6 Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities
Improving monitoring for threatened biodiversity
The opening section of this book (Chapters 2–9) presents the first systematic
attempt to assess the extent and adequacy of monitoring for a substantial
proportion of Australia’s threatened species and ecological communities. This
assessment reveals some severe deficiencies, but it also provides a foundation for
the development of more comprehensive and adequate monitoring programs
generally, and indicates a set of best-practice principles that should be considered
in developing new programs. Existing site-based monitoring programs for
threatened taxa and ecological communities in Australia have been initiated by a
range of different stakeholders, for a range of different purposes (as part of a
research program, to fulfil regulatory requirement, because of public interest, to
inform management). That situation will continue, because disparate contributors
will always have idiosyncratic agendas. However, that very diversity, which includes
foci on different taxa, in different regions, carried out by different stakeholders,
with different values, objectives and skills, could be turned to advantage. To build
the current ad hoc, ephemeral, mostly suboptimal and limited set of existing
monitoring projects into to an enduring strategic national monitoring program for
threatened species, we need national leadership to:
● (^) reform our national biodiversity policy documents, to include explicit reference
to threatened species and ecological communities as targets for action, with
monitoring embedded as a critical component of their recovery
● (^) establish a national institution for storing, analysing and interpreting
monitoring data, and making information on management effectiveness and
conservation priorities available to the public, policy makers and managers
● (^) achieve greater recognition among land-managers, policy makers, researchers
and funding bodies that monitoring is an essential ingredient for the recovery
of threatened species, that funding for important monitoring should be long-
term and secure, and that monitoring should be a mandated accompaniment to
management activity
● (^) better acknowledge that monitoring is also a cost-effective mechanism for
providing early warning of species decline, therefore allowing the opportunity
to prevent a species from becoming eligible for listing as threatened
● (^) make data availability/reporting a requirement of regulatory approvals that
include monitoring as a condition of approval
● (^) motivate a heart-starting injection of funding for the preparation and
coordinated implementation of national Recovery Plans
● (^) recognise, nurture and enhance the monitoring capabilities of key groups that
could contribute meaningfully to national threatened species monitoring,
including citizen scientists (Chapters 11, 14, 26–28, 31), Indigenous groups
(Chapters 25, 27) and environmental consultants (Chapter 8).