Australia's Outback Wilderness

Using existing data, describes potential focus areas for a conservation program supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Nature Conservancy, the ecological processes that maintain the native vegetation, the threats, and local conservation efforts

Ecology of feral cats Felis catus and their prey in relation to shrubland fire regimes

Invasive predators are major drivers of global biodiversity loss and their impacts may be worsened by other disturbances such as fire. I examined how the fire history of shrublands influences the ecology of feral cats Felis catus, dingoes Canis dingo and their prey species in Western Australia’s northern Wheatbelt region. A review of the literature revealed that feral cats inhabit a diverse range of ecosystems worldwide, but are generally recorded most often in habitat types characterised by a mixture of plant growth forms close to ground level. Cat habitat use is influenced by predation/competition, prey availability, shelter availability and anthropogenic resource subsidies. Relatively few studies were available for review and the strength of evidence contained within them was generally low, which highlighted the need for more rigorous field studies. I examined overlap in resource use between cats and dingoes using remote camera surveys and dietary analysis of scats. Both carnivores were recorded in all four major habitat types: recently burnt shrublands (10 to 14 years since last fire), long unburnt shrublands (34 to ~49 years), very long unburnt shrublands (\u3e 50 years), and woodlands. Dingoes and cats preferred woodlands and very long unburnt shrublands respectively, but spatial overlap between the two species was still common. Mean diurnal activity time for feral cats was two and a half hours later than that of dingoes. The diet of feral cats was more diverse than that of dingoes and dietary overlap between the two carnivores was relatively low. Rabbit remains did occur relatively frequently in both cat and dingo scats, but small mammals, reptiles and birds were also common in cat scats, and macropods in dingo scats. Nine of the 15 prey species studied showed a preference for either recently burnt or long unburnt shrublands. Two small mammals and three reptiles were most abundant in recently burnt areas, while the abundance of one small mammal and three reptiles was highest in long unburnt areas. Using giving up density experiments, I showed that rodents exhibited differential foraging behaviour in the two vegetation fire ages. The rodents foraged for longer in sheltered compared to open microhabitats, but this pattern only occurred in recently burnt, not long unburnt shrublands, probably because the higher density of understorey vegetation in recently burnt areas provided the rodents with extra cover to hide and escape from predators. I also developed a new framework for conceptualising interactions between invasive predators and other ecological disturbances, such as fire, habitat fragmentation, and top -predator decline. The impacts of invasive predators can be classified as either functional (density -independent) or numerical (density -dependent), and they interact with other threats through both habitat -mediated (fire, grazing, land clearing) and community -mediated (top -predator decline, altered prey populations, anthropogenic resource subsidies) interaction pathways. The key findings of this thesis show that both old and young shrublands can be suitable habitat for feral cats; predator -prey dynamics are influenced by successional habitat stages; small mammals show behavioural, as well as population -level responses to fire; and that invasive predator management is likely to benefit from addressing multiple threats in unison

Understanding uncertainty to inform conservation: tools to protect the endangered black-throated finch southern subspecies

Juan Mula Laguna used the case of the southern black-throated finch to apply tools to inform the conservation of rare and poorly-known species. Mula Laguna created a list of investment priorities for a due update of the current Recovery Plan, a spatial classification of habitat value, and refuted hypotheses about a diet-driven decline

The effects of wildfire on small mammals and lizards in The Simpson Desert, Central Australia

