166 Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities
monitoring programs suggest that the most essential elements needed are: sound
understanding of the principles of threatened species conservation science and
adaptive management, and the rationale and merits of monitoring; a champion, or
champions, who can stick with the program and ultimately ‘hand on the baton’ to
successors; support and at least some resources from government and relevant land
managers; and good governance.
Introduction
Monitoring species and communities is an essential element of effective
biodiversity conservation management and policy development. Monitoring
information provides the basis for: evaluating the dynamics of populations in
relation to their environment; assessing status, trends and forewarning of
impending species declines and/or extinctions; creating triggers for management
intervention; and evaluating the effectiveness of management actions
(Lindenmayer et al. 2012). However, long-term monitoring of threatened species
has often been poorly implemented (Walls 2014).
The merits of investing in long-term monitoring for declining and threatened
species, and the consequences of not doing it, were clearly illustrated in the ‘global
amphibian crisis’ (Stuart et al. 2004). In the 1970s, reports emerged from around
the world of unusual amphibian declines (e.g. Barinaga 1990). However, broad
recognition and acceptance that these declines were real and part of a global
phenomenon did not occur until the early 1990s (e.g. Richards et al. 1993). Long-
term studies of amphibian population dynamics were rare at that time (Alford and
Richards 1999). This paucity of long-term ecological data was recognised as a
critical knowledge gap that contributed to uncertainty around the veracity and
extent of reported declines, and delayed recognition of their significance, and
whether they resulted from human impacts or natural f luctuations (Blaustein et al.
1994; Alford and Richards 1999). These delays in turn hampered the development
of effective responses from conservation biologists to determine causes, and
biodiversity managers and policy makers in the development of effective
interventions (Blaustein et al. 1994).
In this global context, reports of Australian amphibian declines also mounted
in the 1980s and early 1990s (e.g. Richards et al. 1993). Information gathered from
monitoring in the Queensland Wet Tropics provided some of the most compelling
evidence of declines and helped galvanise awareness (Richards et al. 1993).
Unfortunately, appreciation of the magnitude of these declines, and therefore
mobilisation of management responses, eventuated too late for several Australian
species now considered extinct, including the unique gastric brooding frogs
Rheobatrachus spp. Nevertheless, the Wet Tropics data highlighted the value of
ecological monitoring for detecting important changes in species’ population