26 – Involving volunteers in threatened plant monitoring in South Australia^339Box 26.1. Involving volunteers in orchid monitoring
Natural Resources Adelaide and Mt Lofty Ranges Region funds the ‘Southern Lofty
Block Threatened Orchid Project’, covering the recovery of at least 24 orchid taxa,
including 15 EPBC-listed species. With 227 sites to consider, the benefit gained from
working with volunteers is enormous. The region is one of South Australia’s smaller
NRM regions: all of the threatened orchid sites are located in the Adelaide Hills and
surrounding countryside, within easy reach of the city. This means there is a large
pool of volunteers to draw from (Fig. 26.1).
The region’s Threatened Flora Ecologist sees the benefits of working with
volunteers as easily outweighing the negatives. He attributes some of the success
of the monitoring program to the inclusion of the volunteers in the planning
process. The recovery team regularly revises the program, and prioritises sites
according to the reason for monitoring, monitoring requirements and suggested
frequency (seasonal and annual). The volunteers are included in this process,
which then gives them a sense of ownership of the process and pride in the data
they collect. But there can be negatives – for example, volunteers can lose focus
on the task at hand, and end up collecting irrelevant or superfluous data, or also
neglect to collect target data. Sometimes the returned data sheets can be quite
Fig. 26.1. Volunteers assist with caging and monitoring the pink-lipped spider-orchid
Caladenia behrii (inset) at Roachdale Reserve, a property managed by the National Trust
of South Australia. Photos: D. Bickerton.