Premium
Biodiversity monitoring by community‐based restoration groups in New Zealand
Author(s) -
Sullivan Jon J.,
Molles Laura E.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
ecological management and restoration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.472
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1442-8903
pISSN - 1442-7001
DOI - 10.1111/emr.12225
Subject(s) - citizen science , biodiversity , environmental resource management , identification (biology) , scale (ratio) , habitat , environmental planning , geography , ecology , biology , cartography , environmental science , botany
Summary In recent decades, community groups have transformed habitat restoration, pest control and species translocations in New Zealand. Large areas of wild New Zealand benefit hugely from ongoing management by community‐based restoration groups. Areas near cities and towns have especially good access to pools of keen volunteers. Community groups are involved in monitoring progress with their work, as well as monitoring biodiversity changes in general at their project sites. New tools powered by modern technologies are creating the opportunity for New Zealand's community volunteers to play a transformative role in biodiversity monitoring for either purpose. These tools are reducing the resources and expertise required for species detection and identification. Smartphones with cameras, GPS , audio recorders and data apps make it easier than ever to record species observations. Crowd‐sourced identification of species in photographs and sounds loaded onto NatureWatch NZ allow volunteers to make observations of a much wider range of taxa than just common birds and trees. Realising this potential requires community groups, scientists and their institutions to collaborate in building and maintaining simple, accessible monitoring systems that (i) require and promote standard monitoring methods, (ii) provide efficient data entry in standard formats, (iii) generate automated results of use to community groups and (iv) facilitate public sharing of data to contribute to regional, national and global biodiversity monitoring. Some New Zealand monitoring systems developed recently to assist community‐based restoration groups with monitoring mammalian predator control are good examples of this approach. Making this happen at a large scale across many community groups and taxa requires increased and coordinated long‐term institutional support for monitoring systems and training.