BirdLife Australia

Last updated

BirdLife Australia
Company type company limited by guarantee
Industry conservation and research
Founded2012
Headquarters60 Leicester Street, Carlton, Melbourne VIC Australia
Area served
Australia
Key people
Kate Millar
Chief Executive Officer
Number of employees
c.75 (2020)
Website www.birdlife.org.au

BirdLife Australia is a not-for-profit organisation advocating for native birds and the conservation of their habitats across Australia. [1]

Contents

BirdLife Australia is the trading name of the company limited by guarantee formed through the merger of two Australian non-government conservation organisations, Bird Observation and Conservation Australia (BOCA) and Birds Australia. A constitution was drafted in May 2011 for BirdLife Australia, which became operational on 1 January 2012. [2] Their respective magazines, the Bird Observer and Wingspan, were succeeded by Australian Birdlife . [3]

History

At simultaneous annual general meetings held on 21 May 2011, the respective members of BOCA and Birds Australia voted to merge and form the new company. [4] Over 93% of those that voted from BOCA voted for the merger and over 95% of those that voted from Birds Australia voted for the merger. A combined total of 4517 Birds Australia and BOCA members voted on the resolution, with over 36% of Birds Australia members and more than 50% of BOCA members voting. This was the biggest response to a proposed resolution that either organisation had ever received. [4]

With the merger, BirdLife Australia became the Australian national partner organisation of BirdLife International, a role hitherto performed by Birds Australia.

The inaugural Board of Directors was made up of five board members from each of the merging organisations, with the addition of a "neutral" chair, Gerard Early, who continues to serve as a board member. [5]

The inaugural chief executive officer (CEO), Dr Graeme Hamilton, resigned in October 2012. Hamilton had served as CEO of Birds Australia from 2005 to 2011, and also as CEO of BOCA in its final months of operation in 2011. James O'Connor served as interim CEO from October 2012, until the appointment of Paul Sullivan in January 2013.

Constitution

The constitution of BirdLife Australia is loosely based on the constitutions of the merging bodies. The organisation is member-based, and board members are elected by the membership at an annual general meeting. The constitution also describes a transitional period for the board for its first three years of operation, whereby two members of each original board will stand down at each annual general meeting. [2]

Operations

BirdLife Australia's current national office is at 60 Leicester Street Carlton, Victoria, at the site of the former Birds Australia office. The office of BOCA was in Nunawading, Victoria, and was still owned by BirdLife Australia. The organisation operates the Birdlife Discovery Centre at Sydney Olympic Park in Homebush, [6] New South Wales, and leases premises in Floreat, West Australia. [7]

BirdLife Australia owns and operates Gluepot Reserve, a 540 square kilometres (210 square miles) reserve for bird conservation and research in the South Australian semi-arid mallee region, and leases two bird observatories in West Australia, the Broome Bird Observatory and the Eyre Bird Observatory. [8] [9]

BirdLife Australia runs a number of research, monitoring and conservation programs related to Australian birds, and these are often characterised by a significant volunteer input. The Atlas of Australian Birds Project is a national bird monitoring project involving hundreds of skilled bird observers submitting survey data from across the country. This data is used in national reporting, notably State of Australia's Birds reports. Birdata is the gateway to BirdLife Australia data including the Atlas of Australian Birds and Nest record scheme. Datasets from this activity are publicly accessible. [10]

Other large scale monitoring and conservation efforts include Shorebirds 2020, a national migratory shorebirds program, and the Beach-nesting Birds program, aimed at improving the conservation status of resident shorebirds through research, adaptive management and community engagement. [11] [12]

Other projects, including Birds in Backyards and the Aussie Backyard Bird Count have more of an engagement and education focus. [13] More recently (2017-2019), these projects and programs have been amalgamated into larger programs, including the Urban Birds Program (incorporating the Birds in Backyards program, the Woodland Bird Program (incorporating projects such as Birds on Farms and the Regent Honeyeater Recovery Project), the Coast and Marine Program (incorporating the Beach Nesting Birds program, as well as new programs including the Preventing Extinctions program. These programs are increasingly guided and informed by Conservation Action Planning. [14]

