1 – Introduction: making it count^5species and their monitoring that is not matched in Australia’ national policy
setting (Aitchi Target 12: ‘By 2020 the extinction of known threatened species has
been prevented and their conservation status, particularly of those most in decline,
has been improved and sustained’, http://www.cbd.int/sp/targets/default.shtml)..)
The omission of explicit reference to threatened species (and their monitoring)
in our guiding national biodiversity policy document has been partially remedied in
the inaugural Threatened Species Strategy (Commonwealth of Australia 2015). This
Strategy acknowledges the critical role that monitoring makes to species recovery,
and indeed the Strategy relies on the existence of such monitoring data for reporting
against the targets in its own action plan. However, this policy advance is not yet
accompanied by any additional Commonwealth funding to initiate (or improve
existing) programs for threatened species monitoring; that funding is expected to
eventuate from other government and non-government sources, but these sources
(to date) have not typically supported investments in monitoring.
The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC
Act) is Australia’s national legislation for protecting biodiversity, environment and
heritage, with a focus on threatened species and ecological communities. The
EPBC Act sets out the statutory processes to list species and ecological
communities, and the regulatory and approval processes to protect listed entities.
The Act also guides the preparation of Commonwealth-approved Recovery Plans
that aim to improve the conservation status of nationally listed species and
ecological communities. However, not all listed species/ecological communities
have an approved Recovery Plan (many have Conservation Advices instead, which
have less regulatory muscle; some listed entities have neither), there is no legal
requirement to enact these Plans (other than on Commonwealth land), and the
Plans are not accompanied by Commonwealth funding for implementation. The
management and monitoring of threatened biodiversity is mostly conducted by
state and territory governments, because biodiversity management falls within
their constitutional responsibilities. Recovery Plans include a section on
monitoring activities, but these are of variable utility. Plans often omit detail about
monitoring methods; they often fail to clearly outline responsibilities for delivery
and pathways to implementation; they usually fail to articulate the links between
monitoring and management/reporting; and they usually omit guidance on the
management response if pre-defined thresholds of change are observed (trigger
points) (Lindenmayer et al. 2013). Perhaps unsurprisingly then, Recovery Plans
appear to be ineffectual at improving the conservation status of listed entities,
although the widespread lack of monitoring data makes it hard to assess whether
recovery planning processes aid population recovery or not (Bottrill et al. 2011).
See Chapter 10 for more detail on the national policy framework for monitoring
threatened biodiversity.