To fulfill obligations under the Ramsar Convention and achieve the objectives of a National Biodiversity Strategy, the Australian Government has committed to improving the ecological characteristics of wetlands across the continental Murray-Darling Basin, Australia’s largest surface water resource. Allocating a portion of an increasingly climate-constrained water resource to environmental flows for this purpose necessitates careful evaluation of environmental and economic benefits. We combined a large citizen science dataset of birdwatching visitation over 72 consecutive months at ten Basin wetland birdwatching hotspots with spatio-temporal data on site-specific proxies of environmental and ecological condition. Using an interdisciplinary combination of regression analysis, citizen science data, an online birdwatchers’ survey and in-depth birdwatcher interviews, we found that improved ecological condition was associated with increased birdwatcher visitation. Our findings contribute to the policy debate by identifying increased birdwatching visitation and related expenditure as potential co-benefits of improving ecological condition at Basin wetland birdwatching hotspots.

Savanna ecosystems are globally threatened by land use change, altered fire regimes and invasive species. Northern Australia’s savannas, although relatively intact, face increasing pressures from pastoralism and fire exclusion. This study evaluated the effects of cattle grazing and fire on ground layer vegetation composition and species richness across 75,000 ha of savanna ecosystems in central Queensland, Australia. We undertook a four-year program of burning led by First Nations rangers and low-intensity grazing, ranging from grazing exclusion to 1 adult equivalent per 11 hectares. A total of 900 vegetation surveys conducted across 239 sites were stratified across these land management regimes. Bayesian regression models revealed that higher stocking rates were associated with increased cover and richness of non-native graminoids, particularly Cenchrus ciliaris (buffel grass), and reduced cover of native perennial grasses such as Themeda triandra (kangaroo grass) and Heteropogon contortus (black speargrass). In contrast, sites that had been more recently burnt had higher native annual graminoids and forbs, while long-unburnt sites favoured perennial and exotic species. The study also found that Stylosanthes (stylo) species, an introduced legume that is a developing environmental weed in northern Australia, responded positively to fire and negatively to grazing. Recent burning increased native forb and graminoid diversity and suppressed invasive species. This study highlights that low stocking rates combined with mosaic burning can mitigate the dominance of invasive species and support a native species-rich ground layer. These findings provide empirical support for integrated fire and grazing management strategies to improve the conservation value of Australian savanna.

The significance of koalas to Australia extends beyond their iconic status, with the industry surrounding them valued at $3.2 billion and providing employment for 30,000 individuals. Ever increasing pressures from urbanisation, land clearing, disease, bushfires and the spread of nonnative vegetation and predators have resulted in the continual deterioration in natural koala populations. Effective monitoring and protection of koalas (and their habitat) is critical in reversing this decline. Of particular concern is how to manage koalas at the urban interface - especially with regard to koalas navigating structures such as roads and motorways. While there exist numerous types of infrastructure and strategies to theoretically allow safe passage of koalas between habitat that is divided by road networks, there is limited data on the known effectiveness of these approaches. Part of the problem lies in the ability to detect, monitor and report on the numbers of koalas in the area and their traversal behaviours. Unfortunately, strategies that rely on human observation are piecemeal, and using koala injury/fatalities statistics on roads is not an ideal approach. This paper presents a computer vision enhanced IoT koala monitoring and recognition system that can be used to detect koalas in their native surroundings non-intrusively. The cameras are deployed in places of interest near fauna road crossings. Motion sensing triggers the cameras to take several seconds of video footage that is relayed to the Cloud. Machine learning algorithms process the video footage to determine whether a koala has been spotted. Experimental results demonstrate that our best model on YOLO8 achieve 97.5 AP, 96.5 AR, 99.2 mAP@50, and 97.1 mAP@50-95 in our dataset which contains both daytime and night-time images. Relevant conservation groups and stakeholders can then use our outcomes to target their koala protection strategies accordingly. The system has now been used in multiple koala conservation initiatives. This paper outlines the system including hardware and the image processing approach, deployments for different koala management programs, challenges faced/ overcome (technical, practical and logistical), and possibilities for future directions to enhance the technology.

