Reducing the Impacts of Development on Wildlife

249 Pages·2012·29.463 MB·English

by  Gleeson, James, Gleeson, Deborah

R
e
d
u James Gleeson
c
The rapidly increasing number of threatened fl ora and This well-researched book provides i
n
an excellent basis for approaching g and Deborah Gleeson
fauna species worldwide is one of the chief problems

and solving problems associated with t
h
confronting environmental professionals today. This impact assessment and mitigation. e

I
problem is largely due to the impact humans have had on It gives an overview of techniques m
and solutions with the objectives p
land use through development (e.g. agricultural, residential, a
of conservation of wildlife that can c
industrial, infrastructure and mining developments). t
be applied to most projects. Such s

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a practical book is a ‘must-read’
f
The requirement for developers to implement measures
for every environmental manager, D
e
to reduce the impacts of development on wildlife is particularly those involved in v
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underpinned by government legislation. A variety of consulting and local government. l
o
p
measures or strategies are available to reduce such Dr Martin Denny m
Fellow of the Royal Zoological Society of NSW
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impacts, including those to reduce impacts on fl ora
Past-President of the Ecological Consultants n
and fauna during land clearance, to deter fauna Association of NSW t o
n
from potential hazards, to facilitate the movement
W
This book should not be on the shelf
of fauna around and through a development site as of every ecologist, consultant or ild
l
well as those to provide additional habitat. In recent developer – it needs to lie open on if
e
their desk, sit at the top of their fi eld
years, considerable advances have been made in the
bag and be widely discussed around
techniques used to reduce the impacts of development
the lunch-room table. Indeed – if your
on wildlife in Australia and overseas. copy is not dog-eared and well-worn,
you are clearly not doing your job
Reducing the Impacts of Development on Wildlife properly! The book is well-written, J
.

clearly laid out and provides a huge G
contains a comprehensive range of practical measures
l
array of practical strategies and e
to assist others to reduce the impacts resulting from e REDUCING
techniques to mitigate the effects s
o
development on terrestrial fl ora and fauna, and promotes of developments on wildlife. n

