9

Summary: monitoring extent and

adequacy for threatened biodiversity

Sarah Legge, Benjamin C. Scheele, John C.Z. Woinarski, Stephen

T. Garnett, David A. Keith, Mark Lintermans, Natasha M. Robinson

and David B. Lindenmayer

Monitoring is integral to all aspects of policy and management for threatened
biodiversity. It is the mainstay for assessing the status and trends of listed species
and ecological communities. Monitoring data can be used to diagnose the causes
of decline, to measure management effectiveness and to report on investment. It
can also be a valuable public engagement tool. Monitoring programs can and
should contribute to the conservation of a species or ecological community, but the
value of this contribution depends upon many aspects of their design and
execution. The extent and adequacy of monitoring for threatened biodiversity has
been suspected to be low (Lindenmayer and Gibbons 2012), but, until now, there
have been no national reviews of the quality of monitoring for threatened species
or ecological communities. Chapters 3–8 provide, for the first time, national
assessments of the extent and adequacy of monitoring for threatened mammals,
birds, frogs, reptiles, fish and ecological communities. Threatened plants and