a program created by the
atlas of life projects
Coastal wilderness and Budawang Coast
Saturday 14th - Symposium - Our East Australian Ocean hotspot – what is it and how will it change our coastal ecology?
A diverse group of expert scientists will deep dive into what’s happening in the ocean off the East Coast and how it is affecting our coastal ecology and biodiversity. From the great ocean systems to the waters off our coasts, we will hear about the changes seen in the last decade. What has been happening to the sea creatures and seaweeds? we will hear about research on our tropical fish visitors, the sea slugs we hunt for every year and the seaweeds that are their habitats.
There will be opportunities to ask questions and a panel discussion after the presentations.
From 10am - 12:30 Register in advance for this meeting: East Australian Ocean Warming Symposium
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting
10:00am - the ocean currents in a changing climate - Dr Navid Constantinou, ANU read more
10:25am - 10 years of research in the SE NSW seas - Dr Neil Malan, UNSW Read more
10:50am - Nemo and the dragon - the Sapphire Coast a transition zone - Prof David Booth,UTS Read more
11:15am - Sea Slugs and range changes on the East Coast of Australia - Prof Steve smith, SCU Read more
11:40am - future-proofing our Kelp forests? - Dr Melinda Coleman Adj. Prof., SCU Read more
12:05 - panel discussion - Q&A and our coastal ecosystems in 10 year’s time
Monday 16th Bee Hotels- to Boost Bees after fire
Kit Prendergast will be talking about an exciting project for people in and around areas that have been impacted by fires to install bee hotels. These are artificial nesting substrates which provide much needed substrates for cavity-nesting bees to rear their offspring in when their natural substrates have been destroyed by fires. Learn more about bee hotels and how you can bee involved in saving the bees in this Australia-wide citizen science project.
Dr Kit Prendergast, the Bee Babette, native bee ecologist, committee member of the Australian Native Bee Association. Kit is a scientist researching how we can conserve native bees. She has also written a book ‘Creating a Haven for Native Bees’.
Join our Zoom meeting and Q&A at 1:00 - 1:45 pm
Register in advance for this meeting: Bee hotels
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting
Monday 16th - A celebration - The Atlas of Life and iNaturalist
The Atlas of Life in the Coastal Wilderness is celebrating its 10 years anniversary, so we will have a short trip down memory lane and share some of our favourite events and records. Thomas Mesaglio will give you a tour around our biodiversity mapping platform, the rapidly growing Australian iNaturalist - how you can use it and explore your favourite species, follow fine naturalists and friends and join or set up projects. We will finish with information about the Massive Great Southern BioBlitz which will take place across the Southern hemisphere from 22nd - 25th October 2021.
our new recording platform
Thomas Mesaglio - I’m hugely passionate about all fields in the natural sciences. My greatest interest is in marine science, especially beaches and marine molluscs. I have a personal reference collection of over 5000 marine mollusc shells from NSW, along with thousands of other natural history specimens including feathers, fossils, pinned insects, crustacean moults and dried fish.
I'm also a strong supporter of citizen science and am a curator and forum moderator on the biodiversity citizen science platform iNaturalist, where I'm the number one identifier in Australia. I'm also hugely interested in photography and graphic design.
Join our Zoom meeting and Q&A: 1:50 - 3:10 pm
Register in advance for this meeting: The Atlas of Life and iNaturalist
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting
Tuesday 17th - That Glossy looks familiar! - Photo identification of female Glossy black- cockatoos by citizen scientists. From the Glossies in the Mist, Saving our Species project.
Presenters Lauren Hook and Erna Llenore To raise the conservation profile of threatened Glossy black- cockatoos (GBC), the Saving our Species, Glossies in the Mist project provided identification training to the Southern Highlands community and invited citizen scientists to submit sightings of GBCs. Glossies in the Mist (GITM) teamed up with community champions to co-create a photo identification project focusing on cataloguing individual female GBCs using their plumage patterns. This data examines species dynamics and distribution whilst providing an interesting way for the broader community to get involved with GBC conservation.
The Great Western Wildlife Corridor spans the Southern Highlands linking large wilderness areas and falls predominantly on private land. Traditional methods for estimating GBC populations including dam counts and transects were unsuitable in this landscape. The female glossy (flossy) identification project has delivered the most accurate population count with 184 individual females recorded and reached over 455 community members.
GITM built a mobile collector form providing an easy way for the community to submit sightings of GBCs and active habitat. The launch of flossy profile look books amplified awareness and community monitoring.
