Aims and objectives

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The goal of Australian Butterfly Monitoring Scheme is to develop a national monitoring scheme for Australian butterflies (see background document). The project has the following aims:
 

• To engage the community and encourage citizen science participation in scientific research and butterfly conservation.

• To quantify population trends (i.e., changes in abundance and distribution) over time to determine if butterfly populations are stable, increasing or decreasing. Detection of these trends will be achieved by assessing changes in the abundance of individual species and in their occupancy (presence or absence) at local (site), regional, and national (continental) scales.

• To identify key threatening processes for butterfly species in decline and to provide recommendations to land managers to improve conservation management and prevent further decline and reverse current trends.

• To assess the conservation status of Australian butterflies on a regular basis using IUCN Red List Criteria.

• To nominate candidate butterfly taxa for listing and recovery if they meet the criteria for threatened species-level status in relation to a strategic bioregionalisation framework of Australia for insect conservation.
   

Geographic areas and regional coordinators

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We have divided Australia into 16 regions to reflect state boundaries, islands, and the main centres of human settlement, each with the following coordinators (see Table below). There are currently 11 regional coordinators, mostly from the temperate or southern parts of Australia and its adjacent islands. However, we do not have coordinators for the more remote, northern tropical regions of Australia, including the Kimberley of Western Australia, the ‘Top End’ of the Northern Territory, mainland northern Queensland and the Torres Strait Islands of northern Queensland, as well as the central arid zone (e.g., Alice Springs area) and Tasmania.

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Further information

If you would like to be involved in the Australian Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, become a regional coordinator or require further information, please contact:

Dr Shawan Chowdhury
Head of Global Change Ecology Lab
School of Biological Sciences | Monash University
E-mail: shawan.chowdhury@monash.edu
Mobile: 0469 842 439

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