A warm congratulations to lab members Andrew Rogers and Ruben Venegas for having recently completed their doctoral programs! We look forward to celebrating your graduation in July. Andrew’s research focused on invasive-native species interactions in urban environments and Ruben’s research explored marine spatial planning and conservation. For more information on their research check out the publications page!

Research has shown that international cooperation has been critical in protecting migratory shorebirds in the Asia Pacific, but ongoing challenges exist.

The University of Queensland-led study surveyed and analysed the international policy framework for conserving shorebirds migrating within the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, one of four major global migratory waterbird flyways.

Eduardo Gallo-Cajiao, from UQ’s School of Biological Sciences and the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said conserving these birds was a huge challenge, but efforts were well under way.

“Every year, millions of shorebirds travel between their breeding grounds in the northern hemisphere, primarily in Russia and Alaska, and their wintering areas in the southern hemisphere, including Australia and New Zealand,” he said.

“This spectacle, however, is currently in peril due to multiple threats, such as coastal reclamation, hunting, pollution, and disturbance.”

“National governments and other key players have realised that protecting these birds requires international cooperation, so they’ve been collaborating across the region through agreements.”

The research revealed the number of active agreements, who participates in them, and the threats they address.

“A total of 28 agreements make up the international framework for conserving migratory shorebirds in the Flyway, with 57 government and non-government participants,” Mr Gallo-Cajiao said.

“These agreements have been emerging since the 1970s, with China, Russia, Japan, Australia, Republic of Korea, and the USA participating most.”

The team discovered that Flyway-relevant agreements are not exclusive to national governments, with NGOs and local governments becoming key players.

“NGOs have been emerging as signatories to some of these agreements since the mid-2000s, and local governments, such as Seocheon County in the Republic of Korea, have been entering into additional agreements,” Mr Gallo-Cajiao said.

“The rise in the number of agreements seems to be the result of governance demand in critical areas around the Yellow Sea, where conservation priorities are high.

“We have the agreements; the challenge now is to ensure actions are coordinated across them, helping to protect these beautiful, precious, and globally revered species.”

The research has been published in Regional Environmental Change (DOI: 10.1007/s10113-019-01461-3).

Media: Eduardo Gallo-Cajiao, e.gallocajiao@uq.edu.au, +1 425 393 7595, Skype: e.gallocajiao@gmail.com; Dominic Jarvis, dominic.jarvis@uq.edu.au, +61 413 334 924.

Our Lab Member Ruben Venegas-Li (PhD student) has had his 2017 publication on 3D spatial conservation prioritisation featured in the latest edition of Decision Point, a monthly publication from the ARC Centre of Excellence and Environmental Decisions. Spatial conservation prioritisation is a method used to identify areas where conservation goals can be achieved efficicently. Traditionally this has meant the region being considered is subdivided into two-dimensional planning units. Oceans are inherently 3D spaces, and Ruben and his collaborators have proposed a novel 3D approach for the marine realm. Click below to download your copy of this issue of Decision Point.

Download (PDF, 445KB)

Congratulations to our Lab Member Leslie Roberson on getting confirmed as a PhD student with UQ. Confirmation is the first of three milestones that all PhD students must complete throughout their candidature. Leslie’s research will explore incidental ‘by-catch’ of threatened species in small-scale and industrial fisheries, with a focus on individual fisher behaviour and seafood supply chains as two important avenues for management to improve the environmental performance of fisheries. Well done, Leslie!

In other news, our next publication by Mačić et al., entitled “Biological invasions in conservation planning: A global systematic review”, has been accepted for publication in Frontiers in Marine Science! Click on the image below to read the abstract.

We would like to congratulate our lab members in their recent achievements!

Honours student James Vandersteen is the recipient of the 2018 Heron Island Research Station (HIRS) Research Scholarship. This scholarship was developed to provide students with the equipment and access required for investigations of the diverse habitat and environmental concerns of Heron Island, its terrestrial habitat, reefs and surrounding waters. James’ project will thoroughly explore, using novel technologies, night light distribution on Heron Island with the aim to minimize its impact on sea turtles.

