The Endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax fleayi) is sensitive to disturbance, particularly during the breeding season. In the forestry context management actions have been developed from historic research and scientific literature and are focused around nest sites and immediate surrounds (up to a 1km radius). There are thousands of nest records across Tasmania which means that managing this species comes at a considerable cost. Under an adaptive management framework, the Tasmanian regulator for forestry began doing research on the effectiveness and efficiency of management for this species in 2007. A number of different approaches have been adopted over time. Changes in technology, knowledge and resources have influenced the research done. Yet strong conclusions on the effectiveness and efficiency of current management still eludes us. This presentation will share the journey and the challenges that have been faced in trying to do effectiveness monitoring and adaptive management on a high-profile, highly mobile, widespread and disturbance-sensitive species.

Animals bred in captivity may lose essential wild adaptations and acquire new ones that suit the captive environment. Vagile birds have pointier wings than sedentary ones, but flight constraints in captivity differ to the wild. We quantify wing shape among related birds of differing vagility to look for evidence that wing shape of migratory orange-bellied parrots Neophema chrysogaster has changed in captivity. Wild conspecifics and congeners (including those considered sedentary) had pointier wings than captive birds. Altered wing tip shape was resulted from change in relative lengths of the second and third primary feathers. In wild orange-bellied parrots, the second primary was equal to or shorter than the third in only 13 % of birds, compared to 43 % in captivity. Wing roundness in captivity was negatively related to the proportion of an individual’s genome inherited from new founders. Captive parrots also had longer alula feathers (important for flight control and stall prevention) than wild conspecifics. The wing shape of captive birds may be advantageous for flight in aviaries, but annual survival of released captive birds suggests this is a liability in the wild. This is the first evidence that wing shape can change in captivity and could impair migration ability after release.

Dejan Stojanovic1*, Carolyn J. Hogg2, Teresa Neeman3, Annika Everardt4, Leanne Wicker5, Catherine M. Young1, Fernanda Alves6, Michael J. L. Magrath7, Robert Heinsohn1

Understanding whether, and where, species are declining is crucial for monitoring progress towards national and global biodiversity conservation targets, justifying management resourcing, and stimulating targeted responses to environmental problems. Although protected areas (PAs) are key to stop biodiversity declines, most indicators of trends in species populations in PAs are poorly understood and tend to exclude rare or threatened species. Here, we use data from the first national Threatened Species Index (TSX) developed in Australia to report on trends for threatened and near-threatened birds taxa inside and outside of terrestrial and marine PAs. We used the Living Planet Index method to calculate trends for 66 taxa between 1985 and 2015. For all studies taxa, the trends showed an average reduction of 59% by 2015 relative to an index value of 1 in 1985 (2.1% decrease per year). Bird data showed steeper decreases outside PAs (mean average decrease of 78% over 30 years; 2.5% per year) than inside PAs (39% and 1.8%, respectively). This difference was less pronounced between 2000 and 2015, with 53% average reduction for birds outside vs 28% for birds inside PAs. We show that decreases are most severe for shorebirds compared to terrestrial birds. Our work suggests that the largest reductions are related to human pressures rather than to species’ biological traits. Our analyses provide a clear example of how the TSX can enable governments, agencies and the public to monitor how conservation actions help to improve the status of threatened species.

Rare and threatened fauna species vary in their level of difficulty to study. Without good ecological information, species recovery and management can be problematic; we draw on our studies of two button-quail species to illustrate. The vulnerable black-breasted button-quail Turnix melanogaster of south-eastern Queensland is rare in the landscape, but it shows a distinct preference for dry vine forest habitat, it leaves distinct feeding scrapes and it will respond to call-playback in the right situation. By contrast the buff-breasted button-quail T. olivii of Cape York Peninsula, Queensland has a less distinctive habitat of open savanna woodland and it leaves very little evidence if any of its presence. Black-breasteds are also faithful to location, while the buff-breasted is far more erratic within and between seasons. It is difficult to estimate numbers of individuals of black-breasteds even though they leave signs of feeding; but it has been nigh on impossible to detect buff-breasteds reliably, much less estimate population size. There have been few sightings of buff-breasteds since it was first discovered late in the 19th century. There has been no acceptable photograph of a living bird and while we have recorded calls that fit a description for buff-breasteds from the 1920’s and are structurally different to calls made by other button-quails, these require verification. Slow progress is being made in collecting ecological information on which to base conservation actions. Meanwhile protection of habitat paves a way toward to protection of these species and the study of its ecology and distribution.

