Dr Benjamin Allen1
1University Of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia
Invasive animals are one of the most important threats to native animals globally, and a great deal of time and money is spent controlling invasive animals and conserving native animals. Detecting the presence of both and monitoring spatiotemporal trends in their densities remain a core management activity. Perhaps the most pressing challenge for managers of both types of animals is detecting the presence of species at low population densities and/or reliably confirming their absence. In this presentation I outline a few real-world examples of wildlife management programs that could immediately benefit from a tool or technique – like eDNA – that addresses this challenge. For example, invasive species like wild dogs, foxes, and feral pigs are being eradicated from more than 75,000 square kilometres of pest-fenced land in western Queensland, and it would be very useful to know when even one individual of these species remain inside fenced areas. Alternatively, new peri-urban infrastructure developments requiring substantial clearing of remnant vegetation anticipate significant biodiversity costs to arboreal mammals like koalas, quolls and gliders, but we do not yet know for sure if these species are even present, let alone how the infrastructure development will impact them over longer timeframes. These and other examples illustrate the pressing need for a tool like eDNA to enable detection of very low-density species and cost-effective broad-scale monitoring of more common species. I encourage and invite eDNA specialists to partner with practitioners to co-design and trial practical eDNA solutions to pressing wildlife management problems.
Biography:
Ben has been involved with wildlife management and research since he was a child, and has been employed in the private and public sectors primarily as a dingo ecologist, conservationist and manager since 2005. He is now a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba, and a Research Associate at Nelson Mandela University on South Africa. Ben’s work develops practical solutions to a variety of complex wildlife management problems around Australia and internationally, often in livestock grazing systems and peri-urban areas.