3 – The extent and adequacy of monitoring for Australian threatened mammal species^292012). There are also possible examples of extirpations occurring in part because of
a lack of monitoring, and hence lack of awareness among managers of the severity
of a species’ decline (e.g. Bramble Cay melomys Melomys rubicola: Woinarski et al.
2017).
In this review, all available information on monitoring activity for Australian
mammals was located and summarised. This was a complex and challenging task,
because this activity is characteristically little-reported and its results not readily
available. Our collation indicates that there is indeed an appreciable amount of
monitoring activity, but that this characteristically has limited coverage,
suboptimal design quality (e.g. low statistical power), is poorly coordinated, is
inadequately reported, and often has little management context.
It is difficult to interpret the causes of these shortcomings, but we infer that: (1)
most existing (or lapsed) monitoring programs were set up idiosyncratically by
individual researchers without necessarily any planning for long-term continuity;
(2) there has been no effective national leadership to integrate and systematise
monitoring programs and their data; (3) there are many journals devoted to
conservation research, but few journals find the presentation of ongoing
monitoring results to be worth reporting; (4) research agencies typically undertake
short-term discrete research activities (which are relatively amenable to funding
Fig. 3.4. Boodies, bilbies and other threatened mammals are monitored using tracking surveys at Arid
Recovery in South Australia. Photo: Arid Recovery.