Trish Fleming

Birds are widely regarded as important indicators of environmental change, and identifying areas that are critical for their conservation is pivotal. The Australian bustard (Ardeotis australis), a wide-ranging species of ecological and cultural significance, faces ongoing habitat modifications, yet its future distribution under changing climatic conditions remains uncertain. This study applies ensemble Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) to quantify the species' current and future habitat suitability under four climate scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, SSP5-8.5) for 2050 and 2070. Results indicate that 69.7% of Australia is currently suitable for Australian bustards, primarily in arid and semi-arid regions. Future projections show moderate habitat contraction, with losses mainly in coastal and semi-arid regions, particularly in southern Australia, while inland arid areas remain relatively stable. Overlay analyses suggest that protected areas, including Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs), will continue to support suitable habitat, reinforcing their role as long-term climate refugia. Key environmental drivers influencing habitat suitability include precipitation seasonality (BIO15), precipitation in the coldest quarter (BIO19), and mean diurnal temperature range (BIO2), underscoring the species' reliance on predictable climatic patterns. Anthropogenic variables, particularly proximity to built-up areas also contribute to habitat suitability, forecasting that ongoing land-use changes may exacerbate climate-driven habitat loss. Using estimated cleared areas (0.3 ha/MW), we also found that around 41% of under-construction, 36% of operational, and 46% of proposed wind farms overlap with suitable habitat for the species, highlighting potential future conflict zones. This study provides the first national-scale assessment of current and projected habitat dynamics for the Australian bustard, offering critical insights for conservation planning. Future conservation strategies should prioritise habitat connectivity, minimise anthropogenic disturbances, and integrate Indigenous-led management approaches to ensure the species' long-term persistence in a changing climate.

Context Wild dog impacts on agricultural and environmental systems in Australia are commonly managed through broadscale baiting using sodium fluoroacetate (1080). There has been growing evidence of bait avoidance in some populations of wild dogs throughout Australia, raising concerns about the efficacy of 1080 baiting. Bait avoidance can be a learned behaviour in a population, which could be caused by several factors associated with baiting programmes. One potential causative factor in developing bait avoidance is the ability to detect and respond to the toxin in the bait. The toxin 1080 is described as odourless and colourless to dogs, suggesting limited cues for its detection, but has not been formally tested.Aims This study used a trained detector dog to evaluate the detectability of 1080 to a dog and then the detectability in a variety of bait matrices. We also used a field trial to assess if 1080 dried meat baits were less likely to be taken than non-toxic baits in sites with a history of dog baiting or no dog baiting.Methods We trained a detector dog to detect 1080 odour and trialled this ability on different bait matrices. We used a field-based cafeteria-style trial to investigate the possibility of toxin detection by wild dogs.Key results We demonstrated that a trained dog could detect the presence of 1080, but detectability of the toxin when presented in different baits was variable and mostly greatly reduced. The field trials demonstrated no significant difference in bait take between 1080 and non-toxic baits by wild dogs in either a bait-na & iuml;ve or bait-exposed population.Conclusions These results suggest that, while 1080 is potentially detectable, factors other than its presence are responsible for bait avoidance in wild dog populations.Implications Wild dog management is heavily reliant on baiting with 1080 to reduce populations and thus reduce impacts on the environment and agriculture. The use of 1080 is unlikely to be the cause of bait avoidance and so where reduced uptake of baits by dogs is occurring, other factors need to be investigated and addressed.

Ecological disturbances are discrete events that alter or transform the physical, chemical, or biological characteristics of ecosystems. Animal populations are vulnerable to disturbance, and the risk-disturbance hypothesis and population collapse framework propose that population declines can be predicted by declines in animal body condition. However, no research has empirically examined the general relationship between body condition and abundance, nor their relationship in response to disturbance.

We used a combined dataset representing 33 studies and >42,000 observations of 75 species from Australia, New Zealand, Spain, and the United States to test predictions relating to the relationship between reptile body condition and abundance. We first investigated the relationship at the site level and then used meta-analytical models to test whether populations showed linked changes in abundance and body condition in response to disturbance. We further tested whether key environmental and species traits influenced this relationship and whether there was a time-lagged effect of body condition responses on abundance.

Our results provided no strong support for the risk-disturbance hypothesis or population collapse framework. We found a positive relationship between mean reptile body condition and abundance at the site level. However, the relationship was largely lost when investigating population responses to disturbance. We provide a new conceptual framework that shows how disturbances can modify or uncouple the relationship between abundance and body condition by influencing underlying drivers, such as predation, competition, and resource availability. As such, the impacts of disturbance on reptile body condition cannot be assumed to reflect or predict abundance responses. Monitoring programs that infer population impacts based on changes in body condition should confirm the relationship between these two variables in the relevant study system.

