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Summary: monitoring frameworks

and monitoring program design for

threatened biodiversity

Darren M. Southwell

Most monitoring programs are carried out by government and non-government
organisations with interests in multiple threatened species and ecological
communities (see Chapters 3–8). The chapters in these two sections demonstrate
how organisations often embed their monitoring activity within a framework that
articulates the overall purpose for monitoring, prioritises the selection of species,
ecological communities and environmental covariates, and identifies reporting
requirements and connections to management (Chapters 17–19). For example, the
Australian Wildlife Conservancy’s (AWC) EcoHealth monitoring framework
reports on the status and trend of species, ecological processes and threats on each
of AWC’s properties (Chapter 18). Ideally, monitoring frameworks should link
expenditure to outcomes, demonstrate return on investment, and allow for
knowledge and decisions to be iteratively updated over time. Chapters 17 and 18
show how conceptual models of target ecosystems can help ensure that relevant
conservation assets, major threats to those assets, their interactions, and important
knowledge gaps, have all been considered in a monitoring framework.