Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities

16 Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities

and of providing timely warning of any need for conservation response. Note that
monitoring periodicity should relate in part to the life history of the monitored
species – for example, it is likely that there is less need for annual monitoring for
long-lived taxa such as some tree species or large marine mammals.

Score Score basis

5 monitoring at least annually at major site(s)

4 monitoring at 2–3 year intervals

3 monitoring at 4–9 year intervals

2 monitoring at >10 year intervals

1 no repeat sampling

0 no monitoring

Metric 4: Longevity

Monitoring should occur over appropriate timeframes, with some future security.
Monitoring programs should span sufficient duration to help differentiate short-
term responses to climatic and other variability from longer term trends, and
extend over a long enough period to be able to detect changes that are gradual and
incremental but of conservation significance. The longevity of monitoring may be
particularly important in Australia, where many species undergo marked
f luctuations in abundance and distribution at decadal scales in response to
drought and high rainfall years, or in response to fire history (Dickman et al. 2014;
Greenville et al. 2016a, 2016b).

It is also important that monitoring programs have some long-term future
security, especially so given that climate change is likely to impose additional
threats to many species. Hence it is important for managers to get early warning of
negative responses to climate change. However, for most existing monitoring
programs it is difficult to assess the extent of future commitment.

Score Score basis

5 monitoring extending back for >30 years, and there is an assurance of ongoing commitment

4 monitoring extending back for >20 years, and there is some indication of ongoing

commitment

3 monitoring extending back for >10 years

2 monitoring extending back for >5 years

1 monitoring established only in last 1–5 years, no consideration of future sampling

0 no monitoring

Metric 5: Design quality

Monitoring design should have sufficient statistical power to detect trends of
conservation concern. The monitoring program should be of sufficient intensity