Hazards, Habitats & Hidden Species

These potent measures to lessen the impacts of natural hazards are simple, cheap and often overlooked. Let's look at them and get creative about local application.

Conversion of Wet Tropics rainforest to pasture causes forest fragmentation, leaving flora and fauna isolated in remaining fragments. This results in local wildlife extinctions, declining genetic diversity and inability to move in response to changing climates. Restoring connections between fragments potentially alleviates this, but solid evidence has remained elusive. Between 1995 and 2014, hundreds of volunteers and government staff planted 140,000 trees, converting cattle pasture into 7.7kms of wildlife corridor habitat on the Atherton Tablelands, restoring connections between 3 isolated fragments (300-500ha) and linking them back to continuous forest (80,000ha). Recent research shows many wildlife groups are now corridor residents including, reptiles, amphibians, birds, microbats and ground mammals. Thirty year old corridors are now inhabited by highly specialised mammals, including endemic and threatened species typically restricted to intact forest.  Younger sections are less diverse but ground mammal populations are increasingly similar to adjacent reference forests. This presentation details the process of mammal colonisation in these restored wildlife corridors, comparing mammal communities in corridors to those in the forests they connect. It suggests that local partnerships between government, community and landholders can produce landscapes that support and complement agricultural production and biodiversity conservation.

Research shows declining population trends. Despite facing genetic and unique environmental pressures, the FNQ platypus remains understudied and its stability unknown. This work looks to gain insight into its ecology for future conservation.