Project 1.4.3 - Rainforest threatened species and communities and ecosystem processes

For detailed descriptions of the outputs for this project for Year 4 (2009/2010) of the MTSRF Research Programme, see the Annual Research Plan.

This project will identify the condition and trends of, and likely future for, cassowaries and arboreal mammals and the rare and threatened species and ecosystems of the coastal lowlands, with an initial focus on the Tully-Murray-Hull catchments which include some of the best remnant Melaleucas in the bioregion, and the important Mission Beach area. It will also develop management options for mitigating threats to these environmental assets.

Surveys to report condition and trends 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 the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency re-assessment program; identified threats and condition will feed into Terrain NRM Ltd and Wet Tropics Management Authority statutory reporting and inform policy development, and collation of information on the impact of fire and of weeds and feral animals will inform Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service management policy and Department of Natural Resources and Mines weed eradication programs. One consequence of the range of Research Users with an interest in the outputs of the project is that the data needs to be collected and analysed in a manner suitable to providing outputs at a range of scales and to a range of different types of research user. 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 Terrain 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:

• Refinement of existing survey protocols for birds and vascular plants to incorporate flying foxes, signs of fire history, presence and abundance of weeds and ferals, and expand data collection on cassowaries and on ecosystem health.

• Completion of baseline data for the Tully-Murray-Hull catchments using revised protocol, and collection of baseline for other priority catchments.

• Clarification of the community composition of threatened lowland Regional Ecosystems (REs) and their role in terms of maintaining rare and threatened species, and harbouring exotic and pest species. Identification of key indicators of ecosystem health.

• Assessment of key threatening processes and of effectiveness of current management practices in maintaining lowland ecosystem health.

• Focus on the impact of fragmentation as a key threatening process toward which targeted management approaches may have significant outcomes; contextualisation of fragments in terms of their size, location and age, and the biological trajectories that different combinations of these may confer.

• Assessment of likelihood and direction of community change of REs under climate change scenarios, or as a result of changed ecological functioning (linked to Project 2.5ii.3).

• 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).