Biodiversity Monitoring in Australia.

Abstract

EFFECTIVE biodiversity monitoring, that allows an evaluation of how well we manage Australia’s natural heritage, remains a frustration to many who have worked in conservation biology over the decades. Too many times colleagues have audibly groaned when presented with yet another new tool or pet interest, with an appropriate price tag, that has been paraded to senior management as a panacea to biodiversity monitoring. The hotchpotch of vertebrate, one-off botanical, one-off remote sensing, wetland, riparian ecosystem, Threatened and Priority Ecological Community, and species-focused monitoring programs represents the collective failure to provide consistent measure of the state of the Australian environment within a common framework. We could audit the effectiveness of many of these monitoring programs; if we could find the data. If we can find the data, too often it is difficult to understand what the objective of the management intervention was. Effective biodiversity monitoring programs are in the minority and this must not continue.