Journal article
Evaluating protected area effectiveness using bird lists in the Australian Wet Tropics
Megan Barnes, Judit K Szabo, William K Morris, Hugh Possingham
Diversity and Distributions | WILEY-BLACKWELL | Published : 2015
DOI: 10.1111/ddi.12274
Abstract
Aim: Protected areas underpin many global conservation efforts. However, it is often unclear whether they are effective in maintaining their biodiversity values, both absolutely, and also relative to other conservation actions or land uses. Longitudinal population data are critical for determining protected area performance robustly, but such data are rare. As such, there is often insufficient information with which to make adequate, informed decisions for policy and management. Conversely, informally collected data, such as species lists, are common, especially for birds, and they are often the only source of historical data. The aim of this study was to use list data to evaluate the contri..
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Funding Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge Tara Martin for review, Peter Vesk and Peter Baxter for code analytical advice and review, Tara Martin, Luke Shoo, Ian Craigie and Marc Hockings for review, Bill Venables for code and analytical advice, Kerrie Mengerson and David Rohde for their sage advice regarding Bayesian methods. We also wish to acknowledge the work of countless volunteer citizen scientists who have informed this work through their love of birds, and BirdLife Australia in compiling the Bird Atlas. HPP and MB were supported by National Environmental Research program funding. We also thank two anonymous editors, and associate editor Mathieu Rouget for their invaluable comments.