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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 32(5)

Regional patterns of mammal abundance and their relationship to landscape variables in eucalypt woodlands near Darwin, northern Australia

Owen Price A C , Brooke Rankmore A B , Damian Milne A , Chris Brock A , Charmaine Tynan A , Louise Kean A and Lisa Roeger A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Biodiversity Conservation, Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment (DIPE), PO Box 496, Palmerston, NT 0831, Australia.

B Key Centre for Wildlife Management, Charles Darwin University, NT 0909, Australia.

C Corresponding author. Email: owen.price@nt.gov.au

Wildlife Research 32(5) 435-446 https://doi.org/10.1071/WR04033
Submitted: 29 April 2004  Accepted: 28 June 2005   Published: 8 August 2005

Abstract

Habitat loss and fragmentation are usually construed as having negative consequences for wildlife, and habitat heterogeneity as having a positive effect. We conducted a mammal survey in eucalypt woodlands near Darwin, and found very few mammals in an intact region of the study area. This is consistent with an emerging pattern suggesting that many mammal species are declining across northern Australia, even though habitats remain relatively intact. However, we also found apparently healthy populations of the same species in a fragmented region of the study area. Using a combination of remote sensing, GIS and generalised linear modeling, we found some evidence of relationships between fire regime, fire heterogeneity or vegetation heterogeneity and the distributions of mammal species in this area. However, there was a strong regional component of the distribution that is not explained by these variables. The cause of the lack of mammals in the intact region of the study area has not been revealed by this analysis. One possible reason for this failure is that the landscape variables used in the analysis were too fine to detect variation in mammal abundance occuring at a much courser regional scale.


Acknowledgments

We thank the many volunteers and staff who helped with this work and the landholders who gave permission to survey on their properties. Mammal data for four of the sites were provided by Noel Preece of Ecoz Pty.


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