PhD students Junior Novera and Andrew Rogers have completed their Confirmation and Final Thesis Review milestones respectively. PhD candidates at The University of Queensland complete three milestones throughout their candidature. Junior’s research explores the ecology, evolution, and community conservation of iconic Melanesian mammals on Bougainville, PNG. Andrew’s research explores why certain species do well in human dominated habitats, and how introduced species impact native community interactions, using introduced and native bird species as his study system.

Warm greetings to Luci and Ruben on the birth of their daughter Lara last week. What a wonderful way to start the new year!

Salit delivered an invited seminar about factors shaping invasive bird patterns and processes across continents at the Volcani Agricultural Institute

Two new papers on 3D marine conservation have recently een published from our group, the one in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, led by Ruben as his first PhD chapter and the second as a review on 3D conservation led by Noam, Roberto and Salit in conservation Letters.

Salit gave an invited seminar at the Technion on Marine Conservation Planning this week at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning colloquium.

Congratulations to Ruben for publishing his first paper and very innovative research!

Please click here to read about the novel 3D marine spatial conservation prioritisation approach, which explicitly accounts for the inherent vertical heterogeneity of the ocean. Prioritising in 3D allows conservation and marine spatial planners to target specific threats to specific conservation features, at specific depths in the ocean – A very interesting read!

On the 5th of October, 2017 Salit Kark gave a great talk at the Doñana Biological Station about the factors shaping invasive species richness and distribution in Europe and Australia at large scales. In addition Salit presented several case studies on interactions between invasive and native birds from around the world, with focus on parrots, starlings, mynas and more.

If you would like to watch this talk click here

First, we welcome Marsya who has formally started her Masters with us and will be working on conservation planning in Sumatra! Second, we welcome Maddy and Micheli who recently have started working for us as Research Assistants. We look forward to working with all of you!

Two new Research Assistant positions (casual) have become available from June 2017 to work within the Kark group. These positions include:

1. A research assistant with substantial experience in large spatial scale data analysis, GIS and remote sensing. Experience using Lidar data and analysing digital elevation models is an advantage. Good writing skills are also an advantage. 

2. A research assistant to help with admin tasks. Experience with UQ admin systems, such as UniFi orders etc. is an advantage. 

If you are interested in either of these positions and have the desired skills stated above, please send your CV, short cover letter and any other supporting material to Salit’s email:

s.kark@uq.edu.au

This paper led by Cordes, reviews the types of activities that are associated with global offshore oil and gas releases. This is an extremely prevalent topic as the exploration of oil and gas is expanding in the absence of sufficient baseline data in deep-sea ecosystems. To find out what recommendations were offered to manage offshore and gas development, click here!

Congratulations to Hernán for his contribution to an article published in Science written about the need to change the current forestry practices in Chile. This is especially after the megafires that affected the Mediterranean region, one of the most imperilled regions in the world.

See the article here

Warm congratulations to both Andrew and Hernan who have recently passed their mid term reviews. Nicely done, and keep up the good work!

We are very pleased to welcome Erin McCreless into the Kark Group. Erin has begun a Postdoctoral Fellowship working on projects related to conserving threatened species on Australian islands and managing invasive species in Australia.

Erin completed her Ph.D. at the University of California – Santa Cruz, with her research focusing on quantifying the impacts of introduced mammals on threatened insular vertebrate species worldwide. Using this information along with management cost estimates, she identified cost-effective islands for invasive mammal eradication efforts. Erin is broadly interested in conducting research that can inform on-the-ground conservation, and in understanding the effectiveness of conservation investments both in the past and into the future.

We look forward to working with you and wish you every success on this endeavour.

Projects: Island Conservation, Invasive Species, Birds in an Urban and Agricultural System.