Animals in arid central Australia have undergone widespread declines and extinctions over the past century. These losses have coincided with what appears to have been a sharp shift in the fire regime, from one dominated by many small scale burns to one dominated by infrequent yet intense and widespread wildfires. In this thesis I investigate the processes by which fire affects small mammal and lizard populations in the Simpson Desert, central Australia. I live-trapped small mammals and lizards, used assays of foraging behaviour, measured rainfall, undertook vegetation surveys, tracked predator activity and sampled invertebrate abundance in burnt and unburnt habitat after prescribed burns and wildfire. I also conducted a global meta-analysis of vertebrate responses to fire to characterise the effects of fire on vertebrate diversity at a global scale. The meta-analysis revealed that at a global scale, prescribed burns significantly increase alpha diversity and decrease beta diversity compared with wildfires. In the Simpson Desert, the effects of prescribed burns were taxon-dependent, and wildfire did not have the predicted effects on either the alpha or beta diversity of lizards. Lizard responses were instead influenced by regional factors and food availability. Predator (fox and cat) activity was concentrated on burn ecotones and small mammals foraged for longer in burnt environments when their risk of predation was experimentally reduced. My findings suggest that fire effects on vertebrate diversity are context-dependent as a range of biotic and abiotic factors interact with fire to produce unexpected post-fire successional trajectories. Accordingly, there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach that can be incorporated into land management practices. There is, however, an urgent need for predator control in burnt habitats. I also propose a new state-and-transition model to help predict the short and longer term effect of wildfire on lizards in hummock grasslands

Remote sensing environmental change in southern African savannahs : a case study of Namibia

Savannah biomes cover a fifth of Earth’s surface, harbour many of the world’s most iconic species and most of its livestock and rangeland, while sustaining the livelihoods of an important proportion of its human population. They provide essential ecosystem services and functions, ranging from forest, grazing and water resources, to global climate regulation and carbon sequestration. However, savannahs are highly sensitive to human activities and climate change. Across sub-Saharan Africa, climatic shifts, destructive wars and increasing anthropogenic disturbances in the form of agricultural intensification and urbanization, have resulted in widespread land degradation and loss of ecosystem services. Yet, these threatened ecosystems are some of the least studied or protected, and hence should be given high conservation priority. Importantly, the scale of land degradation has not been fully explored, thereby comprising an important knowledge gap in our understanding of ecosystem services and processes, and effectively impeding conservation and management of these biodiversity hotspots. The primary drivers of land degradation include deforestation, triggered by the increasing need for urban and arable land, and concurrently, shrub encroachment, a process in which the herbaceous layer, a defining characteristic of savannahs, is replaced with hardy shrubs. These processes have significant repercussions on ecosystem service provision, both locally and globally, although the extents, drivers and impacts of either remain poorly quantified and understood. Additionally, regional aridification anticipated under climate change, will lead to important shifts in vegetation composition, amplified warming and reduced carbon sequestration. Together with a growing human population, these processes are expected to compound the risk of land degradation, thus further impacting key ecosystem services. Namibia is undergoing significant environmental and socio-economic changes. The most pervasive change processes affecting its savannahs are deforestation, degradation and shrub encroachment. Yet, the extent and drivers of such change processes are not comprehensively quantified, nor are the implications for rural livelihoods, sustainable land management, the carbon cycle, climate and conservation fully explored. This is partly due to the complexities of mapping vegetation changes with satellite data in savannahs. They are naturally spatially and temporally variable owing to erratic rainfall, divergent plant functional type phenologies and extensive anthropogenic impacts such as fire and grazing. Accordingly, this thesis aims to (i) quantify distinct vegetation change processes across Namibia, and (ii) develop methodologies to overcome limitations inherent in savannah mapping. Multi-sensor satellite data spanning a range of spatial, temporal and spectral resolutions are integrated with field datasets to achieve these aims, which are addressed in four journal articles. Chapters 1 and 2 are introductory. Chapter 3 exploits the Landsat archive to track changes in land cover classes over five decades throughout the Namibian Kalahari woodlands. The approach addresses issues implicit in change detection of savannahs by capturing the distinct phenological phases of woody vegetation and integrating multi-sensor, multi-source data. Vegetation extent was found to have decreased due to urbanization and small-scale arable farming. An assessment of the limitations leads to Chapter 4, which elaborates on the previous chapter by quantifying aboveground biomass changes associated with deforestation and shrub encroachment. The approach centres on fusing multiple satellite datasets, each acting as a proxy for distinct vegetation properties, with calibration/validation data consisting of concurrent field and LiDAR measurements. Biomass losses predominate, demonstrating the contribution of land management to ecosystem carbon changes. To identify whether biomass is declining across the country, Chapter 5 focuses on regional, moderate spatial resolution time-series analyses. Phenological metrics extracted from MODIS data are used to model observed fractional woody vegetation cover, a proxy for biomass. Trends in modelled fractional woody cover are then evaluated in relation to the predominant land-uses and precipitation. Negative trends slightly outweighed positive trends, with decreases arising largely in protected, urban and communal areas. Since precipitation is a fundamental control on vegetation, Chapter 6 investigates its relation to NDVI, by assessing to what extent observed trends in vegetation cover are driven by rainfall. NDVI is modelled as a function of precipitation, with residuals assumed to describe the fraction of NDVI not explained by rainfall. Mean annual rainfall and rainfall amplitude show a positive trend, although extensive “greening” is unrelated to rainfall. NDVI amplitude, used as a proxy for vegetation density, indicates a widespread shift to a denser condition. In Chapter 7, trend analysis is applied to a Landsat time-series to overcome spatial and temporal limitations characteristic of the previous approaches. Results, together with those of the previous chapters, are synthesized and a synopsis of the main findings is presented. Vegetation loss is predominantly caused by demand for urban and arable land. Greening trends are attributed to shrub encroachment and to a lesser extent conservation laws, agroforestry and rangeland management, with precipitation presenting little influence. Despite prevalent greening, degradation processes associated with shrub encroachment, including soil erosion, are likely to be widespread. Deforestation occurs locally while shrub encroachment occurs regionally. This thesis successfully integrates multi-source data to map, measure and monitor distinct change processes across scales

