Conservation of the Australasian Bittern in Western Australia
The following abstract is part of the Bringing Back the Bunyip Bird Australasian Bittern Conservation Summit (Leeton, 1-4 Feb, 2022).
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Sarah Comer, Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, sarah.comer@dbca.wa.gov.au
Co-authors: Alan Clarke, Vicki Stokes, Plaxy Barrett and Allan Burbidge for the Western Australian Australasian Bittern Recovery Team
The adoption of the Western Australian recovery plan for the Australasian Bittern in 2018 set out clear management and research priorities for bittern recovery in WA.
The Western Australian Australasian Bittern Recovery Team also convened in 2018 to provide a coordinated and multi-partner recovery team that could collaborate on the implementation of recovery actions. This followed years of informal discussions and activity with DBCA, BirdLife, South Coast NRM and other partners collaborating on bittern conservation, but formalising the team has provided opportunities to increase funding and coordinate effort to implement recovery actions across the south-west of WA.
A WA State NRM grant was awarded to BirdLife in 2019, and this has enabled expanded monitoring and complemented the additional DBCA and BirdLife investment over the past decade. Research into habitat use and water chemistry has helped to understand priority wetland areas, and many of these are now subject to additional management effort with respect to introduced predators and fire.
Monitoring of wetlands has been improved through the use of autonomous recording units (ARUs), and between 2019 and 2021, 20 to 30 wetlands were monitored simultaneously across the state. Over the same time period there have been a number of attempts to capture Australasian Bittern to fit GPS transmitters.
In this talk we will summarise the current thinking on the Australasian Bittern in WA, and highlight some of the advances in acoustic monitoring and understanding of bittern occupancy of wetlands across the state.