William Holt – u6954919
Frogtober is upon us once again!
Each October, FrogWatch ACT, let by the Ginninderra Catchment Group, leads a community based amphibian monitoring program, identifying levels of abundance and species richness of amphibians within the wetlands of the ACT and surrounding areas. FrogWatch ACT has continued to grow since its establishment in 2002, this being its 20th anniversary! (Osborne & Evans, 2007). How positively ribeting!
Training time
My training included a swift learning of data collection and surveying methods, at HQ just next door to the Jerrabomberra Wetlands. Most importantly, volunteers are given a brief introduction to the identification of different frog calls, so that when in the field, species can be identified and differentiated, and also the abundance of that species can be recorded (Osborne & Evans, 2007). These surveys, and the audio recordings taken with them, build an ongoing insight into the health of amphibian populations in the varying types of wetlands within the ACT, allowing researchers and simple enthusiasts alike to analyse year on year how the region’s amphibians are coping with growing external environmental pressures upon biodiversity.
The ‘Mowing Menace‘
In terms of my contribution, I took surveys in and around the small creek running through Norgrove Park in Kingston, ACT. This area provides a good insight into how amphibians are coping in more urban areas, and what factors may influence them prospering there. In recent times, the FrogWatch surveys have begun to take council mowing patterns into account in the ACT’s public wetlands areas. A correlation between the proximity of mowed grass to the shoreline of the pond or waterway, and the abundance of amphibians found in that area has been shown in recent times (Woodford & Meyer, 2003). This indicates that areas that may be ‘over-mowed’ may actually be harming frog populations. Therefore, with surveyors monitoring the level of mowing while measuring amphibian presence, advice to the government and land managers could be made in the future to influence change, further helping our amphibian amigos!
Significance of community surveying
All of these surveys provide researchers and land managers with a more comprehensive picture of amphibian populations within the area. This is especially poignant amid the ongoing fight against the chytrid fungus epidemic, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, that has ravaged amphibian populations severely in Australia and abroad since before FrogWatch’s inception, and continues to do so (Stockwell et al., 2008). Gaining further insight into what areas may be flourishing, and what areas/ ecosystems may be languishing, could give researchers greater pointers into how and where intervention could be made in seeing these species (Westgate et al., 2015), including the ACT’s own beloved Northern Corroboree Frog, Pseudophryne corroboree, survive further into the 21st century and beyond.
As community led data collection and surveying becomes more common worldwide, a greater link between communities and governmental land managers can be forged (Westgate et al., 2015), hopefully generating a future in which all members of our communities can support biodiversity conservation, and greater steps can be made in making sure that surveying and research can make real differences in how management practices are undertook.
Photos and media have been redacted due to lack of blog media storage space at this time.
Reference List:
Click to access 2009_Frogwatch_Report.pdf
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0140973
Biodiversity Conservation 