Cover Picture and Issue Information

This issue’s cover features the Northern Quoll, Dasyurus hallucatus , an iconic vertebrate species found in the arid landscape of Pilbara in Western Australia. The quoll, along with a diverse array of endemic plant and animal species in this region, are under growing pressures from a number of threats including invasion by exotic plants and animals, predation by feral predators, increased grazing pressure, and altered fire regimes. Choosing which species to monitor to inform threat management decisions in complex systems such as these where multiple species are being impacted by multiple threats, is a challenging task for scientists and managers alike. This is because threats often act together, potentially confounding the ability to separate the effect of each threat. Bal et al. develop the value of information approach to help identify monitoring strategies to disentangle the effect of threats across species. They quantify the relative benefits of monitoring different species, either with or without implementing management actions when multiple threats are operating and multiple species are at stake. Their approach informs the choice of species to monitor and which threats to manage to improve threat management outcomes the most under economic constraints. It also allows for identifying key factors driving these choices: the budget available for management, prior knowledge of which threats cause declines in which species, and the cost of managing the threats. Photo credit: © Jiri Lochman / Lochman Transparencies