Urbanisation places immense pressure on remnant vegetation, driving changes in community structure and impacting ecosystem function. While the influence of urbanisation on extant vegetation communities is relatively well studied, the response of plant propagule banks to such pressures is poorly understood. Propagule banks are important drivers of vegetation dynamics influencing vegetation resilience and adaptive capacity. Here, we investigate the impacts of edge effects and reductions in land area on the composition and structure of three major plant propagule bank sources (aerial, litter and soil) in 20 urban forest patches of varying size in the heavily urbanised region of Greater Brisbane in eastern Australia. We surveyed extant vegetation and conducted glasshouse experiments to examine the composition of propagule banks in edge and core habitats of each forest patch to consider the contribution of these to vegetation dynamics. Germination trials revealed that a high diversity of non-native propagules are stored within propagule banks, particularly at the edges of forests. Edge effects were evident in all extant forests surveyed, manifesting as higher portions of non-native species and changes to species assemblages. Each of the three bank types offered a unique contribution to regeneration potential, and each fostered non-native species. A a distinct disparity was evident between extant and propagule bank assemblages, indicating a risk of extant community shifts in the future. This research highlights the ranging impacts of the urban matrix on propagule bank composition, particularly via the introduction of non-native propagules. Further, the findings presented here highlight the need for management regimes to combat what are clear drivers of biodiversity change.

Conserving threatened species relies on an understanding of their habitat requirements. This is especially relevant for granivorous birds, whose habitat use and movement patterns are intricately linked to the spatial and temporal availability of resources such as food and water. In this study, we investigated the habitat use, home range and daily activity patterns of the Endangered Southern Black-throated Finch (SBTF; Poephila cincta cincta) within a 75,000 ha savanna woodland study area in northeastern Australia. This semi-arid region is one of the key remaining strongholds for the species and is characterised by substantially different habitat and climatic conditions than areas where previous research on this species has been undertaken. We radio tracked 142 SBTF using both manual tracking and an array of 27 automated radio towers, which revealed a strong preference for eucalypt-dominated grassy woodland communities. The preference for these habitats also increased with decreasing distance to permanent water. While SBTF occupied large home ranges, individual SBTF were largely sedentary during the radio tracking period (21.8, range = 0.83-120 days), with few landscape-scale movements of more than 4.5 km. Daily foraging activity of SBTF exhibited bimodal peaks in the early morning and late afternoon, while other activities were greatest from the late morning to the early afternoon. Compared to other estrildid finches, our research suggests that SBTF track resources at a local scale across a large home range. We postulate that in times of resource scarcity SBTF may use dietary diversification, instead of landscape or regional-scale nomadic movements, to meet their resource needs. The species' movement patterns underscore the importance of local scale habitat management to facilitate resource availability throughout the year. Furthermore, our research helps target monitoring designs for granivorous birds that focus on the species' diurnal activity patterns.

Abstract The use of wildlife imagery in society is highly varied and could contribute to reinforcing national identity. Standard depictions of wildlife include photographs, video, artwork and symbols or icons, including on currency. We investigated the representation of native fauna on 4541 banknotes from 207 countries between 1980 and 2017, to identify geographic hotspots and taxonomic patterns and determine whether threatened and endemic species were more readily represented. Native fauna was depicted on 15.2% of banknotes reviewed (352 unique species) with a strong bias towards terrestrial species (89%) and a dominance of bird and mammal species (83% combined). African banknotes had the highest mammal representation while birds were favoured in South America. Globally, threatened species were commonly depicted on banknotes with 30% of all imagery representing these species. The fauna species depicted on banknotes generally perpetuate existing perceptions about these species (i.e., charismatic species). We recommend several avenues for further investigation to explore relationships between perceived value and wildlife representation. These include longitudinal studies of how representation changes over time, the inclusion of flora and/or coin imagery, identifying species‐specific traits for selected wildlife and examining the decision‐making processes governing wildlife imagery on banknotes. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

