Project Leader: Dr Dan Metcalfe, CSIRO Sustainable
Ecosystems
Project 1.4.3 will identify
the condition and trend of, and likely future for, cassowaries and
arboreal mammals and the rare and threatened species and ecosystems
of North Queensland's coastal lowlands, with an initial focus on
the Tully-Murray-Hull catchments, which include some of the best
remnant Melaleucca in the bioregion, and the important
Mission Beach area. The Project will also develop management
options for mitigating threats to these environmental assets.
Surveys to report condition and trend will be
agreed through discussion with end-users and in a workshop to
ensure that the maximum utility may be achieved from the survey
effort, and to ensure that data collection meets individual
requirements for statutory reporting and to support other
projects. Data on Regional Ecosystem composition and
condition will support a re-assessment program of Queensland's
Environmental Protection Agency; identified threats and condition
will feed into FNQ NRM Ltd and statutory reporting of the Wet
Tropics Management Authority, and inform policy development; and
collation of information on the impact of fire and weeds and
feral animals will inform Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service
management policy and weed eradication programs of Queensland's
Department of Natural Resources and Water. Outputs from climate
change related objectives will assist managers to critically assess
realistic and mechanistic-based climate change threats to two
groups of Wet Tropics endemic vertebrates, the microhylid frogs and
rainforest possums, allowing identification of likely refugia and
possible mitigation measures. The project involves
substantial collaboration with FNQ NRM Ltd and links into the work
being undertaken through the Coastal Catchment Initiatives program
in the Tully catchment and potentially, in subsequent years, in the
Barron catchment.
Key objectives of Project 1.4.3 include:
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Refinement of existing survey protocols for birds and vascular
plants to incorporate flying foxes, signs of fire history, presence
and abundance of weeds and feral animals, and expansion of existing
data collection on cassowaries and on ecosystem health;
-
Completion of baseline data for the Tully-Murray-Hull catchments
using revised protocols and collection of baseline data for other
priority catchments;
-
Clarification of the community composition of threatened lowland
Regional Ecosystems and their role in terms of maintaining rare and
threatened species and harbouring exotic and pest species, and
identification of key indicators of ecosystem health;
-
Assessment of the likelihood and direction of community change
of Regional Ecosystems under climate change scenarious, or as a
result of changed ecological functioning (linked to Project
2.5ii.3); and
-
Determine physiological mechanisms of impacts of climate change
on highland rare and threatened species concentrating on arboreal
marsupials and microhylid frogs (linked to Project 2.5ii.4).
