44 Monitoring Threatened Species and Ecological Communities
higher for more threatened and more readily detectable taxa and if there was a
recovery plan, and was particularly high for non-breeding migrants and
shorebirds. Levels of data storage and documentation of monitoring methods were
often reasonably high, but few monitoring programs had considered succession
strategies for when those currently driving monitoring cease to do so. This is the
first overview of threatened bird monitoring quality for any country and provides a
baseline against which improvements can be made and measured. The exceptional
quality of monitoring for some taxa, which has f lowed onto tangible benefits for
the taxa concerned in terms of management effectiveness and impact of advocacy,
shows what can be achieved and the value of doing so.
Introduction
The arguments for monitoring biodiversity and its relative inadequacy in Australia
have been well documented (Lindenmayer et al. 2012). Birds are among the best
monitored of the animal groups in Australia. This is partly because most species
are diurnal and easy to see, thus readily engaging a broader public. People are
encouraged by having access to a wide range of high-quality field guides and apps
that makes identification increasingly easy and reliable. Also, a non-government
organisation, BirdLife Australia, has been compiling and collating data collected
by the public for many years, having coordinated two national projects to map the
distribution of birds across the nation (Blakers et al. 1984; Barrett et al. 2003).
However, gaps remain, particularly for threatened species most of which, by nature
of their rarity, are unlikely to be encountered often by the general public. Many
taxa are not monitored at all, while the adequacy of the monitoring that does occur
varies from occasional encounters at long intervals to counts of every individual
each year. Understanding why there is such variability, and highlighting gaps, is
the first step in improving monitoring effort and quality. This chapter looks for
patterns in the adequacy of monitoring among 222 taxa of Australian birds
considered threatened or nearly so.
Methods
The adequacy of monitoring was assessed for Australian bird taxa listed as
threatened under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act
1999 (EPBC Act; Department of Energy and the Environment 2017) or as
threatened or Near Threatened after assessment against the IUCN Red List criteria
(Ga rnet t et al. 2015 and subsequent updates http://www.birdlife.org.au)..) Taxon is
taken to include species, subspecies and breeding and non-breeding populations of
the same taxon where these have breeding populations in Australia, and non-
breeding populations that visit Australia. The quality of monitoring for 12