How can we best keep an eye on, and learn more about, those areas of NSW which contain our most threatened species of wildlife, especially our birds?
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Well, 46 volunteer naturalists, who are very concerned with this issue, came from all over Northern NSW to attend a weekend workshop in Urunga.
Under the sponsorship of BirdLife Australia, the national bird conservation organisation, attendees were fortunate to have experts from Cairns to Sydney, and inland to Moree and Dubbo, to assist with their task.
Bellingen Shire mayor, Dominic King, opened the event, and National Parks and Wildlife ranger Martin Smith gave a keynote address.
Bellingen resident and avian-lover, Richard Jordan, was the event's organiser.
There are 15 sites in northern NSW which have been designated Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), and BirdLife Australia is in the process of appointing a ‘guardian’ for each.
The job of the guardian is to report annually on threats to their KBA and to conduct regular surveys, especially of birds, to determine just what are the conservation needs of these special areas.
The workshop aimed to train guardians in their reporting role, and teach them how to best survey, using the best scientific survey methods, to keep tabs on the health of the bird populations, especially those threatened with extinction.
Saturday was spent in the ‘classroom’, and on Sunday all went into the field to put what they had learned into practice.
Some went into the forests around Mount Killiecrankie (New England National Park) – home of the endangered rufous scrub-bird. Others went to the more open habitat of the grassy woodlands east of Armidale to practice their bird identification and surveying skills.
The weekend was judged to be a great success, and everyone was fired-up to get on with the urgent conservation tasks ahead of them.