Making research partnerships work
Wed, 05 Jun 2019Rachel Morgain is the Threatened Species Recovery Hub’s Knowledge Broker. She believes stakeholder engagement in vitally important to achieving hub aims.
The central purpose of the Threatened Species Recovery Hub is delivering research that is relevant for and useable by decision-makers, land managers
and others responsible for recovering threatened species. Working with partners is vital if we’re to achieve this.
ver our four years of operation, our hub has worked with over 200 agencies across the breadth of the country. Our partners include Commonwealth, state
and territory policy agencies, conservation and land managers, environmental NGOs, Indigenous groups, local government, community
groups and businesses.
Many of these organisations are direct partners on our projects. Others have contributed knowledge, expertise, skills or data. Still others are end-users,
who seek to apply the findings of our research to inform their own contexts and challenges.
Strategic engagement
Guiding engagement at a strategic level is the hub’s Stakeholder Reference Group (SRG), which includes representatives from Commonwealth, state and
territory governments, NGOs, natural resource management organisations and the hub’s Indigenous Reference Group, Leadership Group and engagement team.
The SRG have a vital role in providing strategic input into our research activities and guidance into our hub’s engagement strategies.
The size and scale of the hub means that our research is relevant to much wider networks than can be involved day-to- day in our project-level
collaborations. In partnership with state governments, our hub is holding roadshows in capital cities, with plans for regional areas. These provide
an opportunity for audience members to hear findings from a breadth of hub research in one place and provide feedback into how project findings and
knowledge from the research can be shared. They have been a drawcard for many from government, natural resource management, ecological consulting,
community landcare groups and industry, many of them learning about our hub’s research for the first time.
Showcasing collaboration
Many of our major projects are made possible through the involvement of dozens of partners and collaborators across the country. Celebrating these
major achievements through product launches is a way to showcase the work and applaud these contributions. In 2018, our hub launched two books on threatened
species recovery, guidelines for plant translocation developed through the Australian Network for Plant Conservation, and Australia’s first Threatened Species Index for Australian birds (tsx.org.au).
These big events have the profile, but they are in reality just the end-point of much fuller processes of engagement, driven by a simple core principle
of research co-production. The day-to-day activities of our hub’s projects are guided by the awareness that research designed, implemented and
delivered with stakeholder input is almost certain to be better directed and more readily implemented than research undertaken in isolation.
For further information
Dr Rachel Morgain - rachel.morgain@anu.edu.au
Top image: Forums to share hub research findings and seek feedback from stakeholders are an important activity for the hub. Photo: Jaana Dielenberg
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‘Tis the season...Understanding how threatened plants respond to different fires
Wed, 27 Nov 2019Many landscapes in Australia are fire-prone, and increasingly so. Altered fire regimes can have a serious negative impact on threatened plant species and ecological communities. A Threatened Species Recovery Hub project is working to better understand the effects of different fire regimes on threatened flora in order to improve fire management strategies and conservation outcomes.
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Backyard scientists helping possums and gliders
Wed, 27 Nov 2019Almost a quarter of Australia’s possums and gliders are listed as threatened under Australian environmental law, and many more are showing signs of decline. Dr Rochelle Steven from The University of Queensland believes people in the community can do a lot to support conservation, especially in urban areas.
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Better detection and monitoring vital for better conservation outcomes
Wed, 27 Nov 2019The detection and monitoring of threatened species have been a strong area of research in the National Environmental Science Program and also the two national environmental research programs which preceded it. Hub Director Professor Brendan Wintle takes a look at what we’ve been achieving and why it is so important to the conservation of Australia’s threatened species.
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Beyond captivity for Christmas Island reptiles
Wed, 27 Nov 2019In 2009, the Christmas Island blue-tailed skink and Lister’s gecko were headed for imminent extinction. Parks Australia acted quickly to collect remaining wild individuals in order to establish captive breeding programs on Christmas Island and at Taronga Zoo, Sydney, which have been highly successful. A Threatened Species Recovery Hub project team is working closely with Parks Australia to help secure a future for the two lizards beyond captivity.
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Detection dogs rapidly filling the gaps for rare antechinus species
Wed, 27 Nov 2019The silver-headed antechinus and black-tailed dusky antechinus are carnivorous marsupials found in high-elevation forests in parts of central-eastern and south-eastern Queensland. They were only described in the past six years, but they are already listed as Endangered. Knowing where they occur is essential for effective conservation, but current distribution knowledge is patchy. To address this, PhD candidate Stephane Batista in partnership with the Queensland Herbarium and Queensland Department of Environment and Science is modelling the habitat where these threatened species are likely to occur, and is using detection dogs to rapidly survey these sites.
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