Biodiversity Monitoring

The Thomas Foundation supported a major workshop on Biodiversity Monitoring at the Australian National University in 2011.

Promoted by Professor David Lindenmayer, the workshop examined a wide range of biodiversity monitoring issues.

With the objective of ensuring long-term monitoring is built in to the strategic plans for all conservation projects, the CSIRO will publish a book in 2012 containing material contributed to the workshop. It is edited by David Lindenmayer and Philip Gibbons.

As well, Professor Lindenmayer led an article on the importance of biodiversity monitoring in the journal Austral Ecology, generating high levels of professional inquiry.

Professor Lindenmayer says that importantly the workshop triggered new thinking on the values of monitoring for more cost-effective environment management, with a paper currently being prepared on the re-design of monitoring programs (ie employing Adaptive Monitoring).

“The paper advocates that in any re-design there are well-defined and pre-determined trigger points for instigating management interventions to prevent the unfortunately common problem of monitoring species to extinction,” Professor Lindenmayer says. “There have been more than 25 such published cases of extinctions in the past decade.”

Professor Lindenmayer is speaking on the workshop’s outcomes and initiatives at conferences in the USA and UK.