Watching clouds over country : reconsidering Australian indigenous perspectives about environmental change and climate change

This paper considers an Indigenous perspective on the rapidly transforming Australian environment and the impact of world climate change. It is largely based upon a National Climate Change Adaptation and Research Facility (NCCARF) research project, in progress, that is seeking to translate a south-eastern Australian Indigenous perspective of how climate change affects 'country'. The project involves direct community consultation and workshops, framed by a literature review and longstanding author involvements with Indigenous communities in planning, design and native title projects, and will discuss conclusions being raised. Importantly, this discourse is being formulated with peri-urban based Indigenous communities whom are well educated and deeply involved with statutory and strategic planning processes and native title debates.

The value of weeds for wildlife and implications for management

This research found that weeds provided valuable habitat for some wildlife, but that current weed management does not adequately account for such interactions. By retaining weed structure during weed management this study showed that wildlife could remain unaffected by considered weed management.

Setback distances as a conservation tool in wildlife-human interactions : testing their efficacy for birds affected by vehicles on open-coast sandy beaches

In some wilderness areas, wildlife encounter vehicles disrupt their behaviour and habitat use. Changing driver behaviour has been proposed where bans on vehicle use are politically unpalatable, but the efficacy of vehicle setbacks and reduced speeds remains largely untested. We characterised bird-vehicle encounters in terms of driver behaviour and the disturbance caused to birds, and tested whether spatial buffers or lower speeds reduced bird escape responses on open beaches. Focal observations showed that: i) most drivers did not create sizeable buffers between their vehicles and birds; ii) bird disturbance was frequent; and iii) predictors of probability of flushing (escape) were setback distance and vehicle type (buses flushed birds at higher rates than cars). Experiments demonstrated that substantial reductions in bird escape responses required buffers to be wide (> 25 m) and vehicle speeds to be slow (< 30 km h-1). Setback distances can reduce impacts on wildlife, provided that they are carefully designed and derived from empirical evidence. No speed or distance combination we tested, however, eliminated bird responses. Thus, while buffers reduce response rates, they are likely to be much less effective than vehicle-free zones (i.e. beach closures), and rely on changes to current driver behaviour

Backyard biodiversity: community and wildlife gardener attitudes and practices.

This thesis concludes that the level of community support for planting native vegetation and welcoming wildlife in yards warrants the encouragement of wildlife gardening to improve biodiversity. It presents strategies to increase the ability of wildlife gardening programs to recruit previously unengaged individuals, thereby maximising their ability to improve biodiversity.

Weeds and wildlife: perceptions and practices of weed managers

Negative impacts of invasive plants or weeds on biodiversity have been well established yet their role in providing key habitats and resources for wildlife has been little understood. Weed removal thus has the potential to adversely affect wildlife but whether this is considered during weed management is poorly known. To determine the extent of this knowledge, we examined the perceptions of weed managers regarding wildlife and weed management in Victoria, Australia. We surveyed 81 weed managers of varying levels of experience from different types of organisations, including state and local government, community groups and private companies. We found 90% of managers had observed wildlife-weed interactions and that most (70%) adjusted management programmes to accommodate wildlife. Despite this, few (19%) had adopted the recommended practice of combining gradual weed removal with re-vegetation. While management programmes included monitoring of native vegetation, consideration of wildlife monitoring in weed management was rare. This highlights the need for management to better understand and respond to wildlife-weed relationships. If the improvement of wildlife habitat is included in the objectives of weed programmes, as it should be, then wildlife should also be incorporated in project monitoring. This would lead to a greater understanding of the role weeds and their management have in each situation and, ultimately, more informed decision making. Copyright: © Carlos et al. 2014.