Developing an effective conservation and sustainable use economy: two Arnhem Land case studies<br />

SummaryThis is the final report for the research project &lsquo;Developing an effective conservation and sustainable use economy in Arnhem Land: Options for payment for environmental services&rsquo;. The research was undertaken at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) at the Australian National University (ANU). The Tropical Rivers and Coastal Knowledge (TRaCK) research hub funded the research. This report provides a preliminary assessment of the management needs and costs for two Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs) in Arnhem Land, as well as a preliminary cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of the social benefits and costs associated with the management of the protected areas. The project commenced in July 2009 and was completed in March 2011.This report is aimed at helping decision-makers in communities, businesses, nongovernment organisations and government agencies consider payment for environmental services alongside continued public funding to support economic development in remote Indigenous communities. Crucially, this report highlights the need for better information and alternative economic perspectives in relation to the capacity of payment for environmental services to support the regional economy of Arnhem Land. This information is critical to addressing both opportunities for and barriers to the development of an effective conservation and sustainable use economy in this region and beyond.The research was carried out in collaboration with two Indigenous Ranger groups in Arnhem Land, the Djelk Rangers (Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation) in Maningrida and the Dhimurru Rangers (Dhimurru Aboriginal Corporation) in Nhulunbuy. The two groups manage the Djelk IPA and the Dhimurru IPA respectively. The Djelk IPA was declared in 2009. It extends over 6,732 km2 stretching from the Central Arnhem Plateau to the Arafura Sea in the Arnhem Coast sub-bioregion ARC-2. The Djelk IPA has outstanding environmental and cultural values for the diversity of its landscapes and languages, and the wealth of community assemblages and species. The Dhimurru IPA was established in 2000. It covers around 920 km2 of land and 90 km2 of adjacent marine areas in the Gove Peninsula. The IPA contains areas of important cultural and environmental values, hosting a significant representation of Australia\u27s Arnhem Coast sub-bioregion ARC-3. Both IPA&rsquo;s are generally considered to be in near pristine condition.The two IPAs face quite different environmental management problems. The Djelk Rangers&rsquo; priorities focus on land and sea management including fire, weed and feral animal control and coastal surveillance. Among the most important issues for the Dhimurru IPA is managing the growing demand for the recreational uses of its environmental and cultural resources. Recreational activities could damage sensitive ecological systems, spread weeds and invasive ants through vehicles movement, disturb native flora and fauna, and damage cultural and sacred sites. The bauxite mine and processing plant adjacent to the Dhimurru IPA also have a serious impact on the integrity of the natural environment and cultural landscape.Both the Djelk and the Dhimurru rangers finance their management activities mainly through public funding. Djelk&rsquo;s revenues are split between government grants (78%) and fee-for-service earnings (22%). The Djelk Rangers use these finances to employ over 35 Indigenous rangers as well as to cover the operational costs of a range of activities including weed and feral animal control, fire management, and coastal patrols. Four activities&mdash;weed control, fire management, customs patrols, and marine debris patrols&mdash; generate 85 per cent of Djelk&rsquo;s total expenditure. The major source of Dhimurru&rsquo;s revenues is public funding (69%), and it is supplemented by Dhimurru&rsquo;s own generated income (20.5%), private contributions (9.2%) and fee-for-service income (1.6%). Dhimurru\u27s activities have interconnected goals: people management, environmental monitoring, conservation and restoration, and heritage and cultural protection. People management includes issuing general and special access permits to non-Indigenous visitors, checking permit compliance, camp site maintenance, fencing, and rubbish pickup. It accounts for over 74 per cent of Dhimurru&rsquo;s total expenditure. Weed control and crocodile management account for another 17 per cent of the Dhimurru&rsquo;s expenses.Public funding and fee-for-service revenues are the cost to society of this provision of environmental services through Indigenous ranger organisations. Both funding streams originate largely from institutional responsibilities of government. A variety ofCommonwealth programs such as Working on Country (WoC) and Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs) are based on this principle. Here the government outsources some of its responsibility to protect the environment by contracting local Indigenous rangers to provide environmental services. In return, Indigenous rangers are required to provide some measure of accountability for their work through management plans, progress reports and financial reports. However, the compensation for this service is calculated on the basis of the government&rsquo;s accounting rule for granting funding and on what the ranger organisations estimate it will cost for them to deliver the service. They are not based on estimates of the benefits that the rangers&rsquo; activities generate for the Australian public.Lack of data, methodological limitations, and a short timeframe, severely restricted the quantitative assessment of the demand for environmental services. Therefore it is not possible to&nbsp; contrast the benefits of Indigenous provision of environmental services in the two IPAs with either&nbsp; the social costs or the organisations&rsquo; private expenditure. As a result, the data presented here is&nbsp; not sufficient to demonstrate in economic terms that the benefits of environmental service&nbsp; provision within the IPAs justify their social cost. Similarly, it was not possible to assess the&nbsp; feasibility of financing Indigenous provision of environmental services in the IPAs on the basis of he benefits it generates at the local and national levels. Further research is necessary to collect more data on such issues over longer time periods. A robust analysis of the costs and benefits of Indigenous provision of environmental services needs to account for temporal and spatial variability, and take into account the fluctuations in environmental, economic and social&nbsp; conditions. Priority should also be given to the collection of basic ecological data. This is necessary to assess the effectiveness of management practices in reaching environmental outcomes

