Author: April Reside

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

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

When it comes to species being vulnerable to climate change, many people think of polar bears – or other species that are highly specialised to local conditions. A lot of research has been done, for example, on mountain top endemics – species reliant on cool, misty mountains that could lose that habitat with rising temperatures. … Continue reading Are Australian tropical savanna birds vulnerable to climate change?

It's difficult to concentrate on my research into priorities for species conservation under climate change when weakening of Australia's environmental protection laws are being proposed. The Australian government has put forward proposed changes to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999 that prevent environment groups from challenging development projects that breach the Act. … Continue reading Australian Government Plans to reduce Environmental Protection to Instead Protect Coal Mines

As conservation scientists, the ultimate goal in our work is to contribute to onground conservation in some way; whether it be through improving the evidence base for the conservation decisions, bringing attention to poorly known issues, or finding the best way of tackling a conservation problem. My first postdoc - fresh out of my PhD … Continue reading Science can influence policy and benefit the public – here’s how

Refugia have been places that species have survived through harsh climate change in the past, so are believed to be important for species survival into the future with the impending, projected changes. In a previous postdoc (funded by NCCARF), I, April, looked at refugia across Australia for terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity.  This work has been … Continue reading New Paper: Incorporating climate change refugia into conservation planning

http://climas.hpc.jcu.edu.au http://climas.hpc.jcu.edu.au/maps/ The CliMAS project provides projected species distributions and biodiversity estimates in the face of climate change, including regional summary reports. These can be generated for states, IBRA bioregions and NRM regions. The models are for terrestrial and freshwater vertebrates across Australia, and crayfish. With the support of the northern monsoon cluster of NRM … Continue reading CliMAS – a tool for investigating predicted climate change impacts on Australian species and biodiversity – is online!