ecologically sustainable development. It will be very Dr Rodney van der Ree a
n
Deputy Director of the Australian Research Centre d
useful to environmental consultants and managers, for Urban Ecology, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne D
developers, strategists, policy makers and regulators, as .
G
l THE IMPACTS OF DEVELOPMENT ON
well as community environmental groups and students. e
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WILDLIFE
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Reducing the Impacts Final.indd 1 19/12/11 1:43 PM
REDUCING
THE IMPACTS OF
DEVELOPMENT ON
WILDLIFE
James Gleeson
and Deborah Gleeson
© James Gleeson and Deborah Gleeson 2012
All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and
subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, duplicating
or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Contact CSIRO PUBLISHING for
all permission requests.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Gleeson, James.
Reducing the impacts of development on wildlife/by James Gleeson and Deborah Gleeson.
9780643100329 (pbk.)
9780643106932 (epdf)
9780643106949 (epub)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Sustainable development.
Wildlife conservation.
Habitat (ecology).
Environmental policy.
Natural resources – Management.
Habitat conservation.
Gleeson, Deborah.
338.927
Published by
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Front cover: Australian pelican (photo: Ron Whitney), city skyline (photo: iStockphoto)
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Dedication
To our grandparents and parents who
fostered our keen interest in animals and plants
during our childhood.
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Foreword
I have been fortunate to work across the disciplinary boundaries of environmental science,
ecological research and consulting practice for most of my 35-year career. After 6 years working
in environmental chemistry in research organisations in Australia and the USA and 13 years
with the international consulting company, Dames & Moore, I joined CSIRO Wildlife and
Ecology in 1995. My role was to help the organisation with the process of brokering ecological
research into practical applications of knowledge for improved wildlife conservation and
natural resource management on development projects. Throughout my career, I have been
involved in the environmental assessment of many major infrastructure projects for the
mining, oil and gas industries in remote regions, and for urban and industrial developments in
cities. And now I found myself working with some of the best wildlife researchers in Australia
located at Gungahlin Homestead in Canberra.
My experience as an environmental scientist working on controversial infrastructure
projects inevitably led me to working with people who brought widely different knowledge and
perspectives on the value of wildlife. For example, I have listened carefully to ecologists, natural
historians, traditional owners, land managers, community-based organisations, regulators,
engineers, lawyers, developers and passionate citizens speaking out about wildlife – and seldom
with a shared view.
In trying to resolve these contending rationalities, there is always some common disputed
ground between the economic values of a developable resource and the biodiversity values of
viable wildlife and functional ecosystems – as if there were a single choice between develop-
ment or conservation. And more often than not, either an iconic species of Australian wildlife,
or one that became well known through the project, has found itself close to the centre of an
increasingly politicised decision-making process – sometimes landing wildlife on the front
pages of newspapers or even in the courts.
In the 1970s and 1980s, with the rise of environmental impact assessment and a resource-
driven economy, there were many field surveys conducted on sites that turned up new informa-
tion about wildlife species for particular projects. Most of these local surveys for companies
were conducted by consultants and the very few big regional fauna surveys were conducted by
CSIRO, state departments and some universities. However, at that time, even basic, reliable pub-
lished information about wildlife distribution was not as easy to access as it is nowadays. And
published ecological research almost always sat in hard copy journals in research organisations
and university libraries. This meant that there was an asymmetry of information access between
what was available to the researchers and what was accessible for those in consulting and man-
agement practice who were often living in remote areas without access to any libraries.
In the 1980s, most environmental management staff and consultants working on major
infrastructure projects went about their environmental compliance requirements without
much deliberate focus on wildlife, except to avoid accidental loss or to conduct a routine fauna
survey. The focus was mostly on the rehabilitation of degraded landscapes and water manage-
ment – gaining practical knowledge along the way from their own experiences and other
v
vi Reducing the Impacts of Development on Wildlife
knowledge from that of the traditional owners, regulators, occasional researchers and local
land users who visited the development sites. In general, this practical ecological knowledge
was only written up in the grey literature of conference proceedings and shared by word of
mouth through industry-sponsored environmental conferences or by a consultant transferring
the knowledge by working on another project.
How the game has changed in the last two decades! The 1990s and 2000s saw significant
advances in funding large-scale research and development programs for fauna conservation.
For example, Western Shield in Western Australia was launched in 1996 and is a world-class
predator control program aimed at the recovery of a range of threatened species, mostly
through the wise use of 1080 against foxes. There were also three consecutive Cooperative
Research Centres (CRC) – namely Vertebrate Biocontrol, Pest Animal Control, and Invasive
Animals that brought together traditional strengths in wildlife research in CSIRO and the
universities together with state departments and biocontrol organisations to consider new
control measures for major invasive species such as foxes, rabbits, mice, cane toads and carp.
There were also large-scale vegetation and fauna surveys conducted as part of the Regional
Forest Agreements and the State Forests of NSW Environmental Impact Assessments in the
1990s. These initiatives required extensive field surveys for fauna using spatial analysis of veg-
etation patterns for habitat assessment and display of information within a new range of acces-
sible geographic information systems. These techniques were complemented by the
development of ecological theory around population viability, database analysis and adaptive
management approaches.
It was only a matter of another few years before the rise of the internet and easy access to
powerful search engines. These technologies have revolutionised the information landscape
for land managers, consultants, researchers and community-based organisations, with unpar-
alleled access to electronic environmental information in the form of satellite imagery, peer-
reviewed journals, data transfer, remote sensing and monitoring technologies. All of a sudden,
there became a form of electronic accountability whereby information is able to be easily
accessed, evaluated and scrutinised by many other stakeholders entering the development
process – and if not, why not?
When I was first approached to provide a foreword for Reducing the Impacts of Develop-
ment on Wildlife I did not realise that I would be reading a book that overcomes the informa-
tion asymmetry problem we experienced in wildlife research and management in the last
century. This book, written by ecologists with backgrounds in both research and consulting
practice, provides an excellent synthesis of the peer-reviewed research literature across many
disciplines. However, the real advance has been to combine ecological theory and field research
with practical knowledge from many local case studies in wildlife management across many
development projects.
I do not recall seeing a book before that so clearly outlines in clear technical English so
many practical measures for reducing impacts on wildlife across multiple types of industrial
and urban developments. This book will undoubtedly fill an empty niche on the bookshelves
of wildlife practitioners, managers, researchers, students and policy makers. The authors also
invite us to join a process for rapid learning and knowledge sharing among all those who value
and want to protect our wildlife. Let’s join them!
Allen Kearns
CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences
Contents
Foreword v
Acknowledgements xi
About the authors xii
Contributors xiii
1 Introduction 1
Why this book was written 1
The scope of this book 2
The structure of this book 4
2 Potential impacts of development on flora and fauna 7
Types of impacts 7
Assessing impacts 12
3 Selecting measures to reduce impacts of development
on wildlife – why an understanding of ecology is
fundamental 15
Ecosystem processes, function and resilience 15
Species present and absent, and their habitat 17
Population ecology 18
Animal behaviour 18
Movement and dispersal 19
4 Avoiding impacts on flora and fauna 21
Conservation planning 21
Ecologically sustainable development and the precautionary
principle 22
Measures to avoid impacts on wildlife 22
Wildlife buffers 28
5 Modifying human behaviour to reduce impacts of
development on flora and fauna 33
Wildlife education 34
Fauna crossing signs 38
vii
viii Reducing the Impacts of Development on Wildlife
Reducing vehicle speed 43
6 Measures to reduce direct fauna and flora mortality
during land clearance 47
Fauna rescue 48
Plant salvage 54
7 Measures to exclude or deter fauna from a
development site 57
Fauna exclusion fences 58
Coverings 66
Reducing the attractiveness of fauna habitat 69
Visual deterrents 74
Chemical deterrents 79
Auditory deterrents 81
8 Measures to promote safe movement of fauna around
and through a development site 85
Natural habitat linkages 86
Land bridges 91
Fauna underpasses 97
Canopy bridges 105
Glide poles 110
Escape routes 114
Fauna inclusion fences 119
Alternatives to barbed wire 122
9 Measures to minimise habitat degradation near a
development site 127
Weed prevention and control 128
Discouraging exotic vertebrates 133
Reduction of artificial lighting 135
10 Measures to provide additional habitat for flora
and fauna impacted by development 141
Revegetation and restoration of ecosystems 142
Artificial frog ponds 150
Wildlife-friendly dams 155
Artificial tree hollows 159
Artificial subterranean bat roosts 167
Artificial nesting platforms 172
Artificial retreats for reptiles 175
Salvaged habitat features 177
Contents ix
11 Ex situ measures for conservation of flora and fauna 183
Seed preservation 184
Translocation 187
12 Environmental offsets 191
Description and potential applications 191
Effectiveness 192
13 Monitoring 197
How can monitoring be used? 197
Ecological monitoring approaches 197
Monitoring results 198
14 Adaptive management 199
15 Concluding remarks 201
References 203
Index 232