Emma Woodcock (u6587190)

During the month of October 2020, I found myself among the ranks of volunteers, braving the dark, the evening weather of the ACTs’ spring and hiking out to the far north-west extent of the territory, to listen in to the mating calls of the frogs of the region. This is all to collect data for Frogwatch, a frog monitoring program ran by Ginninderra Catchment Group.

Through October, volunteers head out right after dark to survey for frogs, recording species observed and their abundance at several sites across Canberra. Frogs are ‘sighted’ using their call. Different frog species have their own distinctive mating calls which can be used to identify them. This audible survey method is effective and completely non-invasive for the creatures (Ginninderra Catchment Group, 2011).

What is Frogwatch?

Ginninderra Catchment Group is a group of ‘friends of’ and Landcare groups that form a “community-based natural resource management organisation”. Frogwatch is one of their programs.

Each year, the data recorded is made into annual reports, these reports date back to 2003 and are publicly available. The data is used by Ginninderra catchment group, ACT governments and researchers. The methods were created by scientists from the ACT government and the University of Canberra to accompany their pre-existing frog monitoring (Ginninderra Catchment Group, 2011). The objectives of the monitoring are to

• Inform about the distribution and abundance of frog species and the health of wetlands and waterways,
• Create a long-term data source,
• Be available to students and researchers, and
• Supplement data recorded by the ACT government to aid their monitoring and research (Ginninderra Catchment Group, 2011).

Power of citizen scientists

Effective, long-term monitoring provide insights into ecosystem change and can be vital for species conservation (Likens & Lindenmayer, 2018). However, Dixson et al. argue that the data collected by institutions monitoring is often ineffective, especially in government organisations (2019). Legislation hurdles, time and money constraints and lack of staff all may cause this (Dixson et al., 2019).

This is where Frogwatch and other citizen science initiatives come in. 100s of volunteers get involved and together can collect a large amount of data. The barrier to conservation of lack of funding is unlikely to change any time soon in Australia. The work of volunteers enables Frogwatch to collect its data on a low budget and continue for nearing two decades.

Frogwatchs’ data has contributed to research including the ongoing assessment of climate changes’ effect frog on breading season timing, the effect of urbanization on frog populations and to determine the optimal conditions for various frog species. In response, plantings have been done to improve and create frog habitat. The surveys have also recorded 3 new frog species in the ACT over its years.

This successful and popular citizen science program is giving government and research access to high quality and long term data and it is in no small part thanks to its volunteers.