7 – The extent and adequacy of monitoring for Australian threatened freshwater fish species^97
non-government organisations. There is considerable scope for the involvement of
citizen scientists for selected threatened fish species, and research is currently
underway to compare angling and electrofishing for monitoring Murray cod
Maccullochella peeli abundance. Anglers represent an important source of
knowledge for some of the larger threatened species (Trueman 2011), and
similarly aquarist groups also contain significant knowledge regarding the
abundance and distribution of selected ornamental species (e.g. rainbowfish).
Further exploration of how such groups might be engaged in threatened fish
monitoring would be fruitful.
Lessons learned
● (^) Our knowledge of diversity of Australian freshwater fishes is expanding rapidly
as new cryptic species are described. As a consequence, there are many
nationally threatened freshwater fish that are not yet listed under the EPBC
Act, with the lack of listing resulting in decreased priority for management and
a consequent lack of available resources for research, management and
monitoring. There is an urgent need for a strategic national overview of the
conservation status of all Australian freshwater fish fauna to facilitate priority
setting and resource allocation (including monitoring), along with a
reinvigoration (and funding) of national recovery teams.
● (^) There are national monitoring programs for around half of Australia’s threatened
freshwater fish, but most are suboptimal: information is scattered, hard to access
and of variable quality; trend information is largely unavailable for most species.
A national monitoring framework is required to inform monitoring design and
coordinate data collection, storage, analysis and reporting.
● (^) Species with recovery plans have improved monitoring outcomes,
demonstrating the importance of such plans.
● (^) There is considerable reliance on single sampling methods in fish monitoring,
often with no appreciation of detection capability, or how this varies with a
range of environmental parameters.
● (^) Improvement in the extent and adequacy of threatened fish monitoring in
Australia is required if these taxa are to be adaptively managed and extinction
avoided.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the many colleagues who assessed monitoring adequacy for individual
or multiple species: Martin Asmus, Steve Beatty, Chris Bice, Steve Brooks, Gavin
Butler, Rhys Coleman, Brendan Ebner, Iain Ellis, Rob Freeman, Scott Hardie, Bill
Humphreys, Adam Kerezsy, Peter Kind, John Koehn, Wayne Koster, Peter Kyne,
Jarod Lyon, Dave Morgan, Luke Pearce, Tarmo Raadik, Zeb Tonkin, Daniel