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Understanding habitat use of the Endangered Alligator Rivers Yellow Chat Epthianura crocea tunneyi to inform monitoring and management
- ROBIN LEPPITT, LUKE EINODER, PETER M. KYNE, JOHN C. Z. WOINARSKI, STEPHEN GARNETT
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- Journal:
- Bird Conservation International / Volume 32 / Issue 3 / September 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 22 February 2022, pp. 423-438
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Knowledge of where a threatened species occurs in a landscape is crucial for determining its habitat requirements and informing its conservation planning and management. We conducted the first broad-scale survey of the Endangered Alligator Rivers Yellow Chat Epthianura crocea tunneyi across much of its known range on drying coastal floodplains in northern Australia. Presence-absence records from 257 sites surveyed in the late dry season (August–December) of 2018 and 2019 were modelled using occupancy/detectability models. Occupancy was estimated to be 0.10 ± 0.04 with a high detection probability (0.89 ± 0.07). Modelling of 13 site-level environmental covariates found that chats were more likely to be detected at sites where the native shrub Sesbania sesban was present, were close to hydrogeological features such as depressions or channels, were long unburnt (5+ years) and/or with topsoil damage caused by feral pigs. Our estimates of chat occupancy, detectability, and the covariates that influence their occupancy, have improved our understanding of the role that fire and feral animals have on chat distribution and habitat selection, and can be used as a baseline for future monitoring. We also provide recommendations on how to design and implement future monitoring of this subspecies.
Chapter 25 - Fire and biodiversity in Australia
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- By John C. Z. Woinarski, Charles Darwin University, Allan H. Burbidge, Department of Parks and Wildlife, Sarah Comer, Department of Parks and Wildlife, Dan Harley, Threatened Species Biologist, Sarah Legge, Suite 5, 280 Hay St, Subiaco, Western Australia, 6008, David B. Lindenmayer, The Australian National University, Canberra, Thalie B. Partridge, Charles Darwin University
- Edited by Adam Stow, Macquarie University, Sydney, Norman Maclean, University of Southampton, Gregory I. Holwell, University of Auckland
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- Book:
- Austral Ark
- Published online:
- 05 November 2014
- Print publication:
- 22 December 2014, pp 537-559
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Summary
Summary
Fire has a major influence on the management and conservation of Australian biodiversity. Notwithstanding a long history of fire on the continent, inappropriate contemporary fire regimes are a key threatening process for many Australian plant and animal species. Fire regimes vary appreciably across the continent, and different species and taxonomic groups respond in markedly different ways to different regimes. A set of case studies highlights the diversity of wildlife responses to fire, although we acknowledge that this set is inevitably far from a comprehensive assessment of the response of all biodiversity components to all fire regimes. Managing fires for biodiversity remains a challenge, particularly in the more remote parts of the continent or when management is driven mostly by human safety and economic assets. Some notable examples of local-and regional-scale fire management programs for biodiversity conservation are presented. Replicating the conservation benefits of these programmes across other parts of Australia will be difficult and will require improved understanding of the fire regimes required by biodiversity, significant effort in implementation and monitoring of outcomes and better understanding of fire by the Australian community.
Introduction
Australia is the most fire-prone continent. Fire has long shaped its ecosystem processes, the juxtaposition and extent of its ecological communities, the structure and floristics of its vegetation types, the ecology of many species, and the distribution, abundance or extinction of individual species. Much of this potency relates to Australian climatic regimes and Australia’s relative lack of topographic relief (and hence protection from extensive fire). Marked wet–dry (monsoonal) seasonality characterises Australia’s north, catalysing frequent (but relatively low-intensity) fire as the annual crop of tall savanna grasses cures during the long dry season. There is marked seasonality also in the Mediterranean and temperate climates of south-eastern and south-western Australia, and their hot summers prompt high-intensity wildfires. Seasonality is less pronounced in the arid inland areas, but recurring but irregular patterns of drought and wet periods drive infrequent but extensive fires as vegetation biomass built up in high-rainfall years dries when the rains disappear. These differences in environmental settings dictate that the frequency and impacts of fires vary very substantially across the Australian continent (Plate 14; Russell-Smith et al. 2007).
11 - Applying landscape-ecological principles to regional conservation: the WildCountry Project in Australia
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- By Brendan G. MacKey, Faculty of Science, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia, Michael E. Soulé, Henry A. Nix, Harry F. Recher, Robert G. Lesslie, Jann E. Williams, John C. Z. Woinarski, Richard J. Hobbs, Hugh P. Possingham
- Edited by Jianguo Wu, Arizona State University, Richard J. Hobbs, Murdoch University, Western Australia
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- Book:
- Key Topics in Landscape Ecology
- Published online:
- 12 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 29 March 2007, pp 192-213
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Summary
Introduction
One of the great challenges facing humanity in the twenty-first century is the conservation and restoration of biodiversity (Convention on Biodiversity 1992). In this chapter we present the landscape-ecological underpinnings of a new nongovernment organization (NGO)-driven conservation initiative in Australia, namely the WildCountry Project.
Global and national analyses highlight the extent of environmental degradation and the need for urgent protection and restoration of biodiversity (e.g., SEAC 1996, Environment Australia 2001, World Resources Institute 2001, NLWRA 2002). Such analyses also suggest that existing conservation strategies and plans are insufficient to prevent continuing losses.
