12 – A tale of threatened frogs: demonstrating the value of long-term monitoring^173effective management interventions. The fate of the stuttering frog may have been
similarly inf luenced if adequate monitoring were in place.
Although long-term monitoring has been beneficial to the corroboree frog,
Baw Baw frog and spotted tree frog, it was only instigated after levels of
endangerment became severe. Better outcomes would have been achieved for these
species if monitoring had commenced earlier, before such high extinction risks
were attained, when perhaps more management intervention options existed,
prospects for successful recovery were greater, and with reduced overall recovery
costs. However, unfortunately, too few taxa are monitored in ways that enable
pre-emptive management intervention (see Chapter 5). This situation has led to
elevated uncertainty stif ling informed policy and management decision making,
and overall increases in extinction risks and recovery costs.
What factors have enabled long-term monitoring?
The long-term monitoring examples presented here share elements that are likely
to have contributed to their initiation and maintenance:
● (^) The recovery programs adopted generally the principles and steps established
by Caughley and Gunn (1996) for combatting declining species.
● (^) Extensive baseline surveys of each species were undertaken at the outset,
enabling an initial well-informed conservation assessment of each species, and
setting up initial hypotheses for declines. Baseline surveys were imperative for
designing the monitoring programs, ensuring representative coverage across
the entire environmental range of each species.
● (^) Project and management personnel collectively had an appreciation of the
imperatives of monitoring, due to the paucity of population demographic and
long-term monitoring data on amphibians more generally.
● (^) Monitoring programs were initiated and driven largely by single individuals
with high levels of personal commitment, who are all still involved with these
programs.
● (^) Fit-for-purpose monitoring programs were designed around each species’ life
history and ecology, logistics, and anticipated long-term cost constraints. They
evolved in response to the priorities of the program, and form integral parts of
the internal feedback loop of recovery planning.
● (^) The species have relatively small geographic ranges within no more than two
government jurisdictions and four land management jurisdictions (i.e. state
forest, national parks, water catchment), reducing the potential numbers of
stakeholders.
● (^) Each monitoring program and its associated research and management has
been guided by well-governed recovery teams, the composition of which ref lect