Feral cats (Felis catus) are a significant threat to Australia's native wildlife, contributing to the decline and extinction of at least 20 native mammal species through predation impacts. To improve the identification and monitoring of populations, individual identification of cats is required. This study proposes a body-part-based computer algorithmic approach that uses deep learning for individual identification from photos that can address a common challenge associated with using camera trapping, where often only a partial or obscured view of the objects of interest is presented. We investigated the discriminatory attributes of the images of four body parts of the cats: flank (‘body’), back leg, front leg, and tail. We use a subset of a dataset of feral cats collected using camera traps deployed across the Glenelg and Otway regions of Victoria, Australia. Due to the skewed and imbalanced nature of images per individual in the dataset, we used a curated subset of 10 individuals, each with a relatively similar number of images, resulting in a total of 1644 images. We trained deep-learning models with a ResNet-50 backbone on these body parts indivdually as well as combinations of multiple body parts through feature concatenation. Results demonstrate that the body was the most discriminatory part for cat identification, with the back leg the next best part. Other parts added to the performance when they were combined. We conclude that individual cats can successfully be identified using partial body images captured using camera traps. While the body was the most distinctive part, the proposed method provides flexibility in cases where the body is obscured. This study shows that deep learning methods can meaningfully contribute to camera trap image analysis, and hence environmental conservation outcomes.

Acoustic monitoring is a common survey method for echolocating bats. However, differences in equipment, methods of field deployment, and variability in bat calls complicate acoustic analysis. The Australasian Bat Society (ABS), the peak body for bat conservation in the region, published reporting standards (hereafter ‘standards’) as a guide towards consistent and transparent methods in acoustic bat surveys. Here we review how the current standards are integrated into Australian bat acoustic research. Our analysis showed that only 8 of the 107 studies reviewed adhered fully to the standards. While 89% of studies included citation to reference libraries, and 79% of studies described call characteristics of similar species, only 17% of studies adhered to guidelines requiring the inclusion of time versus frequency spectrographs for species identification. Furthermore, only 19% reported on survey effort as a function of detector hours. This review underscores the need for easily accessible and updated standards as well as the sharing of bat call reference libraries to improve the accuracy and comparability of bat acoustic surveys in Australia. Enhancing consistency and transparency in bat acoustic reporting will facilitate more robust studies and enhance the effectiveness of conservation efforts.

Population age structure is an important parameter for wildlife population modelling. However, for many species it is not possible to accurately assess the age of adult individuals. We present a hypothetical example to illustrate a previously described method of determining population age structure from the survivorship of individuals of unknown ages that to our knowledge is unused in the fields of zoology and ecology. We then apply this method to data collected over 10 years for a population of wild platypuses (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), a species whose adult individuals cannot be accurately aged and for which only limited data on life history characteristics are available. Our results show a lower mortality rate over the first years of life of platypuses than the one previous study available for comparison, and suggested a Type I or Type III survivorship curve.

Although the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is considered one of the most damaging and adaptive invasive carnivorous mammals that consumes a wide variety of vertebrate and invertebrate taxa, there are surprisingly few reports of red foxes hunting fish. We observed evidence of an attempted predation event by a red fox on a neonate green sawfish (Pristis zijsron) within a deltaic island in the Ashburton River estuary, a remote desert river in Western Australia. The site is a globally important nursery where newborn sawfish arrive annually in spring. Injuries to the sawfish included paw/claw marks on the head, damage to the rostrum, which is a formidable tool that is used for both defence against predators and for detecting and attacking prey, as well as a major hole in the head and damage to the gills, which are vital for respiration, osmoregulation, nitrogenous waste excretion, pH regulation, and hormone production. A series of tracks suggests at least one fox parades the shallow tidally influenced banks, with evidence of a green mud crab (Scylla serrata) having also been predated on. There have also been reports of red fox predation of sea turtle nests nearby. This is the first record of a red fox hunting in marine waters and one of the few identifying fish as prey. We suggest that a monitoring program for foxes, and possibly a control program, is warranted prior to the annual seasonal colonisation of this habitat by neonate green sawfish and nesting turtles, which may in turn reduce predation of sympatric species.