As research on disasters in the tourism context matures, a more holistic understanding of how businesses and communities can recover is needed. Using the disorientation and reorientation framework, this study explores recovery as a place-based process. The perceptions and memories of key stakeholders of Binna Burra Lodge, which was affected by the 2019-2020 bushfires in Australia, are investigated and the analysis reveals two themes of disorientation and four of reorientation. It is proposed that various reorientation mechanisms can be deliberately activated to foster a smoother recovery process. Furthermore, this study shows that tourism-enabled social capital can assist disaster recovery in communities and that, through embracing traditional heritage, communities can not only deal with the loss but also prepare for future disasters.

This study developed and tested a model of higher education environmental science program review through industry-wide surveys of environmental science graduate employers. We surveyed 62 environmental professionals who manage recent environmental science graduate employees in eastern Australia. The survey captured expectations of graduates’ skill performance compared to workplace expectations in the first 6 months of employment in both degree-specific skills and general employment skills. Graduate employee skill importance was ranked significantly higher than their actual performance in degree-specific skills including field work, formal correspondence, policy development, data analysis/interpretation, and understanding environmental legislation. Performance was also significantly lower than expectations of generic employment skills including foundation, collaborative, and employability skills. Work placement within undergraduate programs was reported as being pivotal in efficiently preparing graduates, although workplace time limitations hinder participation. This study provides new evidence for universities to adopt work placement or other work integrated learning as a core program component, embed skill awareness and skill portfolio development in curricula, and periodically undertake industry review of graduate employee performance compared to workplace expectations. The new model presented here, of higher education program review, incorporating both graduate employee performance and employer expectations, will assist universities continuing relevancy in a dynamic employment market.

Australia has lost vast areas of its natural vegetation through agriculture and urbanization, resulting in the area of suitable habitat for many Australian bird species being greatly diminished. Given the geographical and ecological biases in anthropogenic land use, the impact of habitat loss now and into the future may be disproportionately high for some species, threatening their long-term persistence. Such changes are occurring rapidly, and habitat loss needs to be monitored dynamically to prevent extinction. To monitor changes in available unmodified species habitat, we use species’ area of feeding habitat (AFH), which represents the area of habitat within a species’ range with vegetation matching their feeding requirements. We analysed the past, current and future threats of habitat modification for 467 Australian bird species by calculating AFH across three time periods: pre-colonization, current (2020), and a projected future scenario (2100). These values were used to identify species subject to substantial habitat loss due to urbanization and agriculture and delineate predictors of such losses. Most species had experienced habitat loss since colonization (n = 442, 95%), and species that had already experienced considerable habitat loss were more likely to lose habitat into the future. Species with particular habitat associations (e.g., Mallee), were also more prone to greater proportions of habitat lost. The results highlight the utility of AFH and emphasize the importance of protecting what habitat remains for the species with highly depleted geographic ranges, noting that those that have experienced the most loss of unmodified habitat are the most likely to lose more unmodified habitat under future conditions.

