1 – Introduction: making it count^9people with experience in threatened biodiversity monitoring (Fig. 1.1). The
workshop participants included scientists and managers, government and non-
government; their expertise covered a broad range of taxa (terrestrial plants,
vertebrate groups; however, expertise in invertebrates and non-mammalian marine
species was missing). During the workshop, discussion and short presentations
were arranged to follow the book’s aims. The book follows a similar structure, with
six sections (each with multiple chapters) on:
● (^) monitoring extent and adequacy
● (^) the value of monitoring
● (^) monitoring frameworks
● (^) monitoring program design
● (^) community participation
● (^) monitoring and adaptive management.
The chapters follow a reasonably f lexible template, but they all have a feature
called ‘Lessons learned’, which summarises the key points/messages of the
contribution. At the end of each section, the key learnings and implications from
the section’s constituent chapters are brought together in a concise ‘Summary’ (but
Sections 3 and 4 have a combined summary, being Chapter 24).
The last section of the book comprises two chapters. Chapter 34 summarises
the different individual and organisational perspectives of scientists and managers
engaged in monitoring, and looks for commonalities and differences between
various monitoring practitioners. The final chapter (35) synthesises the collective
Fig. 1.1. Participants from a range of organisations gathered in late 2016 at North Head, Sydney, to discuss
ways of improving the monitoring of threatened biodiversity. The workshop was hosted by the National
Environmental Science Programme’s Threatened Species Recovery Hub. Photo: D. Salt / TSR Hub.