- Free Seminar - 31 July.
Using bird monitoring to guide ecological Management across multiple spatial scales.the Charles Hawker Conference Centre, Waite Campus. See flyer for details.
The Mount Lofty Ranges Woodland Bird Monitoring Program (MLR WBMP) is a collaborative long-term monitoring project initiated by Hugh Possingham’s research group (http://www.uq.edu.au/spatialecology/), managed by the Nature Conservation Society of South Australia (www.ncssa.asn.au) and supported by the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resources Management Board. This program has been running annually from September to December since 1999 and aims to assess evidence for declines in woodland birds through repeated surveys of over 150 sites throughout the Mount Lofty Ranges.
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While occasional "snapshot" surveys may be sufficient to keep track of the more secure, stable populations, those that fluctuate widely must be monitored annually. This study represents one of few long-term regional scale studies of a group of species in Australia that achieves this goal. Expert bird surveyors record all birds seen and heard within each 2 ha site during three 20-minute visits. This repetition is necessary to estimate the observation error rates, which is crucial to determining statistically whether birds are declining. These sites are then resurveyed annually to look for trends in the distribution and abundance of birds in response to a changing environment and broadscale ecosystem management.
The data collected are being used to improve our understanding of habitat preferences in MLR bird species. This includes not just site-level preferences, like habitat type and structure, but also landscape-level preferences like patch size and shape. Habitat modelling is being conducted under the supervision of Dr Mark Lethbridge at Flinders University (http://www.socsci.flinders.edu.au/geog/staff/lethbridge.php). This information will be used to guide habitat restoration by regional bodies, non-government organisations and governments.
The results of this study also provide an invaluable tool for forming management decisions and increasing public awareness of, and support for, this and other biodiversity conservation issues in the MLR. The data can be used as a benchmark for the success of habitat restoration and rehabilitation. Furthermore it can be used as "before" data in before-after control-impact experiments on the success of actions like fencing, revegetation, feral control or weed removal.
For more information about the project, contact the MLR WBMP Coordinator through the NCSSA.
Special thanks to past and present funding and participating organisations: Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resources Management Board, Australian Research Council, Birds for Biodiversity ~ Conservation Council of SA, Department of Environment and Heritage (SA), University of Adelaide, and the University of Queensland. We're also very grateful to those property owners that allow us to access the sites year after year... Continuity is of the essence for long-term monitoring programs such as this, so their ongoing participation is greatly appreciated.