BackgroundAutomated radio telemetry (ART) systems enable high-temporal resolution data collection for species unsuited to satellite-based methods. A challenge of ART systems is estimating the location of radio tagged animals from the radio signals received on multiple antennas within an ART array. Localisation methods for ART systems with omni-directional receivers have undergone rapid development in recent years, with the inclusion of machine learning techniques. However, comparable machine learning methods for ART systems with directional antennas are unavailable, despite their potential for improved accuracy and greater versatility. To address this, we introduce an open-source machine learning-based location fingerprinting method for directional antenna-based ART systems. We compare this method to two alternative localisation approaches. Both alternatives use relative signal strengths recorded among multiple antennas to estimate the signal's angle of arrival at each receiver. In the 'biangulation' approach, the location is estimated by finding the intersection of these angles from two receivers. In contrast, the 'linear regression' approach uses a linear regression model to estimate the distance from the receiver along the angle of arrival, providing a location estimate. We evaluate these methods using an ART data set collected for the southern black-throated finch (Poephila cincta cincta), in the Desert Uplands Bioregion of Queensland, Australia.ResultsThe location fingerprinting method performed slightly better than the best performing alternative, the linear regression method, with mean positional errors of 308 m (SE = 17.7) and 335 m (SE = 18.5), respectively. The biangulation method performed substantially worse, with a mean positional error of 550 m (SE = 42.9, median = 540 m). Improved accuracy was observed with shorter distances between transmitters and receivers, higher signal strengths, and a greater number of detecting receivers, suggesting that increasing receiver density improves localisation accuracy, albeit with potential trade-offs in system coverage or cost. Furthermore, shorter pulse intervals of transmitters resulted in greater accuracy, highlighting the trade-offs among battery life, transmitter weight and radiative power.ConclusionsThe open-source location fingerprinting method offers an improved and versatile localisation approach suitable for a wide variety of ART system designs, addressing the challenge of developing study-specific localisation methods using alternative approaches.

Habitat fragmentation and isolation threaten the survival of several wide-ranging species, such as tigers, through increased risk from diseases, disasters, climate change, and genetic depression. Identification of the habitat most likely to achieve connectivity among protected areas is vital for the long-term persistence of tigers. We aimed to improve the mapping of potential transfrontier protected area corridors for tigers by connecting sites within the Terai Arc Landscape in Nepal and to those in India, highlighting targeted conservation actions needed along these corridors to maintain long-term connectivity. We used least-cost corridor modeling and circuit theory to identify potential corridors and bottlenecks in the study area. The landscape's resistance to tigers' movement was gathered from expert opinions to inform corridor modeling. We identified nine potential tiger corridors in the Terai Arc Landscape-Nepal that aligned strongly with the remaining intact habitats of the Siwalik landscape, which could facilitate tiger movement. Banke-Bardia and Chitwan-Parsa-Valimiki complexes and Lagga-Bhagga and Khata corridors were identified as high-priority conservation cores and corridors. While our model exhibited congruence with most established corridors in the landscape, it has identified the need to enhance existing corridors to improve landscape connectivity. Several pinch points posing an increased risk to connectivity were identified. Most of these were located near the protected area boundaries and along the Nepal-India border. The Siwalik landscape holds the key to long-term connectivity in the study area; however, immediate conservation attention is needed, particularly at pinch points, to secure this connectivity for tigers. Validation of identified corridors through empirical research and their conservation is a priority.

The application of machine learning methods has led to major advances in the development of automated recognisers used to analyse bioacoustics data. To further improve the performance of automated call recognisers, we investigated the development of efficient data annotation strategies and how best to address uncertainty around ambiguous vocalisations. These challenges present a particular problem for species whose vocalisations are rare in field recordings, where collecting enough training data can be problematic and a species' vocalisations may be poorly documented. We provide an open access solution to address these challenges using two strategies. First, we applied an active learning framework to iteratively improve a convolutional neural network (CNN) model able to automate call identification for a target rare bird species, the southern black-throated finch (Poephila cincta cincta). We collected 9098 h of unlabelled audio recordings from a field study in the Desert Uplands Bioregion of Queensland, Australia, and used active learning to prioritise human annotation effort towards data that would best improve model fit. Second, we progressed methods for managing ambiguous vocalisations by applying machine learning methods more commonly used in medical image analysis and natural language processing. Specifically, we assessed agreement among human annotators and the CNN model (i.e. inter-annotator agreement) and used this to determine realistic performance outcomes for the CNN model and to identify areas where inter-annotator agreement may be improved. We also applied a classification approach that allowed the CNN model to classify sounds into an 'uncertain' category, which replicated a requirement of human-annotation and facilitated the comparison of human-model annotation performance. We found that active learning was an efficient strategy to build a CNN model where there was limited labelled training data available, and target calls were extremely rare in the unlabelled data. As few as five active learning iterations, generating a final labelled dataset of 1073 target calls and 5786 non-target sounds, were required to train a model to identify the target species with comparable performance to experts in the field. Assessment of inter-annotator agreement identified a bias in our model to align predictions most closely with those of the primary annotator and identified significant differences in inter-annotator agreement among subsets of our acoustic data. Our results highlight the use of inter-annotator agreement to understand model performance and identify areas for improvement in data annotation. We also show that excluding ambiguous vocalisations during data annotation results in an overestimation of model performance, an important consideration for datasets with inter-annotator disagreement.

Fire alters habitat structure, thereby influencing fauna reliant on specific habitat features, particularly those with low dispersal capability such as reptiles. We quantified reptile responses to fire regimes in subtropical open eucalypt forests of southeast Queensland, Australia, with differing fire histories to isolate fire parameters that may alter reptile communities. We sampled 15 unique fire regimes from three sites. Active reptile searches and habitat assessments were completed at 74 plots to determine the influence of fire frequency, time since fire and fire type on reptile composition. The combination of fire parameters and habitat variables were key predictors of reptile communities within models. We identified a negative relationship for overall abundance and Lygisaurus foliorum with fire frequency, and higher species richness and abundances of two species in top disposal burn sites. Shrub and tree cover percentage were important predictors of three individual species. Concinnia martini also exhibited a negative response to time since fire. These results highlight the need to consider multiple fire parameters when explaining reptile community responses to fire owing to mixed responses and varied habitat preferences. Detailed recording and consideration of applied fire regimes should support adaptive management in relation to planned burning to support biodiversity outcomes.

IntroductionConservation research plays an integral role in the effort to conserve biodiversity globally. However, research gaps can limit conservation research’s potential contribution to addressing global biodiversity problems such as habitat fragmentation. While a synthesis of the research literature does not attain effective conservation action by itself, it can inform future research and corridor conservation planning and practices.MethodsWe used a systematic search of peer-reviewed research articles in Scopus, Web of Science, and grey literature in the Connectivity Conservation Specialist Group library published before December 2020. Our review assessed research on the identification and use of corridors, a primary instrument used to address the threats of habitat fragmentation, for large carnivores to identify patterns, priorities, and gaps in the literature. We focused on large carnivores because they are frequently used for connectivity planning owing to their higher sensitivity to habitat fragmentation and their importance as conservation flagship species.Results and discussionWe found that peer-reviewed studies primarily focused on single-species corridors with a strong preference toward apex predators, whereas grey literature focused on multi-species corridors. More than 80% of studies included one of the following five species, the mountain lion (n=46 studies), American black bear (n=31 studies), jaguar (n=25 studies), tiger (n=25 studies), and brown bear (n=18 studies). Although research on the identification of corridors was relatively more common in the past, we found an increasing trend in the publication of studies assessing the use of corridors by large carnivores in recent years. The published research is predominantly from North America (47%) and Asia (30%), with comparatively fewer studies from Africa (4%), despite having several large carnivore species. While climate change and human-wildlife conflict are considered major concerns for large carnivore conservation, these were seldomly considered in corridor research. Corridor research collaborations exist between academia, government, and non-government institutions, but the involvement of the private sector is lacking.ConclusionsOur review shows that there is scope for future corridor research to (i) focus on areas where geographical gaps exist, (ii) target multi-species corridors, (iii) include climate change and human-wildlife conflict scenarios, and iv) increase collaboration with the private sector to better inform connectivity solutions.

This research presents a new model based on Twitter posts and VADER algorithms to analyze social media discourse during and following a bushfire event. The case study is the Gold Coast community that experienced the first bushfire event of Australia’s severe Black Summer in 2019/2020. This study aims to understand which communities and stakeholders generate and exchange information on disasters caused by natural hazards. In doing so, a new methodology to analyze social media in disaster management is presented. This model enables stakeholders to understand key message themes and community sentiment during and following the disaster, as well as the individuals and groups that shape the messaging. Three main findings emerged. Firstly, the results show that messaging volume is a proxy for the importance of the bushfires, with a clear increase during the bushfire event and a sharp decline after the event. Secondly, from a content perspective, there was a consistent negative message sentiment (even during recovery) and the need for better planning, while the links between bushfires and climate change were key message themes. Finally, it was found that politicians, broadcast media and public commentators were central influencers of social media messaging, rather than bushfire experts. This demonstrates the potential of social media to inform disaster response and recovery behavior related to natural hazards.

Conservation of koalas is an urgent task for Australia given their rapidly declining numbers in the wild.To better estimate koala populations and analyse koala activity, a camera network was deployed to capture video of koalas from zoos and the wild.This led to the creation of the world's first koala video tracking dataset.Based on this dataset, a twostream convolutional neural network model was constructed to detect and track koala activity in the video.The model has two branches, one using semantic information for object detection in the original video frames, and the other using optical flow for motion information tracking.Both branches use Yolov5, which generates the positions of objects detected in colour or near-infrared video.Finally, the features generated by the two branches are fused to determine the final position of the koala in each frame.Experimental results show that the dual-stream network can significantly improve the tracking performance when compared with the baseline model that uses only semantic information for tracking.

Urban environments are increasingly acknowledged as a priority for biodiversity conservation. Birds in particular are capable of persisting, and sometimes thriving, in cities and towns globally. However, the process of urbanization results in the loss of many bird species due to the resulting changes in habitat conditions. Urban expansion and densification present a threat to both urban bird biodiversity and bird conservation more broadly. Australian urban areas, including suburban and peri-urban areas, currently support moderate bird species richness, but the rapidly changing urban landscape threatens these communities. Unfortunately, many bird species' population trends are not actively studied, resulting in a poor understanding of species persistence in urban environments. Here, we used bird survey data from long-running citizen science databases in a Bayesian List Length Analysis to determine changes in bird species prevalence (the probability of observing a species in a given survey event) over time in Australia's four most populous urban regions. We found that introduced species, historically prominent in Australian urban bird communities, are decreasing in prevalence in all four regions, while a small group of native urban exploiters are becoming more prevalent. Our results also show that many species perceived to be “iconic” or “common” are experiencing declines in prevalence in urban areas, highlighting the importance of monitoring and conservation action in urban areas.

Habitat destruction is a key threatening process for amphibians. Modified or anthropogenic waterbodies can be used to compensate for habitat loss, with several amphibian species utilising created or modified waterbodies. We measured usage of anthropogenic/modified waterbodies by adult and tadpole frog species, including threatened species, in coastal wallum habitat in eastern Australia. Nine road trenches/ditches, 8 artificial ‘lakes’, 6 golf course waterbodies and 13 natural waterbodies were surveyed for frog adults and tadpoles during the summer/spring period 2011–2012. Additionally, we examined the relationship between frog assemblages and environmental factors (water chemistry, aquatic predators, vegetation types), focusing on Litoria olongburensis and Litoria fallax. Frog species richness differed between waterbody types, with two of three threatened frog species present in both natural and anthropogenic/modified waterbodies. The frog assemblage was influenced by pH, turbidity, salinity and percentage cover of certain vegetation types. Measured abundance of L. olongburensis adults and tadpoles were highest in natural waterbodies with high sedge density and low pH. The measured abundance of adult L. fallax was highest within artificial lakes. We conclude that differences in water chemistry and vegetation density can affect the amphibian assemblage within these environments. Therefore, effective conservation of all frog species would be enhanced by conserving a variety of waterbody types. However, natural waterbodies are more likely to be used by threatened species and the conservation of these waterbodies provides the best conservation outcomes. Where habitat offsets may be required, environmental managers should critically assess the quality of constructed habitat for specialist frog species including those associated with acidic, oligotrophic environments.