysing trends in population abundance problematic.
Standard effort commonly used in boat electrofishing is also known to under-
represent rare species (Ebner et al. 2008), but such considerations are rarely factored
in to sampling designs. Using boat electrofishing as a sole sampling technique also
has limitations for detecting different size classes or life history phases, with small
young-of-year individuals often poorly represented (Lintermans 2016b). By contrast,
backpack electrofishing in small streams (as used in the majority of threatened
galaxiid monitoring programs) seems to have far fewer caveats on its use, because
the electric field generated effectively extends across the entire physical habitat.
Further research is required to identify sampling biases or detection efficiencies of
boat electrofishing for a range of species under varying environmental conditions.
Unlike some other vertebrate groups such as birds and amphibians, there is
little participation of citizen science in current threatened fish monitoring
programs, with monitoring primarily undertaken by state agencies, universities or