The Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife is currently funding critical research on an ecological interpretation of the distribution of native fauna from wildlife carer records. This is a project of the Department of Environment, Climate Change & Water (OEH).
Much information exists in community records that can contribute to the national aspiration to conserve our fauna. Such records are recognised as important in both the UK and the US, and in various parts of Australia, and for various species, such as Koalas.
The project is using WIRES data as a central part of the study. For the second part, information was gained as part of a broad community survey of iconic species by DEC in mid 2006. In addition the project compared care data with community survey data, which was a novel addition to this project.
The primary objectives were to map the collated records of fauna that have gone into care in order to search for patterns in their distribution both in urban and rural areas; to interpret the patterns in relation to potential threats, such as roads, dogs, bushfires; and to examine the records to look for trends with species, year, season, and location.
A supplementary aim was to compare care records with community survey data to have two perspectives of a community problem.
The object of this project was to look ecologically at wildlife care records rather than the traditional approach of examining the need of individual animals and the difficulties of managing animals in care.
Consequently the achievement of this project is not to evaluate the effectiveness of individual carers or care techniques but rather to look at the spatial pattern of the distribution of fauna to see what could be gleaned from a wildlife managers viewpoint, with the additional interest in examining to what extent carers cover the range of a species and reflect the broad issues facing that species.
Not only do agencies such as OEH want to know this answer, but so do the care groups themselves because they are keen to contribute to the conservation of the species as well as the well-being of individual animals.
The final product from the work will be a scientific paper in a peer-reviewed journal, and a better grounding for species management and carer groups to work from.