The Flossy identification project provided interesting post fire data. A flossy named Sunset was photographed in Buxton two days before the fire swept through and again a week later.
Engaging citizen scientists to run the Flossy project has extended the reach of GITM, increasing our species knowledge whilst engaging the community in GBC research and habitat conservation.
Lauren Hook is an ecologist and Saving our Species, Threatened Species Officer working with the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment. Lauren enthusiastically manages a suite of diverse threatened flora and fauna in the Illawarra and Southern Highlands.
Erna Llenore is a member of Birdlife Australia Southern Highlands and a volunteer with the Glossies in the Mist project. She’s a passionate believer in the value of data collection by citizen scientists.
Gang-gang cockatoos - recent research on hollow and nesting behaviour and Glossies in the Mist - stories and research findings from this successful project
The Gang-gang has recently been nominated as a nationally endangered species with an average 69% decline in reporting rates over the last three decades. A citizen science project started in 2017 to find out more about Gang-gang nesting hollows as at that time, only two active hollows were known in the ACT. Much valuable information has been gathered and will inform conservation and nest-tube design. Michael and Tracey will share their findings and invite you to join in a wider scale project. READ MORE ABOUT COCKATOOS
Glossyblack-cockatoos are one of the more threatened species in NSW and, like the gan-gangs, are identified in the Save Our Species project to find out more about them and use that knowledge to create conservation policies. Glossies in the Mist is a citizen science project in Wingecarribee Shire identifying key feeding trees and nesting hollows READ MORE about Glossies
Dr Michael Mulvaney is an ex-government ecologist who worked for ACT, NSW and the Commonwealth. He is one of the supervisors of the Canberra Gang-gang project and has been involved in several other citizen science projects dealing with fire and orchid occurrence, competitor and predator interactions at Superb Parrot nest hollow entrances, the occurrence and ecology of the Small-ant Blue Butterfly and matching caterpillars to adult moth species.
Stacey Taylor is a Senior Conservation Officer with the ACT Government. She coordinates the National Gang-gang Working Group, which includes many researchers, community members and local and state government representatives with a keen interest in the conservation of the species. With support from the ACT Government, Stacey is also embarking on a postgraduate research project to better understand the ecology of Gang-gangs within the ACT.
Join our Zoom meeting and Q&A at 2:00 - 4:00 pm
Register in advance for this meeting: “Register for Glossies and Gang-Gang Webinar”
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting
Wednesday 18th - The science of Nestboxes - research gives us the information to build the best Des.Res. for the birds and possums we want to help
We want to help our birds and possums to find places to nest and raise their young as we know there are far too few suitable natural tree hollows for the animals who need homes. Nest boxes can provide a viable alternative to natural tree hollows for a range of wildlife. This session will share the research that has been undertaken to find out what is needed to build nestboxes that work - not too hot, the right sized holes, where and how to site them. They can be critical for survival where hollows are not available or have been lost, such as in most forest areas on the South Coast after the 2019/20 bushfires. But it’s not as simple as one size fits all. Species often have particular requirements for their homes and nest boxes need to mimic the characteristics of natural hollows. This session complements the Gang-gang and Glossies in the Mist presentations from yesterday.
Courtney Fink-Downes and Susan Rhind from Eurobodalla Council share the results of their work. Andrew Morrison from Bega Valley Shire Council will talk about what we might do together here.
Courtney is a natural resources officer with Eurobodalla Shire Council. She is a passionate advocate for the environment and works closely with community groups to achieve environmental and social benefits. Her work is diverse from managing invasive species, helping cat owners to reduce the impact of their pets on wildlife, promoting community gardens and aiding bushfire recovery. Courtney and the environment team at ESC have been working with landholders to install 500 nesting boxes across the shire since the bushfires.
Wednesday 1:00 - 1:45pm
Register and join our session on Zoom: The Science of Nestboxes
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting
Wednesday 18th - Echidna CSI: combining citizen science with microbiome research to assess bushfire impacts on echidnas
The short-beaked echidna is an iconic Australian animal and Australia’s most widespread native mammal. Despite this, we have poor understanding of most of their wild populations as they are difficult to find, track and study in the wild. To combat this, EchidnaCSI was launched in 2017, which is a national citizen science project with the aim to gather data and material of echidnas to perform research and aid with conservation efforts.
