PhD Scholar

The faunal use of revegetation in agricultural landscapes.

E-mail: Nicola.Munro@anu.edu.au

Revegetation has been hailed in Australia as a potential solution to land degradation problems and biodiversity loss caused by clearance and fragmentation.  Existing work suggests that revegetation can provide some habitat elements for wildlife but that species of greatest conservation concern do not necessarily benefit from plantings.  This has been attributed partly to poor structural complexity in the plantings. 

Structural complexity can be increased by the planting of understorey species, and the inclusion of ground cover elements such as logs, rocks, and tussock grasses.  ‘Best-practice’ revegetation which includes some of these elements has been planted extensively in Gippsland, Victoria.  This project takes the rare opportunity to assess and compare both ‘best-practice’ revegetation and poor-practice revegetation, as well as remnants and paddocks for their habitat value for birds and arboreal marsupials.

The primary aim of this study is to assess the response of birds and arboreal mammals to revegetation plantings differing in understorey complexity.  The study will also assess the related effects of patch size, vegetation cover and isolation of revegetation patches on fauna.  I will compare the total amount of vegetation cover (landscape scale restoration) with the vegetation ‘quality’ (patch scale restoration) to determine which is more important for biodiversity conservation.