Mine landform design using natural analogues

Current practice for landscape reconstruction following opencast mining relies on topographic reconstruction, adaptive land management and botanical characterisation. Environmental processes may be altered where reconstructed landforms have significant relief. Consequently, environmental outcomes in cases where there is large scale land forming are unpredictable. Moreover, landscape restoration lacks an integrated methodology, and while many mine closures have detailed ecosystem and biodiversity objectives based on natural analogue areas there has been no reliable way to design these objectives into mine landforms. The methods used in landscape restorations to describe reference conditions are based on generalised environmental factors using regional information and incorporating conceptual models. Such models lack the precision and accuracy required to understand and restore hillslope environmental pattern at mine sites. However, methodological integration and statistical inference models underpinning the spatial inference methods in conservation and landscape ecology, and pedology may be applied to solve this problem. These inference models utilise digital terrain models as the core environmental data incorporating ecological theory to predict biodiversity and species distribution. Also, numerical mass balance models such as water and solute balance, which have been applied to understand environmental processes in landscapes, can be used to assess mine landform design. The objective of the work reported here was to investigate environmental variation, with sufficient accuracy and precision, in natural landscapes to design mature mine landforms and to demonstrate the capacity to predict ecological outcomes. This would extend current best practice - designing mine landforms with predictable hydrological and geotechnical outcomes needed to protect off-site environmental conditions – to the on-site environment after closure. The specific aims of this thesis were to: (i) evaluate the predictability of ecosystems based on regional ecological mapping: (ii) develop and evaluate quantitative, site specific environmental mapping and natural analogue selection methodology; (iii) evaluate a trial final landform cover (reconstructed soil) using water balance, water chemistry monitoring; (iv) design and evaluate a conceptual mine landform through the assessment of environmental processes in natural analogue areas; and (v) make valid predictions of revegetation outcomes on the conceptual landform. In meeting these aims, links between ecological theory, landscape analysis and the current practice in mine landform design were identified. The first phase of the thesis involved environmental investigations and surveys of extensive savanna environments on the Tiwi Islands (7320 km-2) and similar environments in the vicinity of Ranger uranium mine (150 km-2) in northern Australia. This first phase, reported in Chapter 3, investigated the reliability of conceptual landscape models used in regional ecological mapping in predicting ecological patterns in terms of vegetation and soil. The Tiwi Islands was selected because of the relatively uniform parent material and its simplified climate. This allowed the study of physiographic control of soil and vegetation patterns. The results identified correlations between vegetation pattern and landform that were confounded by a subjective and complex land unit model of ecosystems. This investigation enabled the development methodological approach to analogue selection and ecological modelling at Ranger uranium mine – a site that will require a restoration approach so as to meet environmental closure objectives. The second phase is the methodological development – involving an initial reconnaissance, is presented in Chapter 4. This phase was aimed at selecting natural analogue areas for mined land restoration. Environmental pattern recognition involving classification, ordination and network analysis was implemented based on methods of conservation ecology. This led to quantitative landscape model to identify natural analogue areas and design ecosystem surveys. This quantitative landscape model incorporated a grid survey of vegetation and soil variation into a nearby analogue landform that matched the area of mine disturbance. This analogue landform encapsulates the entire ecosystem types observed on rocky substrates in the broader reconnaissance survey. The natural analogue selection incorporated a combination of digital terrain analysis and k-means clustering of primary and secondary terrain variables to classify habitat variation on hillslopes. Landscapes with similar extent to the mine landscape were identified from numerical similarity measures (Bray-Curtis) of fine grained habitat