The primary question, at the most general level, is: how can a conservation system be designed and implemented for Australia that is likely to maintain biodiversity for centuries to millennia? Dedicated protected areas are a core component of a nation's biodiversity conservation system. By our calculations (Fig. 11.1) only about 6 percent of Australia is in a secure protected area. There is no theoretical or empirical basis to the proposition that this level of reservation, while necessary, is sufficient for securing the conservation of Australia's biodiversity. In any case, protected area networks are largely the result of various historical contingencies rather than the principles of modern reserve design (Margules and Pressey 2000). We suggest that the percentage of Australia reserved in protected areas is unlikely to ever exceed 10–15 percent.
The effects of grazing and fire on vegetation and the vertebrate assemblage in a tropical savanna woodland in north-eastern Australia
- Alex. S. Kutt, John C. Z. Woinarski
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- Journal:
- Journal of Tropical Ecology / Volume 23 / Issue 1 / January 2007
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 12 January 2007, pp. 95-106
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We studied the response of vegetation and vertebrate assemblages to fire and grazing, and their interacting effects, in Eucalyptus woodland in north-eastern Australia. In this vegetation type, many pastures remain free of cattle grazing due to the occurrence of a native shrub poisonous to livestock. Vegetation (floristic data and 22 habitat variables) and vertebrate fauna (birds, mammals, reptiles) were sampled in 29 standardized 50 × 50-m quadrats in the 2001 wet season, representing four treatments: sites burnt recently (within 2 y) and grazed by cattle (4–8 ha per livestock unit); sites unburnt (last burnt >2 y ago) and grazed; sites burnt recently and ungrazed; and unburnt and ungrazed sites. Fire and grazing had a significant influence on vegetation: both grazing and fire reduced ground cover (fire in grazed sites 51–23%, fire in ungrazed sites 68–39%) and increased the cover of forbs (8% in burnt and grazed sites, 3% if ungrazed) and tussock grasses (20% in grazed and unburnt sites and 5% when ungrazed). Grazing caused a shift in floristic composition from the perennial hummock grass Trioda pungens to tussock grasses (e.g. Aristida spp., Enneapogon spp.), forbs (e.g. Phyllanthus spp.) and shrubs (e.g. Acacia spp.). Of the vertebrate groups, birds responded more to fire effects (9 species), reptiles to grazing effects (6 species) and mammals to the interaction (2 species). Species reacted to increases in bare ground (e.g. crested pigeon Ocyphaps lophotes, hooded robin Melanodryas cucullatus, Ctenophorus nuchalis) and to the dominant ground cover (e.g. Ctenotus pantherinus) or change in vegetation architecture (e.g. singing honeyeater Lichenostomus virescens, variegated fairy-wren Malurus lamberti). The clearest example of an interacting effect was the cycle of complementary dominance between the rodents Pseudomys delicatulus and P. desertor, the latter's post-fire recovery becoming more muted in sites where cattle grazed (modelled time for population recovery twice as long as in ungrazed sites).
25 - The role of connectivity in Australian conservation
- Edited by Kevin R. Crooks, Colorado State University, M. Sanjayan, The Nature Conservancy, Virginia
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- Book:
- Connectivity Conservation
- Published online:
- 24 May 2010
- Print publication:
- 02 November 2006, pp 649-675
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
In Australia and globally, nature and society face a historically unprecedented wave of extinction and ecological degradation (Wilson 2002). Although large ecological reserves are an essential core component of any biodiversity conservation program, protected areas comprise only about 6–12% of the land globally (IUCN 2003) and nationally (Mackey et al. 2006) and are typically widely dispersed and isolated. This percentage of strictly protected land is too small – by a factor of five or ten, even if the reserves were optimally distributed (Soulé and Sanjayan 1998).
In response, critics of conventional conservation (e.g., Soulé and Terborgh 1999) often suggest that long-term prospects for biodiversity will be enhanced the more the entire landscape, irrespective of tenure, is managed as a conservation (rather than a production) matrix. Such a transformation, however, will demand a bolder and more systematic approach to nature protection. This will require increases in the area protected, enhanced biotic and abiotic connections between core protected habitat areas, and reconsideration of the economic and recreational activities on lands where native ecosystems still dominate.
In North America and elsewhere, it has been recognized that existing conservation initiatives fail to provide sufficient area and ecological connectivity to accommodate the key, large-scale, long-term ecological processes necessary to sustain natural systems (Soulé and Terborgh 1999; this volume). Neither do they allow for evolutionary adaptation to environmental change. The current situation for biodiversity in Australia is similar (Australian Government 2001).
Seasonal habitat use by flying-foxes, Pteropus alecto and P. scapulatus (Megachiroptera), in monsoonal Australia
- Michael J. Vardon, Peter S. Brocklehurst, John C. Z. Woinarski, Ross B. Cunningham, Christine F. Donnelly, Christopher R. Tidemann
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- Journal:
- Journal of Zoology / Volume 253 / Issue 4 / April 2001
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 March 2001, pp. 523-535
- Print publication:
- April 2001
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Distributions of flying-fox (Pteropus alecto and P. scapulatus) were examined in relation to use of habitat in the essentially natural landscape of northern Australia. There were differences between the species in terms of the vegetation used for roosting and foraging, which were related to the reproductive cycle and seasonal variation in temperature, rainfall and the availability of preferred foods. Important habitats of P. alecto varied seasonally and included floodplain, mangrove, monsoon rainforest, Melaleuca open-forest, and Eucalyptus miniata/E. tetrodonta open-forest and woodland. The minimum scale at which conservation of P. alecto should be attempted is in the order of 5000 km2, based on seasonal patterns of habitat use. The size of this area will make conservation via traditional reserves difficult and conservation of important habitats outside reserves will be needed. Habitats protected for the benefit of P. alecto will also benefit P. scapulatus but because P. scapulatus is more mobile, displays greater yearly variation in distribution and is less well understood than P. alecto, appropriate conservation actions are less certain.