The Bushfire Recovery program aims to improve conservation outcomes for Australian birds impacted by the 2019–20 bush fires, with a focus on threatened species most imperilled by the fires. [15]

Together with Charles Darwin University, Birdlife Australia created the Action Plan for Australian Birds 2020. According to the plan, there were 216 threatened birds in Australia compared to 195 ten years ago. The plan, published by CSIRO Publishing, was written by more than 300 experts and edited by CDU Conservation Professor Stephen Garnett and Dr Barry Baker, and reports on a decade of monitoring and assessment of the populations of Australian birds. The report outlines instructions on how to avoid further decline of bird populations. [16] [17]

Regional groups

Birds Australia Northern NSW (BANN) is a regional group of Birds Australia based in northern New South Wales. BANN was formed in 1987 following a campout by RAOU members at Dorrigo the previous year. Members of Birds Australia who are residents of the area of coverage are automatically members of the group. A quarterly newsletter is sent to members. Activities provided for members include meetings, a variety of field trips, bird surveys, and conservation projects.

Birds Australia Western Australia (BAWA) is the Western Australian regional group of Birds Australia. BAWA was formed in 1943 and incorporated in 2001. Members of Birds Australia resident in Western Australia are automatically members of BAWA. BAWA maintains an office, Peregrine House, at Floreat, Perth. It also publishes a quarterly newsletter, WA Bird Notes. Activities provided for members include monthly meetings, a variety of excursions ranging from half-day outings to extensive campouts, bird surveys and conservation projects.

Wader Studies Group

The Australasian Wader Studies Group (AWSG), established in 1981, is a special interest group of BirdLife Australia. It publishes a journal, The Stilt , usually twice a year, with occasional extra issues. Its mission statement is "to ensure the future of waders (shorebirds) and their habitats in Australia through research and conservation programs and to encourage and assist similar programmes in the rest of the East Asian–Australasian Flyway".

The AWSG organises the nearly annual series of North-West Australia Wader Expeditions, which use experienced international cannon netting teams to catch and study the very large numbers of migratory waders that visit the beaches of Roebuck Bay near Broome, Eighty Mile Beach and Port Hedland in north-west Western Australia.

AWSG Objectives

  • To monitor wader populations through a programme of counting and banding in order to collect data on changes on a local, national and international basis.
  • To study the migrations of waders through a program of counting, banding, colour-flagging and collection of biometric data.
  • To instigate and encourage other scientific studies of waders such as feeding and breeding studies.
  • To communicate the results of these studies to a wide audience through the Stilt , the Tattler , other journals, the internet, the media, conferences and lectures.
  • To formulate and promote policies for the conservation of waders and their habitat, and to make available information to local and national governmental conservation bodies and other organisations to encourage and assist them in pursuing this objective.
  • To encourage and promote the involvement of a large band of amateurs, as well as professionals, to achieve these objectives.

Awards

The organisation awards a number of regular prizes.

The Stuart Leslie Bird Research Award and the Professor Alan Keast Award are bestowed annually to postgraduate students of ornithology, with an emphasis on conservation applications. The Indigenous Grant for Bird Research and Conservation acknowledges the contribution of Indigenous Australians by facilitating their further engagement in research and conservation. [18]

John Hobbs Medal

The John Hobbs Medal may be awarded annually for "outstanding contributions to ornithology as an amateur scientist". [19] It commemorates John Hobbs (1923–1990) and was first awarded in 1995.

List of recipients [20]

D. L. Serventy Medal

The D.L. Serventy Medal may be awarded annually for outstanding published work on birds in the Australasian region. It commemorates Dr Dominic Serventy (1904–1988) and was first awarded in 1991. [21]

List of recipients [22] [23]

Publications

Selection of publications:

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Birds of Australia</span> Birds native or endemic to Australia

Australia and its offshore islands and territories have 898 recorded bird species as of 2014. Of the recorded birds, 165 are considered vagrant or accidental visitors, of the remainder over 45% are classified as Australian endemics: found nowhere else on earth. It has been suggested that up to 10% of Australian bird species may go extinct by the year 2100 as a result of climate change.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union</span> Bird research organisation

The Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU), now part of BirdLife Australia, was Australia's largest non-government, non-profit, bird conservation organisation. It was founded in 1901 to promote the study and conservation of the native bird species of Australia and adjacent regions, making it Australia's oldest national birding association. In 1996, the organisation adopted the trading name of Birds Australia for most public purposes, while retaining its original name for legal purposes and as the publisher of its journal, the Emu. In 2012, the RAOU merged with Bird Observation & Conservation Australia to form BirdLife Australia.

