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- The reintroduction of locally extinct mammals: The landscape ecosystem approach
- The persistence of common wombats in road impacted environments
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- Strategic adaptive management
- Limit to climate change adaption in floodplain wetlands - Macquarie Marshes
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- Managing for biodiversity in boom and bust cycle environments
- Submission on Biodiversity Act Review
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- Using radar satellite imagery to detect and monitor flooding in arid Australian wetlands
- Supporting continental retrieval of vegetation biophysical attributes
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- Regrowth mapping
- Regional biodiversity responses to climate change
- Will climate change affect the ecology of temporary lakes in Australia?
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- Lowbidgee wetlands of the Murray-Darling Basin - The Nimmie-Caira
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- Tube fishway project
- National waterbird survey
- Eastern Australian waterbird survey
- Feather map of Australia
- Life history and dynamics of a platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) population: four decades of mark-recapture surveys
- Adequacy of environmental assessment of the proposed Macquarie River pipeline to the city of Orange
- Increasing production from inland aquaculture in Papua New Guinea for food and income security
- Aquaculture and environmental planning group
- Understanding soil-related constraints on aquaculture production in the highlands of Papua New Guinea
- Improving technologies for inland aquaculture in Papua New Guinea (ACIAR Project FIS2014062)
- Drying of ancient Thirlmere Lakes caused by human activities
- Application of GIS and remote sensing to assess sustainable mariculture and protect conservation zones
- Improving the sustainability of rice-shrimp farming systems in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam
- A SWOT analysis of Papua New Guinea’s inland fisheries and aquaculture sectors
- Carbon and floodplain biota in the Macquarie marshes
- Micro-invertebrate community dynamics and flooding in the Macquarie marshes
- Just add water? The effectiveness of environmental flows during wetland vegetation restoration
- Application of motion sensing cameras as a tool for monitoring riparian fauna
- Captive or wild?
- Brolga and Sarus crane diet comparison
- Lake Brewster pelican banding
- Aquatic invertebrate strategies for coping with drought
- Submission on Draft Lake Eyre Basin Strategic Plan
- The Menindee Lakes Water Savings Project – an example of poor decision-making
- Flow-MER
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Terrestrial ecosystems
- Post-fire recovery of threatened ecological communities
- Environment Recovery Project: Australian bushfires
- Community stability of upland swamp vegetation
- An innovative approach to maximising catchment water yield in a changing climate
- Post-fire seed production in Hakea Gibbosa
- Managing fire regimes with thresholds to save threatened flora and fauna
- Stopping the toad
- Trophic cascades in NSW North Coast forests
- Individual hunting behavior in feral cats
- Mallee Ecosystem Dynamics
- Investigating artificial waterhole utilisation and management in north-eastern Botswana
- Investigating the spatial ecology, habitat use, behaviour, and ecosystem engineering of hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), a keystone species in the Okavango Delta and Chobe River, northern Botswana
- Does overgrazing reduce ecosystem functions
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- Maximising establishment success in reintroduced populations
- PhD scholarship saving our species - patch value, viability and resilience
- PhD scholarship – mechanics of species irruptions
- Conservation ecology of Greater bilby: survival, reproductive success and movement ecology in a breeding sanctuary in NSW
- Scientia PhD scholarship - Identifying healthy burning practices for Australia’s threatened plant species
- Scientia PhD scholarship - Ecosystem restoration through rewilding
- Platypus population health and dynamics
- Tackling prey naiveté in Australia’s endangered mammals
- Testate amoebae: a new biomarker of climate change and human impact in peatlands
- Surface water dynamics as a function of climate and river flow data
- Multisensor integration for environmental flows
- Response of northern Australian mangroves to climatic variability
- Comparative effects of extreme heat on threatened desert mammals
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- Home
- About us
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Our research
Conservation practice
- Water Information System for the Environment (WISE)
- Red list of ecosystems
- Shrub encroachment as a legacy of native mammal decline
- Foraging and habitat ecology of the yellow-tailed black-cockatoo
- Tackling prey naïveté in Australia’s threatened mammals
- Biodiversity sampling in Strzelecki Regional Reserve
- The reintroduction of locally extinct mammals: The landscape ecosystem approach
- The persistence of common wombats in road impacted environments
- Temperate highland peat swamps on sandstone
- Cumberland plain woodland restoration
- Strategic adaptive management
- Limit to climate change adaption in floodplain wetlands - Macquarie Marshes
- Managing for ecosystem change in the greater blue mountains world heritage area
- Adaptive management of Ramsar Wetlands
- Managing for biodiversity in boom and bust cycle environments
- Submission on Biodiversity Act Review
Remote sensing and GIS
- Mangrove response to climatic variability
- Using radar satellite imagery to detect and monitor flooding in arid Australian wetlands
- Supporting continental retrieval of vegetation biophysical attributes
- The Injune Landscape Collaborative Project
- Tree species shifts in response to environmental change
- Regrowth mapping
- Regional biodiversity responses to climate change
- Will climate change affect the ecology of temporary lakes in Australia?
