Abstract
Monitoring is critical to assess management effectiveness, but broadscale systematic assessments of monitoring to evaluate and improve recovery efforts are lacking. We compiled 1808 time series from 71 threatened and near-threatened terrestrial and volant mammal species and subspecies in Australia (48% of all threatened mammal taxa) to compare relative trends of populations subject to different management strategies. We adapted the Living Planet Index to develop the Threatened Species Index for Australian Mammals and track aggregate trends for all sampled threatened mammal populations and for small (<35 g), medium (35–5500 g), and large mammals (>5500 g) from 2000 to 2017. Unmanaged populations (42 taxa) declined by 63% on average; unmanaged small mammals exhibited the greatest declines (96%). Populations of 17 taxa in havens (islands and fenced areas that excluded or eliminated introduced red foxes [Vulpes vulpes] and domestic cats [Felis catus]) increased by 680%. Outside havens, populations undergoing sustained predator baiting initially declined by 75% but subsequently increased to 47% of their abundance in 2000. At sites where predators were not excluded or baited but other actions (e.g., fire management, introduced herbivore control) occurred, populations of small and medium mammals declined faster, but large mammals declined more slowly, than unmanaged populations. Only 13% of taxa had data for both unmanaged and managed populations; index comparisons for this subset showed that taxa with populations increasing inside havens declined outside havens but taxa with populations subject to predator baiting outside havens declined more slowly than populations with no management and then increased, whereas unmanaged populations continued to decline. More comprehensive and improved monitoring (particularly encompassing poorly represented management actions and taxonomic groups like bats and small mammals) is required to understand whether and where management has worked. Improved implementation of management for threats other than predation is critical to recover Australia's threatened mammals.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e14032 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-15 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Conservation Biology |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 8 Nov 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Apr 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research received funding from the Australian Government’s National Environment Science Program through the Threatened Species Recovery Hub and drew on the collective efforts of government (commonwealth, state, and territory) conservation agencies and innumerable passionate, dedicated people from nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions, and citizen science programs from all Australian states and territories. A full list of data contributors is available from https://tsx.org.au/tsx/#/ in the citation column. A.I.T.T. was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE170100599. We thank P. Stewart-Sinclair for assistance with custodian surveys and all custodians for their efforts collecting, collating, and validating the threatened mammal data, in particular numerous staff from the New South Wales Department of Planning, Industry and Environment Saving our Species Program, South Australian Department for Environment and Water (including P. Copley), Northern Territory Government, Forestry Corporation of New South Wales, Western Australian Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, Arid Recovery, and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. Open access publishing facilitated by The University of Queensland, as part of the Wiley - The University of Queensland agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.
Funding Information:
This research received funding from the Australian Government’s National Environment Science Program through the Threatened Species Recovery Hub and drew on the collective efforts of government (commonwealth, state, and territory) conservation agencies and innumerable passionate, dedicated people from nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions, and citizen science programs from all Australian states and territories. A full list of data contributors is available from https://tsx.org.au/tsx/#/ in the citation column. A.I.T.T. was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE170100599. We thank P. Stewart‐Sinclair for assistance with custodian surveys and all custodians for their efforts collecting, collating, and validating the threatened mammal data, in particular numerous staff from the New South Wales Department of Planning, Industry and Environment Saving our Species Program, South Australian Department for Environment and Water (including P. Copley), Northern Territory Government, Forestry Corporation of New South Wales, Western Australian Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, Arid Recovery, and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology.