<i>Wingspan</i> (magazine)

Wingspan was the quarterly membership magazine of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU). It was first issued in 1991, replacing the RAOU Newsletter. When Birds Australia and Bird Observation and Conservation Australia merged in 2012 to form BirdLife Australia, Wingspan's run ended, and was replaced with Australian Birdlife magazine.

Bird Observation & Conservation Australia (BOCA) was a club established on 12 April 1905 by members of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) in Melbourne, Victoria, as the Bird Observers Club. Although inactive for many years, in 1927 it was revived and subsequently active until the end of 2011 when it merged with Birds Australia to form BirdLife Australia. It published a quarterly journal, Australian Field Ornithology, and a quarterly newsletter, the Bird Observer. It had a cooperative relationship with the Land for Wildlife program, a voluntary conservation scheme for private land in Victoria, which was instigated by two prominent club members, Ellen McCulloch and Reg Johnson, established in 1981, and coordinated by the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment.

Dominic Louis Serventy was a Perth-based Western Australian ornithologist. He was president of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU) 1947–1949. He assisted with the initial organisation of the British Museum's series of Harold Hall Australian ornithological collecting expeditions during the 1960s, also participating in the third (1965) expedition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Broome Bird Observatory</span>

The Broome Bird Observatory is an educational, scientific and recreational facility located 24 km from Broome in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. It began operating in 1988 under the auspices of the non-profit organisation Birds Australia to provide a base for the study and enjoyment of the birds of Roebuck Bay and adjoining areas. The bay boasts the highest diversity of migratory waders in Australia. In March and April, immense flocks of waders can be watched as they depart to their breeding grounds in the northern hemisphere.

Lesley Brooker is an Australian ornithologist based in Western Australia following retirement from a career with the CSIRO's Division of Wildlife Research. There she worked, as a database manager and computer modeller, on developing methodologies for the re-design and restoration of agricultural lands for bird conservation. Since then, she has collaborated with her husband Michael Brooker in studies on cuckoo evolution, population ecology of fairy-wrens and spatial dynamics of birds in fragmented landscapes.

John Casimir Zichy Woinarski is an Australian ornithologist, mammalogist, and herpetologist. He was awarded the 2001 Eureka Prize for Biodiversity Research. In the same year he was the recipient of the D. L. Serventy Medal, awarded by the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union for outstanding published work on birds in the Australasian region.

Clive Dudley Thomas Minton, AM was a British and Australian metallurgist, administrator, management consultant and amateur ornithologist. His interest in birds began in childhood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">East Asian–Australasian Flyway</span>

The East Asian–Australasian Flyway is one of the world's great flyways of migratory birds. At its northernmost it stretches eastwards from the Taimyr Peninsula in Russia to Alaska. Its southern end encompasses Australia and New Zealand. Between these extremes the flyway covers much of eastern Asia, including China, Japan, Korea, South-East Asia and the western Pacific. The EAAF is home to over 50 million migratory water birds from over 250 different populations, including 32 globally threatened species and 19 near threatened species. It is especially important for the millions of migratory waders or shorebirds that breed in northern Asia and Alaska and spend the non-breeding season in South-East Asia and Australasia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penny Olsen</span> Australian ornithologist and author

Penelope Diane Olsen is an Australian ornithologist and author.

John Warham was an Australian and New Zealand photographer and ornithologist notable for his research on seabirds, especially petrels.