Rivers and wetlands
- Changes to the Darling River and Menindee Lakes – past, present and future
- Lowbidgee wetlands of the Murray-Darling Basin - The Nimmie-Caira
- A stitch in time – synergistic impacts to platypus metapopulation extinction risk
- Tube fishway project
- National waterbird survey
- Eastern Australian waterbird survey
- Feather map of Australia
- Life history and dynamics of a platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) population: four decades of mark-recapture surveys
- Adequacy of environmental assessment of the proposed Macquarie River pipeline to the city of Orange
- Increasing production from inland aquaculture in Papua New Guinea for food and income security
- Aquaculture and environmental planning group
- Understanding soil-related constraints on aquaculture production in the highlands of Papua New Guinea
- Improving technologies for inland aquaculture in Papua New Guinea (ACIAR Project FIS2014062)
- Drying of ancient Thirlmere Lakes caused by human activities
- Application of GIS and remote sensing to assess sustainable mariculture and protect conservation zones
- Improving the sustainability of rice-shrimp farming systems in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam
- A SWOT analysis of Papua New Guinea’s inland fisheries and aquaculture sectors
- Carbon and floodplain biota in the Macquarie marshes
- Micro-invertebrate community dynamics and flooding in the Macquarie marshes
- Just add water? The effectiveness of environmental flows during wetland vegetation restoration
- Application of motion sensing cameras as a tool for monitoring riparian fauna
- Captive or wild?
- Brolga and Sarus crane diet comparison
- Lake Brewster pelican banding
- Aquatic invertebrate strategies for coping with drought
- Submission on Draft Lake Eyre Basin Strategic Plan
- The Menindee Lakes Water Savings Project – an example of poor decision-making
- Flow-MER
Terrestrial ecosystems
- Post-fire recovery of threatened ecological communities
- Environment Recovery Project: Australian bushfires
- Community stability of upland swamp vegetation
- An innovative approach to maximising catchment water yield in a changing climate
- Post-fire seed production in Hakea Gibbosa
- Managing fire regimes with thresholds to save threatened flora and fauna
- Stopping the toad
- Trophic cascades in NSW North Coast forests
- Individual hunting behavior in feral cats
- Mallee Ecosystem Dynamics
- Investigating artificial waterhole utilisation and management in north-eastern Botswana
- Investigating the spatial ecology, habitat use, behaviour, and ecosystem engineering of hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), a keystone species in the Okavango Delta and Chobe River, northern Botswana
- Does overgrazing reduce ecosystem functions
-
Study with us
Postgraduate research projects
- Platypus breeding
- Maximising establishment success in reintroduced populations
- PhD scholarship saving our species - patch value, viability and resilience
- PhD scholarship – mechanics of species irruptions
- Conservation ecology of Greater bilby: survival, reproductive success and movement ecology in a breeding sanctuary in NSW
- Scientia PhD scholarship - Identifying healthy burning practices for Australia’s threatened plant species
- Scientia PhD scholarship - Ecosystem restoration through rewilding
- Platypus population health and dynamics
- Tackling prey naiveté in Australia’s endangered mammals
- Testate amoebae: a new biomarker of climate change and human impact in peatlands
- Surface water dynamics as a function of climate and river flow data
- Multisensor integration for environmental flows
- Response of northern Australian mangroves to climatic variability
- Comparative effects of extreme heat on threatened desert mammals
- Our Impact
- News
- Wild Deserts
Date: Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Project: Eastern Australian Waterbird Survey
Observers: Richard Kingsford & Paul Wainright
Pilot: Tim Dugan
This week’s leg of the survey heads south, surveying the eastern edges of Bands 3 (just south of Sydney), Band 2 on the south coast of NSW and Band 1, which is at a latitude south of Melbourne. Avon and Cordeaux Dams were first on a list, part of Sydney’s water supply. Both dams were at low levels.
Cordeaux Dam was as the lowest water levels I have seen. When it gets this shallow, the waterbirds start coming in because it is shallow and there are feeding areas and so for the first time we saw a few pelicans, swans, little grebes and some teal. And up to a dozen deer.
Then down to the coast for a circuit of Lake Illawarra, near Wollongong, where there were about a couple of hundred swans and a few cormorants. Nothing unremarkable here compared to previous years. I would have expected to see more birds on these coastal lakes, given the state of the rivers and wetlands west of the Great Dividing Range.
After a brief stop off to refuel at Moruya, we finished the coastal lakes and inlets on the eastern side of Band 2 around Bermagui. There were very few ducks and the usual few hundred black swans and cormorants.
Then across the Monaro plain, near Cooma, which can be excellent waterbird habitat, when all its little lagoons fill but today there was just the odd farm dam with water. These are not nearly as good as the natural shallow wetlands that dot the Monaro Plain. It was very dry. Some of the creek lines had a tinge of green in a very brown land and so there must have been some recent rain.
Jindabyne Dam only had silver gulls with no suitable habitat for ducks, despite the large area of water. It is very unproductive.
This was where we finished the eastern end of Band 2 and so headed south for the most southernmost survey band, band 1, which runs east to west from Seaspray, south of Melbourne to Port Fairy in the east. The coastal lakes around Seaspray on the east coast of Victoria were pretty wet last year but were mostly dry this year. Wetlands like Jack Smith Lake can be great waterfowl habitat but not in 2019.
Down here in Victoria was so different to what we have seen elsewhere, over the last three weeks to the north, during our surveys. We could have been in a different country, with the wonderful green carpet of pastures and full dams everywhere. There were some of these dams with black duck and grey teal. On across Phillip Island where there was a colony of a few hundred straw-necked ibis and Australian white ibis nesting, near the town of Rhyll. This was so different to other parts of the survey. Waterbirds seem to be doing well in this the most southern part of the mainland.
We have also started to see the odd brood of black swans, which I hadn’t expected but then I hadn’t realised how much rain has fallen down here (above average according to our Warrnambool taxi driver). There seemed to be more Cape Barren Geese down here on Phillip Island than we have seen before, up to a few hundred. We then surveyed a few large dams in the Otways which had a few waterbirds, usually there are none, and then on to the dams south of Colac. Here there were small flocks of three to four ducks, not as many as I would have expected given the dry to the north. The small lagoons east of Warrnambool had their usual good numbers of Australian shelduck and a few teal. One lagoon east of the town even had a few magpie geese.