| Abstract: |
This project aims to foster a skilled body of community members across the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, capable of carrying out bird surveys to facilitate long-term monitoring programs.
Existing bird identification expertise across the region is limited. Typically members of the public gain experience in bird identification slowly over many years, often through self-education.
A program to assist people in identification of shorebirds is run by Birdlife Australia, but it is generally relevant only to birding enthusiasts who have already achieved a relatively high level of knowledge over many years. Typically the majority of skilled bird watchers represent an aging demographic well-into their 60s and 70s.
To enable implementation of a scientifically-valid, cost-effective, long-term, broad-scale monitoring program able to assess mechanisms of biodiversity change across the Eyre Peninsula, there is a need to develop a new generation of skilled bird-observers across the region. This can be achieved by training community members to the appropriate level, and helping them to carry out surveys within a scientifically-valid monitoring program.
Community members undertake bird identification training (available online) which provides them with the skills and knowledge to undertake bird surveys across Eyre Peninsula. Sightings are entered into an online data portal (www.epbirds.com.au) and the data stored in the Atlas of Living Australia.
This dataset contains the opportunistic records collected within a 500m radius of the 2HA area searches conducted under Survey 995. This data and the data under Survey 995 are part of the same project, which also encompasses any opportunistic records seen outside of the 500m radius AND outside of the 2HA area searches. These opportunistic records have been entered under Survey 993.
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