Fauna Monitoring
Fauna Monitoring in the Moorabool Catchment
We have 32 motion sensing fauna monitoring cameras, and an ultra sonic bat detector at our disposal. We employ these tools to gather important data of native wildlife in our local area.
If you would like to be a part of our next fauna monitoring program, please get in touch.
Eastern Grey Kangaroo mother and joey (Macropus giganteus)
Why do we monitor fauna?
Monitoring our local wildlife gathers important data. This data tells us information about species distribution, population health and is more reliable than anecdotal reports.
Having reliable data allows us to monitor the health of species over time. While anecdotal reports can bring our attention to species decline we need data to back this up, so we can make better management decisions and protect vulnerable species.
Latest survey results
Our most recent survey took place from Nov 2021 - Feb 2022
We covered 2 Bioregions
- Central Victorian Uplands (CVU)
- Victorian Volcanic Plains (VVP)
And 4 different Ecological Vegetation Class's (EVC)
- Grassy Dry Forest
- Valley Grassy Forest
- Lowland Forest
- Plains Grassy Woodland (VVP)
Superb Fairywren (Malurus cyaneus)
We recorded 26 native species
- Brown Thornbill
- Eastern Spinebill
- Red Wattle Bird
- Faintail Cuckoo
- Yellow-faced Honeyeater
- Grey Shrike-Thrush
- Little Raven
- Eastern Yellow Robin
- Magpie
- Eastern Grey Kangaroo
- Superb Fairywren
- White-naped Honeyeater
- Red-browed Finch
- White-eared Honeyeater
- Southern Boobook Owl
- Common Bronzewing
- Brush-tailed Phascogale
- New Holland Honeyeater
- Crimson Rosella
- Ring-tailed Possum
- Grey Fantail
- Pied Currawong
- Grey Currawong
- Brush-tailed Possum
- Swamp Wallaby
Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes)
And 2 introduced species
- European Rabbit
- Red Fox
What do we do with this information?
We upload the results of our surveys to biodiversity data bases such as the Victorian Biodiversity Atlas (VBA) and Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). These online data bases are used by natural resource managers, policy makers, scientists and developers to make decisions that impact biodiversity.
We now have an iNaturalist project where you can look at the full results, and also record any observations you make.
The more data available the better decisions can be made to preserve biodiversity of our natural eco-systems.
We also use this information for our own projects to make better management decisions. If we want to have an impact on a particular species, this information allows us to monitor the success of management actions to the target species.
How can you get involved?
The easiest way to get involved is to join our iNaturalist project. We run two fauna monitoring programs a year, but you can upload observations at any time through iNaturalist.
Unless we are targetting a specific species, we conduct our fauna monitoring everywhere from urban areas to remnant bushland. Every piece of data we can gather is important, and tells a story of our landscape and what we can do to help it.
We run our fauna monitoring programs twice a year, and members are allowed to borrow cameras when they like to conduct their own monitoring projects. If you would like to be a part of our next fauna monitoring program or conduct your own, please get in touch.