News

Eagle eyes map birdlife on Mallee wetlands

Wed, 11 Jul 2018 05:00:00

Each month, a small army of volunteers head out into wetlands around Mildura to indulge their passion for birdwatching and provide important insights into local bird populations and movements.

Mallee Catchment Management Authority has recruited 11 “Citizen Scientists” to gather information on five local wetlands in a long-term project to build local knowledge about the role and health of the wetlands.
Mallee CMA chair Sharyon Peart said the bird observation project was not only building a local database but is also contributing towards Australia’s collective knowledge and understanding of bird population distributions.
“All of the volunteers on the project have been through a training workshop to hone their bird identification skills and to ensure there’s consistency in the data they collect,” Ms Peart said.
“Then each month, they head out for an hour to see what’s going on at one of the five sites we’re monitoring; at Ducksfoot Lagoon, Lake Hawthorn, Cowanna Billabong, Brickworks Billabong and Catfish Billabong,” she said.
“They record the species they see but also variations in numbers, what birds are doing and information about whether they appear to be breeding.”
The volunteers’ observations are uploaded to the national Birdlife Australia portal, known as Birdata, which combines 20 years of data gathered by more than 7000 volunteers in 420,000 surveys – a combined record of more than 7.1 million birds!
Ms Peart said the Citizen Science project was also nurturing a new generation of young people excited to be preserving the future of important local species.
“Some of the migratory species travel more than 10,000km from Alaska and Siberia before they stop off in on our Mallee wetlands,” she said.
“Insights like that are really exciting to people, and make you realise the incredible creatures around us and what an important role wetlands in the Mallee and environmental water play in the bigger picture.”
Teenagers Luka Modica and Harvy Burgess are two of the volunteers who undertake the monthly surveillance at Ducksfoot Lagoon, at Kings Billabong.
“We just get on our bikes and head down to the Billabong, which is close to where Luka lives,” Harvy said.
“It’s nice to be outdoors and doing something useful as well as contributing information about where birds are moving and how that relates to other wildlife.”
Luka said he enjoyed being part of a larger collective community group working to improve long term bird conservation and management.
“Birds are easy to monitor, but they tell us a lot about the health of the environment as well,” Luka said.
“I’ve loved bird watching since I was in primary school, but it’s good to get out and really take notice of what impact environmental changes have on the species that are here,” he said.
“But it’s also great that Harvy and I just have a reason to get together and relax and talk about stuff other than what we’re doing on the monitoring project – I really enjoy it.”