This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Jon C. Day, PhD candidate, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University The widespread bleaching event occurring across the Great Barrier Reef is unprecedented in scale and severity. It has rightly gained global media attention. Sadly, however, some of … Continue reading Conversation piece: Great Barrier Reef bleaching stats are bad enough without media misreporting
Packed house for demonstration of new decision-support software
Members of the conservation planning group gave a successful demonstration of their new decision-support software in Perth on 16 March 2016. The software has been developed by Jana Brotánková, with Justin Osbaldiston working on the graphical user interface. Funding for the five-year project, focused on identifying priorities for management actions on about 600 islands off … Continue reading Packed house for demonstration of new decision-support software
Forthcoming global database on studies in systematic conservation planning
From 18-21 February 2016, six members of the Conservation Planning Group organized a writing workshop on Magnetic Island. The main aim of the workshop was to produce a journal paper describing the first stage of a global database on planning studies. The explosive growth of systematic conservation planning in the last decade has made it … Continue reading Forthcoming global database on studies in systematic conservation planning
New paper: Factors influencing incidental representation of previously unknown conservation features in marine protected areas
Alana, Bob and Tom Bridge from the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies recently published an article in Conservation Biology examining how to plan for protection of unknown habitats and species in marine protected areas. Using the Great Barrier Reef as a case study, they show that biodiversity can be ‘incidentally’ represented in no-take … Continue reading New paper: Factors influencing incidental representation of previously unknown conservation features in marine protected areas
The Northern Australia Environmental Research Portal is now live
The Northern Australia Environmental Resources Portal brings together this collection of environmental knowledge to help us manage the opportunities and expectations for land and water resources of the north. Research from the Tropical Rivers and Coastal Knowledge (TRaCK) consortium and the Northern Australia Hub has led to a dramatic increase in the knowledge and evidence … Continue reading The Northern Australia Environmental Research Portal is now live
Workshop to plan for threatened species across Northern Australia
In Darwin from 17th to 19th of November, Bob Pressey, Stephanie Trotter, Jorge Álvarez-Romero and Jeremy Vanderwal led a workshop on threatened species in northern Australia. The workshop was funded by the Northern Australia NESP (National Environmental Science Program) Hub, with the main aim of designing a multi-year project to develop new data and more accurately identify … Continue reading Workshop to plan for threatened species across Northern Australia
NEW PAPER: Coal, Cumulative Impacts and the Great Barrier Reef
Alana, Bob and Jon recently published a manuscript in Conservation Letters that exposes the links between the Great Barrier Reef, climate change, energy production and the Australian coal mining industry. They propose new policies and processes that enable the consideration of the cumulative effect of coal mining by environmental decision makers. The manuscript is open access; feel … Continue reading NEW PAPER: Coal, Cumulative Impacts and the Great Barrier Reef
Planning for biodiversity – and carbon, water, biosecurity, agriculture, traditional owner priorities … in the Wet Tropics
Terrain, the Natural Resource Management (NRM) group looking after the Wet Tropics region in Far North Queensland, launched their Wet Tropics NRM Plan this Friday, 20th November 2015. Australia has 54 NRM regions, which are defined by catchments and bioregions. These regions are grouped into 8 NRM clusters, areas that have some commonality of climate, … Continue reading Planning for biodiversity – and carbon, water, biosecurity, agriculture, traditional owner priorities … in the Wet Tropics
Mammal declines in northern Australia – a fresh perspective on diseases
Sadly, Australia leads the way in mammal extinctions worldwide. Alarmingly, the relatively-unmodified tropical savannas across northern Australia are facing decline of their mammals; both diversity and abundance. Some work has been done on this recently, and contenders for the drivers of this decline include modified fire regimes, grazing, cats & foxes, climate change, disease and … Continue reading Mammal declines in northern Australia – a fresh perspective on diseases