Shared from UQ News (https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2017/01/alien-birds-follow-global-wealth-and-power):

16 January 2017 

Earlier this year in January Carla traveled over to Peru to work with Macaws at the Tambopata Research Center. The Tambopata Research Centre (TRC) is nestled on the banks of the Tambopata River in the Madre De Dios Department of Peru, 6 hours by boat from civilisation. A Peruvian architect, Eduardo Nycander founded the research centre in 1989 just a 5 minute boat ride from the Collpa Colorado, the largest and most biodiverse known avian clay-lick in South America, and arguably the world. Close to 20 parrot species, including 6 macaw species consume this clay, normally right after sunrise. In 1999 Professor Donald Brightsmith, an ornithologist from Texas A&M University, became the director and expanded the centre’s focus to include how the macaws interact with their environment ecologically and physiologically.

I am currently studying Agronomy Engineering  in France. As a part of my studies I had the great opportunity to do an internship with A/ Prof Salit Kark at ARC CEED (Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions) at the University of Queensland from April to August 2015.

During this time, I got the chance to attend Kark group lab meetings and some CEED talks where I learnt a lot about species conservation and invasive species.

For my research, I was in charge of characterizing the vegetation on various sites, which are currently used for the Urban Bird Project. I learnt how to use ArcMap and IDRISI to create a vegetation index and land cover maps (with Matt’s help). I also made a fieldwork analysis conducted with Andrew and Carla, of the Queensland sites in order to characterize these areas and the trees present around the nest boxes. I learnt how to prepare and conduct a fieldwork plan and a lot of things on Australian’s birds and trees.

My time in Brisbane was an incredible one. It helped me in my near future to know what kind of subject I want to work on.

I’d like to thank Salit for the amazing opportunity she gave me, for her time and for her instructions. I’d like to thank as well all the group members that were really welcoming and made my internship an amazing one.

It was really an unforgettable experience; I already miss the people who surrounded me during these few months.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Je suis actuellement en école d’ingénieur en Agronomie en France et j’ai eu l’opportunité, durant ma deuxième année d’étude, de faire une stage avec Salit Kark au sein du CEED (Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions). J’ai réalisé ce stage dans l’Université du Queensland à Brisbane d’avril à août 2015.

Durant cette période, j’ai eu la chance de participer aux réunions du groupe de Salit et d’assister aux conférences organisées par le CEED, ce qui m’a permis d’approfondir mes connaissances sur la conservation des espèces et la gestion des espèces invasives.

Mon stage consistait à caractériser la végétation et les environnements sur les différents sites où le projet d’étude des oiseaux en ville est mené. J’ai appris à me servir d’ArcMap et d’IDRISI afin de calculer des indices de végétation et de créer des cartes d’occupation des sols (avec l’aide de Matt). J’ai aussi mené une étude de terrain, en coopération avec Andrew et Carla, sur les sites du Queensland, afin de caractériser ces zones et de conduire une étude sur les arbres présents autour des nichoirs. J’ai appris beaucoup d’informations sur les arbres et les oiseaux en Australie, mais aussi à réaliser et à mener une étude de terrain.

Mon expérience à Brisbane fut extraordinaire. Cela m’a aidé pour construire mon projet professionnel et pour découvrir des problématiques qui m’intéressent.

J’aimerais remercier Salit pour l’incroyable opportunité qu’elle m’a donnée, pour son temps et ses instructions. J’aimerais aussi remercier les autres membres du groupe qui m’ont accueilli chaleureusement et qui ont rendu mon stage formidable.

C’est une expérience que je ne suis pas prête d’oublier. Les personnes qui ont partagés mon quotidien pendant ces quelques mois me manquent déjà.

We have had 3 of our PhD students confirm their PhD candidature in the last month. Congratulations Andrew, Ruben and Hernan on your efforts and hard work in the past year and all the best for the remainder of your studies.

Emerging conservation challenges and prospects in an era of offshore hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation