Wildlife Cameras Capture Conservation Wins At Young

Southern Tablelands landholders are hoping to catch a glimpse of rare and endangered species on their properties with a new initiative launched by the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust.

A workshop was delivered as part of the Land Libraries program at the Clover Leigh Golf Club in Young this month, giving 19 landholders the equipment and skills to monitor species on their conservation areas and log them on the online platform NatureMapr.

The information they collect will be used to guide management of their conservation area, as well as support ecological research, feed into future conservation decision making and underpin government policy making.

Each landholder was loaned wildlife cameras and audio recorders to capture evidence of the biodiversity of fauna on their properties. The images and audio will be verified using a combination of artificial intelligence, manual validation by BCT ecologists, and confirmation by NatureMapr expert moderators before being added to the biodiversity database NSW BioNet.

Participants are among the 1,700+ existing landholders across NSW that have permanent conservation agreements on their land. This means the native vegetation on their properties is protected forever and the conservation area is registered on their land’s title. They carry out regular maintenance activities like weed control to protect the environment and provide habitat for important native species.

“Empowering landholders to capture this information provides them with instant feedback on their efforts to protect our precious environment,” NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust Education Team Leader Alice McGrath said.

“Knowing all that hard work is paying off, and our important native species are benefiting, is a real boost to them, personally, but also to our state’s scientific data on native species and their distribution,” she said.

Landholders interested in learning about how the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust supports conservation on private land can visit bct.nsw.gov.au, or phone 1300 992 688.

• Topics:

• Workshops
• What's on
• Nature