28 Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities
agencies (mostly CSIRO and Parks Australia) (8), Indigenous groups (15),
unaffiliated individuals (9), natural resource management groups (4) and zoos (3).
(Note that these tallies may sum to more than the number of taxa considered
because more than one of these different groupings may have monitoring activities
for the same taxon. Note also that if a mammal species was monitored by different
state agencies in different states, it received a score of only one for species
monitored by State agencies.)
Discussion
Monitoring has been pivotal in charting the decline of many Australian mammal
species (Woinarski et al. 2010; Wayne et al. 2017), helping to elucidate the factors
causing such decline (Woinarski et al. 2014; Lawes et al. 2015), catalysing
conservation status assessment and remedial management, and measuring the
effectiveness of such management response (Morris et al. 2003). In some cases,
unfortunately currently a minority, monitoring has also provided compelling
evidence of recovery of threatened mammal species following appropriate
management (e.g. Moseby et al. 2009; Figs 3.3, 3.4), and such robust evidence of
success can help garner public support and justify ongoing investment in
conservation management by government and non-government organisations.
However, there are also some textbook examples for Australian mammals of
otherwise good monitoring programs being undertaken without sufficient linkage
to management, leading to a caricatured ‘monitoring-to-extinction’ (Martin et al.
Fig. 3.3. Example of a monitoring program that charts the recovery of a threatened mammal species
benefitting from effective management. Here, increase in abundance (measured as number of tracks per km
of searched area) of burrowing bettongs Bettongia lesueur following their reintroduction to a predator-proof
exclosure at Arid Recovery. Data from Arid Recovery (K. Moseby and K. Tuft).