On June 5, World Environment Day, Federation University, in partnership with the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network, the Atlas of Living Australia and BirdLife Australia, released a new online mapping portal called Valuing Urban Wetlands.
The map reporting tool uses both Latham’s Snipe Project data and Atlas of Living Australia data to help raise awareness about the value of urban wetlands for biodiversity. It captures data from Melbourne only at the moment, but the idea will be to extend it in the future to other urban centres.
You can read more about the project background on the ALA blog.
This week, the Weekend Birder released an episode in their podcast series featuring Birgita talking about the project. You can access it via Spotify or on online at: Weekend Birder episode 79
As some of you with have heard, Latham’s Snipe were uplisted to Vulnerable under the EPBC Act in January of this year. This is the first time in Australia that the species has had a conservation status, and is in recognition that the species is under threat and likely to be declining. The biggest threat to snipe in Australia is wetland habitat loss, hence the purpose of the Valuing Urban Wetlands project. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all the volunteers and people who have contributed to the snipe survey efforts over the years. This has been instrumental in informing the national conservation assessment and the recognition that Latham’s Snipe is a threatened species in Australia.
Lori Gould’s PhD research has been tracking along really nicely and she now has two seasons worth of movement data from tagged snipe in Canberra, which she is currently analysing. The results so far show very similar movement patterns to what we found in Port Fairy years ago with the radio tracking. Most snipe move predictably distances of usually 1-2km and up to 5km nightly between their daytime roost sites and night time foraging sites. She has also had two birds return to Jerrabomberra wetlands after their breeding season and transmitting their tag data to the Bluetooth receiver at the wetland. One bird went to northern Japan and the other went to SW Sakhalin. We were not expecting to get long distance movement data like that from these tags, and we were very excited to get these results. See attached two images.
The Wild Bird Society of Japan are conducting field work again this season on the breeding grounds and we hope they get some great results from their surveying and catching efforts.
Lastly, we have had a short documentary about the snipe project work in Canberra done, which was produced by Richard Snashell. The full doco will be available later in the year.
Latham's snipe project 