Professor Jiro Kikkawa was a Japanese Australian ornithologist. His early zoological studies were at Tokyo University, Japan and at Oxford University in England. He subsequently spent three years at the University of Otago in New Zealand where he began what was to become an enduring focus of research, the behavioural ecology of Silvereyes and other species of Zosterops.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Frederick Recher</span> Australian ornithologist

Emeritus Professor Harry Frederick Recher RZS (NSW) AM is an Australian ecologist, ornithologist and advocate for conservation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vincent Serventy</span> Australian author, ornithologist and conservationist

Vincent Noel Serventy AM was an Australian author, ornithologist and conservationist.

Dr Denis Allan Saunders, AM, is an Australian ornithologist and conservationist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pūkorokoro Miranda Naturalists' Trust</span>

The Miranda Naturalists' Trust is a charitable trust, that established and maintains the Miranda Shorebird Centre, located at Pūkorokoro / Miranda on the western shore of the Firth of Thames on the North Island of New Zealand. The Miranda Naturalists' Trust (MNT) was formed in 1975 to encourage people to visit the coastline and appreciate its wide range of flora and fauna. The trust promotes education and public awareness of coastal ecology, shorebird research and conservation. Work done by the trust, to increase knowledge of shorebird migration, includes bird banding, research and data exchange. The Shorebird Centre has information displays on waders and a library and helps raise funds for the trust's work through their shop sales and visitor accommodation.

The Orielton Lagoon is a shallow dystrophic lagoon located west of Sorell in south east Tasmania, Australia.

Birds Korea is an organisation dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats in South Korea and the wider Yellow Sea Eco-region.

The Victorian Wader Study Group (VWSG) is an Australian non-profit, volunteer, ornithological fieldwork group that gathers biometric and other data on waders and terns, mainly through regular catches of large samples of several species by cannon-netting at sites along the coast of Victoria.

References

  1. "Who We Are". BirdLife Australia. Archived from the original on 4 May 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  2. 1 2 "Constitution" (PDF). BirdLife Australia. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 March 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  3. "Publications". BirdLife Australia. Archived from the original on 4 May 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  4. 1 2 "Dial M for Merger". Birds Australia. Archived from the original on 22 March 2012. Retrieved 16 April 2016.
  5. "People | BirdLife". www.birdlife.org.au. Archived from the original on 24 October 2017. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
  6. "Birdlife Discovery Centre". Sydney Olympic Park. Archived from the original on 23 March 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  7. "BirdLife Western Australia". BirdLife Australia. Archived from the original on 4 May 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  8. "A birder's calendar". The Guardian. March 2021. Archived from the original on 4 May 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  9. "Eyre". BirdLife Australia. Archived from the original on 15 May 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  10. "BirdLife Australia, Birdata". Atlas of Living Australia. Archived from the original on 5 April 2019. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
  11. "Migratory Shorebird Program". BirdLife Australia. Archived from the original on 4 May 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  12. "Beach-nesting Birds". BirdLife Australia. Archived from the original on 4 May 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  13. "Birds in Backyards". Birds in Backyards. Archived from the original on 6 March 2021. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  14. "Urban Birds Program". BirdLife Australia. Archived from the original on 17 March 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  15. "Bushfire Recovery". BirdLife Australia. Archived from the original on 4 May 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  16. The Action Plan for Australian Birds 2020. Archived from the original on 9 August 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  17. "CDU and BirdLife Australia release Action Plan for Australian Birds". Charles Darwin University. December 2021. Archived from the original on 27 June 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  18. "Awards & Scholarships". BirdLife Australia. Archived from the original on 4 May 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  19. "BirdLife Australia: Awards & Scholarships". Archived from the original on 4 September 2012. Retrieved 12 September 2012.
  20. "Birdlife Australia". Archived from the original on 11 February 2022. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  21. Birds Australia D. L. Serventy Medal
  22. Birdlife Australia
  23. "Birdlife Australia". Archived from the original on 11 February 2022. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  24. Our Latest Newsletter
  25. "Joseph, Leo George (1958 - )". Encyclopedia of Australian Science. Archived from the original on 20 September 2019. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
  26. "Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds (7-Volume Set)". nhbs. Archived from the original on 20 May 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.

Further reading

37°48′18″S144°57′39″E / 37.8049°S 144.9608°E / -37.8049; 144.9608