November 23, 2020
The Arnold McGill Memorial Lecture Members Meeting
1 December 2020
‘Waterbirds – sentinels of rivers
under pressure’
Professor Richard Kingsford, Director of the
Centre for Ecosystem Science, UNSW Sydney
Freshwater biodiversity around the world is in
long term decline. And Australia, as the driest
inhabited continent, is under extreme pressure.
We have been using waterbirds as indicators of
the pressures and trajectories of change in our
wetlands and rivers, over 38 years, 1983-2020.
I will talk about some of the major changes that
have occurred in our waterbird communities
which are indicating fundamental challenges
for environmental flow management particularly
in the Murray-Darling Basin. Contrastingly, the
waterbirds and the habitats they depend on are
still doing well in the Lake Eyre Basin. These
trajectories of change are borne out by data
from our aerial surveys of waterbirds across
eastern Australia. We have just finished our
2020 aerial surveys, despite major challenges.
These data are delivering on a range of fronts
from understanding the status of different
waterbird species, wetlands and river health
and climate change impacts, underlining
the importance of waterbirds as sentinels of
freshwater biodiversity.
View the lecture here.
September 25, 2020
New Website for ORAC
The website includes a comprehensive Index of Cases which includes all NSW reports that have been submitted to NSW ORAC and BARC both accepted and not accepted, and also includes known reports of rare species for which no submission was made. Most of these latter reports are shown at the end of the Index of Cases as not confirmed/not assessed but some have case numbers since, in the early days of NSW ORAC, case numbers were sometimes assigned when a sighting was claimed but which was not followed up with a submission. The Index of Cases can be searched by species names, dates, sites, etc and there is also a downloadable PDF version.
The latest revision of the NSW ORAC Review List is on the site as a PDF file and the URR Form is on the site as a downloadable Word document which can be used to prepare submissions to the committee.
Vist the site here: www.nsworac.org/
July 18, 2020
Regent Honeyeaters and Swift Parrots: an update from Birdlife Australia
On July 7, 2020, Mick Roderick gave his presentation on “Regent Honeyeaters and Swift Parrots – an update from BirdLife Australia” to Birding NSW via Zoom. He kindly agreed for the talk to be recorded for club members to view via the Birding NSW website (www.birdingnsw.org.au). I apologise that the initial part of the presentation is missing but the remainder of the presentation provides important information on the current status of these birds and the work being done particularly for the Regent Honeyeater to monitor and protect these birds.
A full set of slides used by Mick Roderick in this talk is available on the “What the Guest Speakers said” page.
In this video, Mick Roderick gives an update on Regent Honeyeaters and Swift Parrots.
Elisabeth Karplus