variation and summarised using a dendrogram. The range in hillslope ecosystem types were described from stratified environmental surveys of vegetation and soils along environmental gradients in selected analogue landforms. The results show that the mapped environmental factors in close correlation with water and sediment distribution were strongly associated with observed vegetation patterns in analogue areas at Ranger uranium mine. Environmental grain size and landform extent concepts were therefore introduced using landscape ecology theory to integrate different scales of environmental variation in a way that provides direct context with the area impacted by mining. Fine-grained environmental terrain attributes that describe runoff, erosion and sediment deposition were derived from a digital elevation model and classified using non-hierarchical multivariate methods to create a habitat class map. Patch analysis was used to aggregate this fine-grained environmental pattern into a grid that matched the scale of the mine landform. The objective was to identify landforms that were similar in extent to the reconstructed mine landscape. Ecosystem support depends on soil as well as geomorphic factors. An investigation into critical environmental processes, water balance and solute balance, on a waste rock landform at Ranger uranium mine is presented in Chapter 5 to characterise waste rock soils and investigate cover design options that affect environmental support. This involved monitoring of water balance of a reconstructed soil cover on a waste rock landform for four years and the solute loads for two years. A one dimensional water balance model was parameterised and run based on 21 years of rainfall records so as to assess the long-term effects of varying cover thickness and surface compactness on cover performance. The results show that the quality of runoff and seepage water did not improve substantially after two years as large amount of dissolved metal loads persisted. Also, tree roots interacted with the subsoil drainage-limiting layer at one metre below the land surface in just over two years - and thus altering the hydraulic properties of the layer. Further, the results of water balance simulations indicate that increasing the depth to, and thickness of, the drainage-limiting layer would reduce drainage flux. Increasing layer thickness could also limit tree root penetration. It was also found that surface compaction was the most effective means of limiting deep drainage, which contained high concentrations of dissolved metals. However, surface compaction creates an ecological desert. Therefore long-term rehabilitation of the cover will be required to allow water to infiltrate for it to be available for ecosystems. A cover that can store and release sufficient water to support native savanna eucalypt woodland may need to be three to five metres deep, including a drainage limiting layer at depth so as to slow vertical water movement and comprise a well graded mix of hard rock and weathered rock to provide water storage and erosion resistance. The resulting waste rock soils would be similar, morphologically to the gradational, gravelly soils found in natural analogue areas. The study then shifted from mined land back to a selected natural analogue landscape at Ranger mine in Chapter 6. The fine grained variation in terrain attributes is described to support a landform design that allowed for mine plan estimates of waste rock volumes and pit void volumes. A process of developing and evaluating the landform design was put forward, in the case of Ranger, that begins with key stakeholder consultation, followed by an independent scientific validation using published landform evolution and integrated, surface-groundwater water balance modelling. The natural analogue and draft final landforms were compared in terms of terrain attributes, landform evolution and eco-hydrological processes to identify where improvements could be required. The results of the independent design reviews are contained in confidential reports to Ranger mine and in conference proceedings that are referenced in Chapter 6. Independent validation will be a key element of an ecological landform design process and the application of published eco-hydrological and landform evolution models at the Ranger mine case study site are presented as an example of current best practice. Also, detailed assessment was made of environmental variation and soil and geomorphic range in the selected analogue landscape to support the landform design process with the mining department. Ecological modelling of the distributions of framework species in the reconstructed landscape is proposed as an additional assessment tool in this thesis to validate an ecological landform design methodology. To this end, a detailed