Dr Tahlia Perry (Uni Adelaide) will talk about this project and describe research on the echidnas of Kangaroo Island after the huge bushfires of 2020. Fascinating results show echidnas’ resilience and adptability. You are invited to record echidnas in our region to gather more data to help understand more about their little known lifestyles. Tahlia launched the Australia-wide citizen science project, EchidnaCSI, where the public submit sightings of echidnas and echidna scats to better understand wild echidna populations for conservation purposes. Tahlia has developed molecular techniques to analyse the gut microbiome and diet of echidnas from the scats submitted through EchidnaCSI, bringing together areas of genetics, microbiology, and bioinformatics with ecology, public engagement and conservation.
Tahlia is a Postdoctoral Researcher at The University of Adelaide. She is an award-winning scientists and science communicator who is passionate about conserving Australia’s wildlife and engaging with the public.
Wednesday 2:00 - 2:45pm
Register and Join us on Zoom: Echidna Conservation Science Initiative
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting
Thursday 19th Forest Monitoring and Improvement program - an innovative partnership for collaboration on research and restoration between government and community
This project asks community members to work with scientists and natural resource managers to develop and analyse the data from research projects, and jointly agree plans and actions for restoration projects to improve the biodiversity, health and resilience of post bushfire forests. The Atlas of Life has been invited to partner with the Natural Resources Commission (NRC) to pilot the research methods and analysis in our area with our citizen science community, with a view to the project being enlarged to a much broader geographical and community reach for long-term monitoring and improvement actions. Libby Hepburn will talk about the background to the project and Cassie Thompson will share the details, aims timescale and resources of the project. If you would like to find out more about joining us to take part, you are asked to register your interest after the presentation.
Libby Hepburn is chair of the Atlas of Life (Coastal Wilderness) and a citizen science project manager and advocate. The Atlas of Life project has been collecting records of local biodiversity for 10 years from Nadgee to Moruya. We have run many citizen science projects and Bioblitzes and have over 35,000 records from nearly 800 contributors. We also have a dedicated group of moderators and project committee who help to identify species and build our community of naturalists.
Cassie Thompson -Cassie is working as a Senior Advisor at the Natural Resources Commission, assisting with the State-wide Forest Monitoring and Improvements project. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, investigating ways to reduce the effects of fragmentation and barriers to urban-sensitive small mammals.
Cassie strives to provide robust and practical solutions to challenging ecological issues. She has worked on a range of resource, development and infrastructure projects across eastern Australia as EMM's Ecology Service Manager. Following this, Cassie moved into State Government and worked as a biodiversity officer for several years , providing ecological advice for projects, steering project approvals and preparing and implementing biodiversity policy.
Join our Zoom meeting and Q&A at 2:00 - 2:45pm
Register in advance for this meeting: Forest Monitoring and Improvement
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting
Saturday 21st Towamba - life in our cemeteries - a mini bioblitz - Live field event
This is the first of a series of mini-Bioblitzes which will visit each cemetery in Bega Valley Shire over the next 3 years. This is a community event where we will explore and record all the creatures and plants in and around the cemetery on the iNaturalist app . We will have expert naturalists and botanists who will help you find and identify creatures great and small and the plants that make this cemetary so special.
Sadly the event has been postponed until further notice because of Covid restrictions which have been introduced, a new date will be set when current restrictions have been lifted.
We will also have talks on the local eco-system, including a discussion by botanical expert, Jackie Miles and a talk about the history of the cemetery by historian, Fiona Firth. Potaroo Palace will be with us and there will be a free sausage sizzle.
This will be a great day for all the family.
This project is a partnership between the Atlas of Life and Bega Valley Shire Council
The Atlas of Life in the Coastal Wilderness (ALCW) is an ongoing citizen-science project. It was originally the initiative of a small group of dedicated people who, in 2011, recognised the biological importance of the far south coastal region of NSW. We encourage the documentation of the area’s biodiversity, building a community-based resource and network of contributors. This month is our 10th anniversary and our project has grown to involve hundreds of people, numerous organisations, and a wide variety of projects and initiatives. It is a volunteer and non-profit organisation. We want to thank all our naturalist and moderator friends who help to identify all the sightings everyone records, so we can send scientific quality records to the national biodiversity database, the Atlas of Living Australia. Our project goes from Nadgee to Moruya and inland to the escarpment and we have a sister project, the Budawang Atlas of Life who record biodiversity from Moruya up to Kiama.
