Teams to survey Australia's biodiversity

Adam Bennett, AAP The Sydney Morning Herald 15 Feb 10;

Scientists and volunteers will spend the next three years surveying the far-flung corners of the continent to find the missing pieces of Australia's animal and plant diversity.

The $10 million Bush Blitz program will send research teams to remote national reserves throughout the country in a search for new species, and to better document those already known.

Groups of 10 to 12 scientists, together with volunteer "citizen scientists" and support staff, will conduct six major surveys each year.

In the process the teams will be building a better snapshot of the plant and animal life in the national reserves, which make up 11 per cent of Australia's land mass.

Launching the program at a national reserve in Darkwood in northern NSW, Environment Minister Peter Garrett said the surveys would help uncover some of the thousands of native species that have yet to be documented.

"Bush Blitz is nature discovery on a huge scale - teams of scientists will scour hundreds of reserves and expect to find hundreds of species that are completely new to science," he said.

"Australia is home to more than 560,000 native species, many found nowhere else on earth, yet only one quarter of this biodiversity has been scientifically documented."

Mr Garrett toured a survey camp at Darkwood, in the New England National Park, where he was introduced to a recently caught barred frog, a swain's leaf-tailed gecko, a golden crown snake and a brown tree snake.

"Quite often we have a sense that the environment is under some pressure and threat and that's true," and at times squeamish Mr Garrett said.

"But what we don't have as much of a sense of is the already great expanse of species there. That is becoming filled in with this type of scientific effort."

The program has been jointly funded by the federal government, which chipped in $6 million, and miner BHP Billiton, who has made a $4 million contribution.

International conservation group Earthwatch will help manage the research sites, and co-ordinate the volunteer "citizen scientists".

Earthwatch Australia's Executive Director, Richard Gilmore, said it was those volunteers, and links with government and business, that made such a large project possible.

"The national reserve system is larger in area than Germany, England and New Zealand combined," Mr Gilmore said.

"(Bush Blitz is) bringing together business, and community groups, and government, and volunteers, in a way that probably hasn't been done before. This is an important large-scale project that just couldn't be done by one group, or by scientists alone."

Scientist Frank Lemckert, from the NSW government body Industry and Investment NSW, said Bush Blitz would travel to areas usually ignored by researchers.

"This program is going to go to a whole lot of areas you wouldn't usually go to, and it is not just going to look at the charismatic, fluffy, furry things," he said.

"These surveyors will look at everything."

Dr Lemckert said the information gathered would help future conservation efforts.

"It's really about knowing about the environment that we have and that we came here with is being protected, so our children have what we have," he said.

"If we don't know it's there, we're not going to be able to save it. Until we actually understand them we can't conserve them, so this survey will be a chance to do that, so we can leave behind for our children and their children the same legacy that we have ourselves. I don't want to say, "Sorry kids, I saw it, but you didn't."