environmental survey is presented in Chapter 6 of the soils and vegetation in a selected natural analogue area of Ranger mine to identify common and abundant plant species and their distribution in a similar landscape context to the mined land. This work supported ecological modelling of species distributions in reconstructed and natural landscapes in the following chapter. The results of species distribution models for reconstructed and natural landscapes at the Ranger mine site are reported in Chapter 7. The aim was to predict the distribution of common and abundant native woodland species across a landscape comprising a sculpted, post mining landform within a natural landscape. Species distribution models were developed from observations of species presence-absence at 102 sites in the grid survey of the natural analogue area that was reported in Chapter 6. Issues related to optimising predictor selection and the range of environmental support were investigated by introducing survey sites from the broad area reconnaissance survey reported in Chapter 4. Added to these are the published species abundance data from an independent regional biodiversity survey of rocky, well drained eucalypt woodlands, used as analogues of mined land. Plant species responses to continuous and discrete measures of environmental variation were then analysed using multivariate detrended correspondence analysis and canonical correspondence analysis to select independent variables and assess the relative merits of abundance versus presence absence observations of species. Then, generalised additive statistical methods were used to predict species distributions from primary and secondary terrain variables across the natural analogue area and a reconstructed post-mining landform. This analysis was completed with an assessment of the effect that survey support has on model formulation and accuracy. The scale of the mine landscape was found to provide important context for the stratified environmental surveys needed to support predictive modelling. Extending the geographic range of survey support did not improve model performance, while survey sites remote from the mine introduced some degree of spatial autocorrelation that could reduce the prediction accuracy of species distributions in the mine landscape. Further work is needed to address uncommon species or species with highly constrained environmental ranges and aspects of landform cover design and land management that affect woodland type and vigour. The combined studies reported in this thesis show that the predictability of mine land restorations is dependent on the landscape models used to characterise the natural analogue areas. It is demonstrated that conceptual ecological models developed for regional land resources survey, commonly used to select natural analogue areas, are subjective, complex and unreliable predictors of vegetation and soil patterns in hillslope environments at particular sites. It was recognised that environmental patterns are subject to terrain and hillslope environmental variation across an extensive areas. The landform model for selecting natural analogues was refined by introducing grain size and ecological extent concepts, used to describe ecological scale in landscape ecology, to address these effects. These refined concepts were adapted to define environmental variation in the context of natural analogue selection for mining restoration, rather than home range habitat conditions for native animals as was their original purpose. It is demonstrated here that the grain size and extent of environmental variation in the natural landscape can be used to select natural analogue landforms, develop ecological design criteria and design field surveys that support the capacity to predict the distributions of common and abundant woodland species in a reconstructed landscape. In conclusion, it is worth noting that an integrated ecological approach to landscape design can be applied to closure planning at mine sites where cultural and ecological objectives are critical to the success of the mine rehabilitation. Furthermore final landform trials could be used to support a restoration approach — providing an understanding of the interactions between critical physical and ecological processes in the soil layers and environmental processes at catchment scales. The accuracy of the inferences made is dependent on the understanding of hydrological processes in natural and constructed landforms. However, the natural analogue approach provides a clear landscape context for these trials. In a world where species extinction resulting from habitat loss is one of the most important global ecological issues, mine rehabilitation offers unique experimental opportunities to develop capability in ecosystem rehabilitation

