18 – Designing a monitoring framework for Australian Wildlife Conservancy^249monitoring and research aimed at identifying key threats to fauna (Legge et al.
2011; McGregor et al. 2014; Legge et al. 2015). Current survey effort is focused
on monitoring the status and trend of key conservation assets (Fig. 18.5) and
threats (i.e. on monitoring condition, or ‘ecological health’) which provides
information critical to the design of land management strategies and the relative
allocation of effort across different strategies. The current version of the
framework has also extended the scope of monitoring from species at risk of
decline to a broader range of taxa, as well as vegetation, habitat and some
ecological processes.
AWC continues to invest heavily in question-based monitoring and research –
in particular, to understand the causes of species declines and to evaluate the
outcomes of management interventions. In AWC’s science framework (Fig. 18.1),
information obtained by question-based monitoring and research is
complementary to information obtained from status monitoring – together, this
effort is intended to tell us ‘what is changing, how it is changing, and why’
(Lindenmayer et al. 2015).
Lessons learned
● (^) The literature on monitoring is immense and often confusing to practitioners,
with competing approaches and complex terminology, and an emphasis on
issues relevant to the research community. As a conservation organisation,
AWC has found particular value in reviewing monitoring frameworks
developed by other managers of protected areas.
● (^) AWC’s monitoring framework is directed towards meeting its mission of the
effective conservation of Australia’s wildlife and their habitats. The monitoring
program is focused on tracking the status and trend of conservation assets and
threats to those assets. AWC also invests in research (often integrated with
monitoring), particularly aimed at understanding threats to biodiversity and
the management of those threats. The development of a conceptual model
around AWC’s information requirements (Fig. 18.1) has helped to articulate the
scope of the monitoring program and to allocate available effort to monitoring
or research.
● (^) Our collective understanding of Australian ecosystems is still limited. The
ecosystems are also often highly variable; in many areas, the abundance of
small mammals may vary by an order of magnitude in response to rainfall. In
such variable systems, it is challenging to develop defensible conservation
targets. As data are accumulated from its monitoring and research programs,
AWC expects to develop a better understanding of the dynamics of the species
and ecosystems for which we are responsible, allowing the identification
emerging conservation issues.