Greater gliders are Australia’s largest gliding possums, distributed widely. While long been considered common, recent studies have found local populations declining at annual rates up to 9% and modelling predicts substantial contractions of habitat in the future under climate change. As a result, Petauroides volans was classified as threatened in Victoria. Population declines are commonly attributed to logging and planned-burning activities, resulting in the implementation of respective conservation measures. Declines could also be related to a wider range of factors like foraging quality or extreme and more frequent weather events, but these are typically not considered in contemporary conservation planning. We are addressing interactions between these factors to investigate: 1) what role has climate in their distribution, 2) what is the influence of tree nutrition on occurrence and abundance; and, 3) do climate and nutrition influence greater glider occurrence at different scales. Our analysis using high-resolution climate data suggests extreme weather-events and micro-climatic processes are good predictors for habitat suitability and indicates decadal changes in climate as drivers of decline and range shifts in grater glider populations in Victoria. Nutrient analyses of soils taken from sites in eastern Victoria indicate a nutritional gradient with elevation and forest type and suggest high variability of nutrient levels within mixed-species forest habitat, which is to be confirmed with leaf samples taken from these areas. Along with UAV multi-spectral imagery, this data will be used to predict P. volans habitat based on climate, forest nutrition and structure to improve reserve design and forest management.

Documenting impacts of climate change underpins the development of adaptation responses, but long-term data to enable detection of climate change impacts in the Southern Hemisphere are limited. We present a novel approach using a national survey of local ecological knowledge to build a continent-scale view of climate change impacts on terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystems that people with close links to the environment have perceived in Australia. Results from 326 respondents showed that people are already perceiving effects on hundreds of species and ecosystems, significantly extending the detail previously reported for the continent. While most perceived trends and attributions remain unsubstantiated, anecdotes concurred with >35 examples in the literature, included >20 repeat examples, and were compatible with expectations from global climate change impact frameworks. The latter involved examples across the spectrum from organisms (e.g. increased mortality in >75 species), populations (e.g. changes in recruitment/abundance in >100 species, phenological change in >50 species), and species (e.g. >80 species newly arriving or disappearing), to communities and landscapes (e.g. >50 examples of altered ecological interactions). The overarching pattern indicated that people are more often noticing climate change losers (typically native species) than winners in their local areas, but potential ‘adaptation in action’ included arrivals and range shifts (particularly for native birds and exotic plants), and compositional and phenological change. We conclude that targeted elicitation of local ecological knowledge about climate change impacts can provide a valuable complement to data-derived knowledge, substantially extending the volume of explicit examples and offering a foundation for further investigation.

There has been a significant decline of arboreal mammals in northern Australia, especially in areas of lower rainfall. To better understand their habitat requirements, we investigated how variation in habitat structure influences den-tree selection by the savanna glider (Petaurus ariel). We compared den-tree selection by P. ariel in two populations at the climatic extremes of the species’ geographic range, representing areas of high and low rainfall (mean annual rainfall: 1695 mm and 1074 mm, respectively). We used traditional habitat surveys complemented by advanced terrestrial Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) technology to compare site habitat structure and subsequent den-tree selection by P. ariel. Den-tree selection varied significantly with habitat structure. The higher rainfall site had greater tree abundance, canopy cover and variation in tree size/form, and P. ariel den-trees were significantly larger than neighbouring trees (mean trunk diameter– 53.4 cm against 33.8 cm; canopy diameter– 14.0 m against 10.4 m). In contrast, den-trees at the low rainfall site were no larger than neighbouring trees, with animals selecting tree species more likely to be hollow-bearing. We conclude that hollow availability is likely to be a limiting resource for arboreal mammals in northern Australia, particularly in areas of lower rainfall where tree abundance is low and trees are more likely to be killed and consumed by fire.

Understanding the impacts of threats on populations is critical for designing prudent management strategies for declining species. Unravelling the impacts of chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis; Bd) on amphibian populations is particularly important given the fungal pathogen is currently linked to around 500 species declines globally. Recent studies examining the age-structure of amphibian populations have provided insight into species short-term population responses to Bd infection. Whilst around 90 species extinctions are now linked to Bd infection, some species populations persist despite infection and other populations may even be recovering. Unfortunately additional threats, including invasive predators, also influence many amphibian populations. Therefore, understanding how populations cope with chytrid and other threats is essential for navigating more specific management actions. A long-term (~27 year) mark-recapture program for the threatened spotted tree frog provided an opportunity to examine longer-term amphibian population age-structure changes for two populations exposed to Bd and non-native predatory fish. In these populations the fish limit recruitment by predating upon the tadpoles and Bd reduces adult survival. The age of captured frogs was assessed using skeletochronology and snout-vent-length. The population age structure was evaluated using catch curve analysis. We report on the findings of this study that quantified the effects of Bd and non-native predatory fish on a critically-endangered frog and discuss how the results inform management actions for this species.