INTEGRATED MODELING OF LAND USE AND CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS ON MULTISCALE ECOSYSTEMS OF CENTRAL AFRICAN WATERSHEDS

Assessment and management of ecosystem services demands diverse knowledge of the system components. Land use change occurring mainly through deforestation, expansion of agriculture and unregulated extraction of natural resources are the greatest challenges of the Congo basin and yet is central to supporting over 100 million people. This study undertook to implement an integrated modeling of multiscale ecosystems of central African watersheds and model the impact of anthropogenic factors on elephant population in Greater Virunga landscape. The study was conducted at varied scales, regional, landscape, and community. Regional study included watershed analysis and hydrological assessment using remotely sensed data implemented in Geographical information System. Species distribution modeling using generalized linear models using presence only and pseudo absence data was also done at regional scale. The major findings were that ecosystem services for the Congo basin are spatially varied and there are significant differences in their distribution of ecosystem services at a subwatershed level three and six and the distribution of endangered and threatened species is more concentrated in the central part of the basin and most of these species occur mainly inside protected areas. Poaching and sustained civil wars were the biggest threat to elephant conservation in the region. Improvement in law enforcement, monitoring, and increasing household incomes for communities living adjacent to protected areas would help to reduce the impact of poaching on elephant population dynamics. Climate change did not show immediate direct impacts on the elephant population, but thermal and latent heat effects could be occurring. A change in habitat, however, showed resulted in an upward trend in elephant population for all age classes. The local communities heavily depend on these ecosystem services for their livelihoods. It is therefore recommended that reasonable financing to strengthen law enforcement and monitoring is done, multiple policy options should be considered in order to maximize ecosystem benefits. Creation of partnerships and research networks need to be promoted. Existing transboundary collaboration initiatives should continue and be supported by the donor community in order to build peace and dram support for wildlife and wild habitat protection

Indigenous participation in monitoring megafauna within the Reef 2050 Integrated Monitoring and Reporting Program: final report of the Indigenous participation team in the megafauna expert group

[Extract] This report summarises a desktop review and analysis of Indigenous participation in monitoring megafauna in the coastal waters of the Great Barrier Reef (the Reef), and contributes to the development of design recommendations that satisfy the objectives of the Reef 2050 Integrated Monitoring and Reporting Program (RIMReP). The review commences with an overview of Traditional Owner groups in the Reef that have strong cultural connections to megafauna, particularly sea turtles and dugongs, and highlights their aspiration to participate in RIMReP comprising an inseparable component of the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan (Reef 2050 Plan). About 20 per cent (9/44) of Traditional Owner groups in the Reef were identified as participating in megafauna monitoring activities, mostly through ranger programs. However, apart from detailed reports of dolphin and dugong boat surveys undertaken by James Cook University (JCU) in partnership with five north Queensland Traditional Owner groups, representing 11 per cent of Traditional Owner groups in the Reef, we found no other documentation. Hence, our assessment should be treated with caution given the limitations of using information collated only from a desktop review. Nevertheless, the apparent absence of broad participation in megafauna monitoring activities provides an opportunity to implement a coordinated and standardised approach throughout the Reef from the outset as reflected in our recommendations