Ecological disturbances are discrete events that alter or transform the physical, chemical, or biological characteristics of ecosystems. Disturbance can cause animal populations to decline and, according to the risk-disturbance hypothesis and population collapse framework, these declines can be predicted by declines in animal body condition. However, no research has empirically examined the general relationship between body condition and abundance, nor their relationship in response to disturbance. We used a combined dataset representing 33 studies and > 42,000 observations of 75 species from Australia, New Zealand, Spain and the United States of America to test predictions relating to the relationship between reptile body condition and abundance. We first investigated the relationship at the site level and then used meta-analytical models to test whether populations showed linked changes in abundance and body condition in response to disturbance. We further tested whether key environmental and species traits influenced this relationship and whether there was a time-lagged effect of body condition responses on abundance. We found a positive relationship between mean reptile body condition and abundance at the site level. However, the relationship was largely lost when investigating population responses to disturbance. As such, our results provided no support for the risk-disturbance hypothesis and limited support for the population collapse framework. Therefore, the impacts of disturbance on reptile body condition cannot be assumed to reflect or predict abundance responses. We provide a new conceptual framework that shows how disturbances can modify or uncouple the relationship between abundance and body condition by influencing underlying drivers, such as predation, competition and resource availability. Monitoring programs that infer population impacts based on changes in body condition should first confirm the relationship between these two variables in the relevant study system.

Utility-scale solar facilities (‘solar farms’/‘solar parks’) represent vast altered landscapes – currently covering ∼0.025% of the earth’s land surface. The rapid transformation of landscapes necessitates urgent research into biodiversity impacts of solar facilities worldwide. Evidence for fauna impacts at both concentrating solar power (CSP) and photovoltaic (PV) solar facilities was analysed. Solar facilities impact fauna through habitat loss and fragmentation, altered microclimate, and creation of novel habitat. Evidence suggests increases in insect, bird and bat species richness and abundance around solar facilitates built over degraded landscapes, likely due to introduction of novel habitat and presence of generalist species, but a decrease when comparison is made with intact reference landscapes. CSP facilities attract large numbers of flying insects and therefore insectivorous birds, while both heliostats (CSP) and PV solar panels are attractive to waterbirds, with the timing and direction of bird movements indicating they are responding to linear polarised light reflections from panels. While generalist bat species make use of solar facilities, data to date indicates a decrease in bat species richness and activity around solar facilities. Extrapolating from USA studies, an estimated 17.3 million birds die at solar facilities every year. Direct impacts of solar facilities include injuries and deaths due to collisions and burns, while entrapment, starvation and increased predation risk are also recorded causes of mortalities. Solar facilities significantly impact local fauna, particularly attracting and affecting insectivores and waterbirds. Further research is needed to fully understand these effects and develop mitigation strategies for sustainable solar energy expansion.

Most human‐carnivore conflicts arise from the impact of predation on livestock. In Australian rangelands, considerable resources are allocated to constructing exclusion fences and implementing control measures to manage dingo populations for sustainable livestock enterprise. Assessing the effectiveness of these measures is crucial for justifying the investment. We used a replicated experimental design to examine the effect of landscape‐scale dingo‐proof exclusion fences (‘cell‐fencing’) on activity and population density of dingoes in the Southern Rangelands of Western Australia. We monitored dingo populations for 22–24 months across six study sites nested within a landscape of about 75,000 km2 and defined ‘fence level’ as the number of dingo‐proof fences enclosing each study site. We used camera trap capture rate (number of independent capture events per 100 trap nights) as a metric for dingo activity (including the availability of resources as other potential covariates), estimated dingo density using spatially explicit mark‐resight models, and tested the relationship between capture rate and estimated density of dingoes for each study site. Significant variation in both metrics was observed between sites and across time. Fence level and prey occurrence significantly influenced dingo activity. The annual mean dingo density estimate across study sites was below two dingoes per 100 km2 (i.e., 0.02 dingoes per km2; the maximum value believed to be compatible with small livestock) at only one study site in the first year, but it was higher across all sites during the second year of monitoring. Dingo activity correlated with estimated dingo density at only two sites, suggesting differences in dingo behaviour and detection across the six study sites. This study provides experimental evidence that camera trap capture rate is not a reliable method for assessing variations in the population size of dingoes. These results have implications for monitoring outcomes of dingo control programs across Australia.
This study addresses a critical question: How reliable is the activity metric (here we used camera trap capture rate) to assess variations in population size of dingoes across diverse habitats in Australia? Through experimental evidence, we demonstrate that activity metrics can lead to inaccuracies in assessing changes in dingo population size. Our findings highlight the need to assess dingo population size from identified individuals, which is particularly relevant for effective dingo control programs across Australia.