A warm welcome to some new group members that are starting projects with us:
Image: Matt McKinney working on some coding (Photo taken by Carla Archibald)
Don’t forget we have a lot of fantastic photos from our invasive species research, taken by local photographer Steve Gray or Biodiversity Research Group lab members.
With the help of UQ’s Property and Facilities Division, the Biodiversity Research Group has set up a few nesting boxes for our invasive species project at the Gatton and St Lucia campuses. The boxes have been popular with the new residents, which you can read about in UQ’s Sustainability News.
The National Environmental Research Program (NERP) Environmental Decisions Hub has featured a media release on our research, with an interview from Salit Kark and Professor David Lindenmayer from ANU.
Read the release here or visit NERP Environmental Decisions Hub.
It’s the end of 2014 and Kark Group has had a huge year. Here’s a summary of all the things we got up to over the last 12 months.
In the Oxley Common, one nest box in particular is attracting a lot of attention. Maybe it’s the view, or just the facilities, but nest box UQS005 is in high demand from local avian residents.
These local rosellas seemed interested in the nest box…
…but a prior claim arrived.
An altercation ensued…
…before the Galahs got back to chewing at the nest box.
The Rainbow Lorikeets thought with all that fuss it must be worth a look.
Meanwhile the Common Mynas have set up house in a nearby Eucalyptus, which also contains nests of Rainbow Lorikeets, Scaly-breasted Lorikeets, Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and Magpies.
Thanks to Steve Gray for the great photos and commentary.
Kark Group has recently installed more nesting boxes out at UQ’s Gatton Campus, and began monitoring the critters that have made their homes in our boxes across Brisbane.
See a selection of box residents.
Cover photo credit: Steve Gray
We have an article in the October edition of Decision Point discussing the recent CEED workshop Salit led in Canberra in June.
Read it here.
A paper which Salit Kark collaborated on has been published in Marine Policy, titled Marine conservation challenges in an era of economic crisis and geopolitical instability: The case of the Mediterranean Sea.
In the Mediterranean Sea, socio-economic drivers may accelerate the process of exclusive economic zone (EEZ) declarations. Despite the challenges, the EEZ declarations may provide important opportunities for leveraging change to national policy towards the development of large-scale conservation of marine ecosystems and biodiversity in this zone. Using the Mediterranean Sea as a case study, we aim to highlight a set of best practices that will maximize the potential for the development of large-scale marine conservation initiatives. These include a range of approaches, such as using surrogates to fill the many biodiversity data gaps in the region, further the development of consistent and open access databases, and the utilization of technological developments to improve monitoring, research and surveillance of less accessible and under-explored marine areas. The integration of Mediterranean-wide and local conservation efforts, the facilitation of transboundary collaboration, and the establishment of regional funds for conservation will further enhance opportunities for marine conservation in this region.
Feb 2015
Tessa Mazor has been awarded her PhD and started a postdoc at CSIRO working on global scale trawling.
Tessa has published 5+ papers from her PhD, well done Tessa, warm congratulations on completing this so elegantly and smoothly!!!
