Governments often lack necessary data to determine if conservation measures are effective, says review’s leaderOne-third of Australia’s threatened species are not subject to any formal monitoring program and monitoring for the remaining species is largely poorly done, a review has found. The findings come as the ABC reports the federal environment department could cut up to 60 jobs in its biodiversity and conservation division, which conducts threatened species assessment and monitoring. “The reality is that only a fraction of our threatened species have a recovery plan and that fraction is decreasing all the time,” Legge said. “If one of the results is that there’s less staffing resources to do threatened species listing, assessments and recovery plan preparation – that’s really bad news,” Legge said. Legge said a number of species had “very effective” monitoring programs conducted by NGOs or Indigenous corporations, which covered a particular portion of the species’ range, but few species had monitoring that covered their entire range.

Source: The Guardian May 04, 2018 04:41 UTC