Ecological Outcomes Monitoring on Bush Heritage reserves

Ecological Outcomes Monitoring is being implemented on our reserves and will also be implemented on land that we are managing for conservation in partnership with others. As yet  no monitoring sites have been established on partnership properties, but there are plans to do so soon.

The elements of Ecological Outcomes Monitoring are explained below.

DETERMINE THE MONITORING SITES

At a new reserve information from our initial land assessments and preliminary surveys, together with expert and local knowledge, are drawn together in an initial planning phase. Monitoring sites around the reserve are identified and pegged.

These sites are located so that they provide a representative sample of all the ecosystems, and the variations within those ecosystems, based on (1) ecological variability such as differences in slope and aspect, fire or flood history, and (2) past management and land use history. This would include sites at different distances from water points, at paddock boundaries and in areas that have been cleared or cultivated.

PREPARE THE MANAGEMENT PLAN AND ALLOCATE RESOURCES

As we prepare the management plan we identify the key conservation values and ‘targets’ for the property, what threats they face and finally how these threats should be managed. 

The key conservation targets and values include special elements of the landscape, perhaps threatened species or groups of species, vegetation communities or ecosystem processes. Work plans follow. They specify, as a series of defined projects, the on-ground actions that are needed.

COLLECT THE DATA

Monitoring then begins at each site using the ‘biodiversity indicators’ that have been selected by our team of ecologists. These indicators give us valuable information about what is happening at the site and, over time, they will allow us to monitor changes across the landscape. These changes will show how effective our management work has been in meeting our primary conservation goals for the reserve. They will help us to understand how the natural systems on each reserve work, including how the threats are affecting the land and its wildlife and how we can manipulate them through management activities.

MATCH OUR ACTIONS ON THE GROUND TO THE CHANGES IN THE LAND

The changes emerging in the landscape will be matched to the management actions that have influenced them. We can thus compare our human ‘outputs’, such as erosion control work, controlled burns, and feral animal and weed management to the ‘outcomes’ we see in the recovery of the land and in our key conservation targets. As our understanding grows we will be better able to judge the best actions to take to achieve the most desired ecological result.

STORE AND ANALYSE THE ‘OUTPUT’ AND ‘OUTCOME’ DATA

The EOM data gathered at all sites are stored in a dedicated spatial database, together with information on the management actions that were taken across the entire property. Added to this is vegetation productivity deduced from satellite data. This remote imagery may also tell us the amount of carbon that is being stored in these recovering landscapes – an important measure for quantifying our contribution to sequestering carbon and combating climate change.  The database has been designed to collate and manage the data and provide coherent and reliable information in reports and maps. The consistency of the data collection method across the reserves will allow us to compare the changes we see both within reserves and also between reserves. With time, especially as we add monitoring sites to those properties that we cooperatively manage with our partners, we will be able to see changes in the vegetation and bird populations on a continental scale.

This will help identify and target the most important sites for future land acquisitions and also help us understand the effects of climate change and its implications for biodiversity across the continent.

RESULTS

It will be several seasons before we get monitoring results that will be useful for our adaptive management and in which we can account for normal fluctuations resulting from differences in rainfall and temperature. However, we are already starting to see some interesting patterns in the movement of birds, changes in vegetation and records of new species within the four reserves for which monitoring is underway in the south-west of Western Australia.

The Increment project, funded by the Australian Government Natural Heritage Trust and Land and Water Australia, is assisting us convey these results to our supporters in the most understandable form. It will develop custom-designed software that will enable rigorous reporting to supporters on biodiversity outcomes achieved as a result of their investment in reserve management activities.