Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities

142 Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities

monitor progress and to report on outcomes and conservation success. Securing
the long-term recovery of threatened species and ecological communities is a
challenging task, involving many individuals, organisations and agencies. The
development and implementation of recovery and other conservation plans are
therefore necessarily collaborative processes that involve multiple stakeholders. A
key mechanism to assist this process is to ensure effective governance (Martin et
al. 2012).
The Strategy recognises the importance of the recovery team – a collaboration
of partners brought together to plan and/or coordinate the implementation of a
recovery program – as a governance model report on recovery progress and
effectiveness. National recovery team governance guidelines are being established
in 2017 and will provide a framework for establishing and operating effective
recovery teams. A national reporting framework is also being established to allow
recovery teams to report on progress in achieving the objectives of a recovery
program. Monitoring undertaken will be important in informing this reporting.
Consistent reporting across national recovery teams will progressively build a
national overview of conservation efforts over time.
The implementation of the Strategy, and key learnings that might arise,
represents an opportunity to progressively build a coordinated national reporting
framework. The Strategy’s governance and reporting systems could serve as a
model on which to expand a representative monitoring and reporting program
covering a larger set of Australia’s threatened species.
There would be significant resource, capacity and logistical challenges in
establishing monitoring programs for all or most of the 1787 species and ecological
communities listed as threatened under the EPBC Act (at February 2017). A
strategic subset could, however, be identified and established as a benchmark that,
if monitored and reported on, could collectively and progressively build a national
story of conservation action. This could then inform national and international
reporting requirements. Choosing such a subset could be guided by an appropriate
prioritisation process, potentially incorporating representatives from a range
taxonomic groups, life histories, habitats or threat categories.
In considering such an approach, several broad steps could be taken:

1. Building upon existing reviews (Chapters 3–8), complete a stocktake of the
   extent and quality of existing monitoring programs for the remaining
   threatened species (e.g. invertebrates, plants) and ecological communities.


2. Develop a set of criteria (national standards) that would have to be met for a
   monitoring program to be considered as part of a national scheme. Include
   appropriate measures or indictors that are scalable across multiple levels of
   reporting. (This step is underway as part of the Threatened Species Index
   project being developed by the National Environmental Science Programme).