Abstract for presentation at Biodiversity Extinction Crisis Conference - A Pacific Response

Resource condition monitoring continues to flourish both as a discipline and a social obligation. In grazing enterprise, it has long been recognised that monitoring land condition and grass cover is important for sustainable management. Historically untested anecdotes suggest this adequately accounts for other values such as biodiversity and hydrological function. It is now recognised that such simple relationships are not entirely valid. There is a current strong government emphasis on the need for land managers (e.g. state agency, NRM regional bodies, and other land stewards) to demonstrate a duty of care for the environment, such as monitoring biodiversity condition and trend.

In response to this a range of condition assessment tools are being developed and tested across Australia. These range in complexity from simple, field site-based categorised metrics to complex remotely sensed indices. However, unless assessment tools are underpinned by detailed information on measurable facets of biodiversity, hydrological function and pastoral science, and account for spatial and temporal pattern, they will all ultimately be meaningless. We introduce and present data from two projects examining biodiversity condition in Queensland’s grazed rangelands.. The projects together cover almost the total span of the Queensland, and are investigating the relationship between detailed biodiversity pattern and a range of condition metrics; BioCondition, Stocktake, remote sensed indices, and Patchkey (an LFA equivalent). We present preliminary data from intensive field studies in open savanna woodlands and identify the strengths and weaknesses of many of the surrogate condition variables. Early evidence suggests many of these tools show promise, but a single method is unlikely to be appropriate, given the dichotomy in definitions of ‘condition’ for biodiversity and grazing production. One challenge is to find the balance between a method that is simple enough for all land managers to use, but is able to capture ecological complexity.