With a large focus of urban riparian management being the removal of non-native species, and the continued spread of weeds and plant invasions across these novel ecosystems, a better understanding of the function of vegetation in riparian areas may provide a more practical solution for the management of these areas. With increasing population growth and urban sprawl, anthropogenic influences are expected to intensify and spread through ecosystems within and close to cities. This project includes surveys of the composition and function of riparian vegetation along creeks in Brisbane. Analysis of vegetation function data will assess whether non-native species have a positive functional value within their ecosystem and how the functional values of communities with high proportions of non-native species compare to those with more natives. With emerging literature highlighting positive functions of many non-native plant species, traditionally viewed as detrimental, results from this project aim to inform management practices surrounding riparian vegetation in urban areas to incorporate function attributes.

The endangered northern bettong (Bettongia tropica) currently persists in just two distinct populations, only one of which is considered stable. This vital population occurs in the Lamb Range of northern Queensland, an area where habitat is managed by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, predominantly using fire.
Though the frequent burning regime in this area is thought to be beneficial to the bettong's survival, by promoting suitable habitat structure, the effect of various direct and indirect impacts of fire on bettongs are unknown. Through this project, we are aiming to assess a number of these impacts, such as finding out what individual bettongs do when a fire comes through their nesting and foraging range, how much grass cover is left after these burns for bettongs to find refuge and food, and whether these burns alter the behaviour of predators in the area, in particular feral cats. Working with QPWS, the results of this research will directly contribute to management of the region to ensure the survival of this critical bettong population.
This presentation will focus on the response of individual northern bettongs to this year's burns, displaying results of a GPS tracking study of nine bettongs before, during and after fire.

Given the reality of resource constraints, many threatened species conservation projects target a limited number of sites for conservation. These sites are typically located in areas that contain robust populations of a species and where threats to its persistence can be reduced or eliminated by management.

To maximise the probability that a species will persist in the long term, networks of management sites should also represent as much of the species’ adaptive genetic variation as possible.

Conservation planning tools such as Marxan solve the 'minimum set problem' - the cheapest solution that ensures all conservation targets are met.

Conversely, multi-objective optimisation approaches to site selection produce a set of solutions. This set represents a Pareto frontier, where increases in one objective are associated with the minimum possible decrease in another objective, and vice versa.

Sometimes a substantial gain can be made in one objective for only a small penalty in another. Constraining the output to a single 'cheapest' solution means that this opportunity is not available to conservation planners, even if the cost is only slightly greater.

We have developed a decision support software tool that identifies networks of sites that represent optimal trade-offs between site quality and the amount of environmental variation represented (a surrogate for representation of adaptive genetic variation). This tool allows users to find a set of ‘cheap’ solutions from which to draw a Pareto frontier, and thus achieve maximum benefit for a given level of investment.

In situ conservation of Britain’s rarest mammal and only native felid, the Scottish Wildcat Felis silvestris, faces a huge range of challenges, not least the problem of identifying which cats to protect. This is due to a long process of introgressive hybridisation with the range overlapping domestic cat, and these fertile hybrids present a continued risk to wildcats, with evidence found of a hybrid swarm scenario. Identifying which animals are behaviourally, phenotypically and genetically wildcats is the basis for vital conservation and legal decisions, such as neutering or culling, but is fraught with difficulty.
Fresh combined approaches were developed for use in the author designed TNVR (Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate-Return) programme for feral domestic cats and hybrids, which are here specifically used as a tool for wildcat conservation for the first time (though used worldwide as a generic method of feral cat population control). Case studies from the field will illustrate the practical challenges of making these decisions and doing large scale TNVR. Practical methods for trapping, genetic sampling and GPS collaring wildcats hybrids are also discussed, as well as implications for conserving other hybridised species.
Using these innovative methods, some real progress on some of the drivers of wildcat population decline has been achieved, and crucially for the first time the gravity of the situation for this species has become clearer- it is facing functional extinction in the wild in the UK. These methods will play a key role in the next phase of this species’ conservation – population reinforcement.

Protected areas play a pivotal role in threatened species conservation efforts globally, as these areas are widely held as one of the most effective ways to halt these species’ declines. Yet, numerous analyses have shown that the current protected area network does not adequately represent most threatened species, a fact that is unlikely to change in the near-term. Accordingly, looking beyond these areas is now more important than ever to ensure threatened species’ declines are halted. Here, using Australia as a case study, we look to understand the distribution of threatened species across protected and non-protected lands by combining the most up-to-date land tenure map with distribution maps of nationally listed threatened species. We found that an average of half of Australian threatened species’ distributions (50%) occurs on freehold lands, despite this tenure covering less than one-third (29%) of the continent. In contrast, we found that leasehold lands, which accounts for 38 percent of the Australian land mass, overlap with an average of six percent of threatened species’ distributions. Encouragingly, while covering less than ten percent of Australia, strict protected areas (IUCN management categories I-IV) represent an average of 28 percent of threatened species’ distributions. Despite the importance of this result for the representation of threatened species within strict protected areas, our findings highlight the urgent need for Australian State and Federal Governments to improve threatened species conservation outcomes, particularly habitat retention, on freehold lands.