27 – Community involvement in monitoring threatened species: a WWF perspective^347Indigenous communities undertake active roles in land and sea management,
especially in remote areas, where they are often the only people regularly on
Country (Altman et al. 2007). Indigenous Protected Areas make up over 44% of
Australia’s National Reserve System, and play an important role in protecting
threatened species and their habitats (Australian Government 2016). Over the past
two decades, Indigenous Ranger programs have emerged and f lourished,
delivering natural resource management across these areas. More than 85% of
Indigenous Ranger groups conduct weed and fire management and more than 80%
conduct feral animal control (Country Needs People 2016), thus undertaking a
crucial role in threatened species management.
Working closely with local communities presents some challenges: large
volunteer workforces and sustained, meaningful participation requires a
substantial input of time, organisation and communication. In addition, particular
care is required to ensure accuracy and reliability of data and analyses. Approaches
to meeting these challenges are outlined in the following case studies.
Case study 1: northern bettongs and community participation
The northern bettong Bettongia tropica, listed as nationally Endangered under the
Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act 1999, is found in the narrow strip of
wet sclerophyll forest on the western edge of rainforest in North Queensland. The
species has suffered recent localised extinctions, most likely as a result of changed
fire regimes and feral animal predation (Claridge et al. 2007).
The Northern Bettong Project (NBP) is carried out in partnership with James
Cook University, Queensland Departments of Parks and Wildlife and
Environment and Heritage Protection, Indigenous groups and the wider
community, and is supported through Australian Government Caring for Our
Country funding. The project aims to determine current distribution and
population status, and develop fire guidelines to improve management of this
endangered marsupial. It relies on an intensive cage trapping program to track the
northern bettong’s core population in the Lamb Range: trapping 48 days per year
(>2500 trap-nights), requiring a large number of trained volunteers (Fig. 27.1).
Additionally, an extensive sensor camera program allows the team to monitor
bettong presence over a much larger area, and has recently resulted in rediscovery
of a population thought to have disappeared in Mt Lewis National Park. Sensor
cameras have been placed at over 300 sites across potential habitat (identified
through habitat modelling), with ~250 more sites planned for surveillance in 2017.
Sensor camera surveys produce huge volumes of photo data. With over 200 000
images from the NBP so far, analysis requires considerable time and expense. This
bottleneck was circumvented by joining the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s
(ABC) Wildlife Spotter program to trial crowdsourcing analysis of this large