Harry Recher

Australian Museum · Department of ornithology

The Yellow-plumed Honeyeater Lichenostomus (Ptilotula) ornatus is a short-billed honeyeater which has declined in abundance over its range in Western Australia (WA), but remains abundant in the Great Western Woodland (GWW) where this study was conducted. It is also found in southeastern Australia where it occurs mostly in mallee woodlands. Yellow-p...

Frequency of occurrence data are available for birds along a transect in Kings Park, Perth, Western Australia from 1928 to 2008. These data show a dynamic avifauna with about a third of the sixty-one bird species recorded declining in frequency since 1928, another third, including new colonisers, increased, while a third showed little or no change....

In Australia’s eucalypt forests and woodlands, co-habiting birds differ in the foraging manoeuvres or methods used to search for and take prey, the substrates and plants on which prey are found, and the heights at which foraging takes place. On the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, eucalypt forest and woodland birds foraged on different subst...

Sydney is an affluent city of nearly three million people surrounding three well developed estuaries and a shallow protected bay. These areas all originally had extensive wetlands of salt marsh, mangroves and sea-grass flats. The areas are now being rapidly reclaimed or destroyed by port development, marinas, canal estate development, playing field...

Mulga (Acacia aneura) woodlands dominate much of arid and semiarid Australia. Although mulga woodlands are floristically and structurally diverse, the composition of the mulga avifauna is consistent across the continent, with 50-70% of bird species shared between sites and a high proportion of migratory and nomadic species. A comparison of avian fo...

The foraging behaviour of mulga birds in the Murchison and Gascoyne Bioregions was studied in 1999 following a period of heavy rain and again in 2002 when it was dry. Mulga birds allocated foraging resources in a similar fashion to other bird communities, with species differing in the way that prey were taken, the substrates and plant species on wh...

While it is important for conservation scientists to advise government on policy, they need to do more than give advice. Conservation scientists need to be public advocates for the creation of economies that are ecologically sustainable. To achieve sustainability conservation scientists must assume a role of leadership in the development and applic...

This is an essay that began as a book review. The book reviewed is: 'The Australian Bird Guide' by Peter Menkhorst, Danny Rogers, Rohan Clarke, Jeff Davies, Peter Marsack and Kim Franklin, and published in 2017 by CSIRO Publishing, Clayton, Victoria, Australia (paperback, AU$49.95, ISBN 9780643097544). I enjoy reviewing books and particularly enjoy...

Our previous work has shown how invertebrate food resources influence usage of tree species by birds. Using data from Western Australian forests and woodlands, we extend the findings to indicate how the avifauna is influenced by these resources at the landscape level. The northern dry sclerophyll forest of south-west Australia comprises jarrah (Euc...

The Top End of the Northern Territory lies within the monsoon or wet-dry tropics of Australia, where virtually year-round high temperatures and humidity test the endurance of non-indigenous people. The first British garrisons and convicts that attempted to settle the north during the 1820s and following decades had to suffer the harsh conditions, a...

In this paper, I present data on the foraging behaviour of eucalypt forest and woodland birds at two sites on the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales during the non-breeding season (winter).The winter community was a subset of the summer community, with six guilds among 23 species identified by cluster analysis compared with seven guilds among 4...

Australia's system of conservation reserves is inadequate to conserve continental biodiversity. Reserves are small, isolated, and unrepresentative of continental ecosystems to the extent that entire groups of organisms, such as nomadic and migratory birds, are poorly conserved. The reasons for the inadequacy of the reserve system are historical and...

Nectar-feeding birds are commonly the most abundant birds in Australian eucalypt forests and woodlands, where they play a key role as pollinators of native plants. Among the nectar-feeders, honeyeaters (Meliphagidae) are particularly aggressive and may exclude other birds from the habitats they occupy thereby affecting the composition of avian comm...

One factor in the alienation of nature in Australia is the failure of the scientific community to take responsibility for the technology created by the knowledge generated from scientific research. Science has failed to protect Australia's flora and fauna. Scientists must communicate more widely with society, but need to be educated on how to commu...

From 1999 to 2003, the Great Western Woodlands in Western Australia experienced above average summer and autumn rainfall. Although rainfall from 2004 to 2010 approximated long-term seasonal and annual averages, the soil and litter layer became parched, there was less vegetative growth, and nectar production declined. As habitats became drier, fewer...

I BEGIN this review of Clifford Frith’s book on the Lord Howe Island Woodhen Gallirallus sylvestris with a ‘conflict of interest’ admission. Long ago, 1970–72 to be precise, while at the Australian Museum, I coordinated an environmental survey of Lord Howe Island. The survey was undertaken at the request of the Lord Howe Island Board for the museum...

Wildlife research; climate change; animal ethics; science policy; journal impact factors; Australian fauna; ecological conscience; biodiversity crisis; extinction, taxonomists, museums

Comparisons of community structure across sites allow for the detection of convergent patterns and the selective forces that have produced them. In this study, we examined the foraging guild structure of birds breeding in forests on three continents – Europe, North America, and Australia, with largely phylogenetically distinct avifaunas. We examine...

In December 2005, a wildfire burnt a large area of semi-arid eucalypt woodland along ∼10 km of the Norseman-Coolgardie Road north of Norseman in the Great Western Woodlands (GWW), Western Australia. Few birds used the burnt area in the first year after the fire and these were mainly ground and shrub foraging insectivores. There was no influx of see...

This scientist is grumpy with his scientific colleagues and the conservation agenda driven by green groups. Scientists are too conservative and lack the skills to communicate effectively with the community. Scientists need to assume moral responsibility for the application of their science and not allow multinationals and politicians dictate scienc...

WILDLIFE rescue has become part of Australian urban society. Injured and sick animals are common in all cities and their surrounding suburbs. The majority of these are common human commensals that have been dogs, cats, and cars, or have struck overhead wires or windows. Near coasts, it is common to find birds entangled in fishing line (with or with...

IVOR Beatty, the man who made Pacific Conservation Biology possible, died on 29th June 2012 after a long illness. Ivor had many roles in the play that was his life. Only one was as a publisher and conservationist, but it is for that role that naturalists across Australia will remember him.

THIS is the third Action Plan for Australian Birds produced since 1992 by Stephen Garnett and his colleagues. Each reviews the conservation (threatened) status of the 1266 indigenous bird taxa (species and distinct populations; excluding vagrants) found in Australia and its territories. Threats, important habitats, and gaps in information are given...

OCEANS cover 70% of Earth, but the impact of humans on the world’s seas and oceans is boundless. Boundless in the sense that human impacts begin on the land at the headwaters of every creek, stream, and river flowing to the sea and extend without interruption along and across every coast and estuary to the most remote and deepest parts of the ocean...

Dead, standing trees, commonly referred to as stags in Australia and as snags in North America, are a regular feature of forests and woodlands. Although previously regarded as useless, often meriting removal, stags are now recognized as important for wildlife. We quantified the abundance of arthropods that visited or used the trunks of stags in Kin...

For a biologist attaining his doctorate in 1990, David Lindenmayer has been nothing less than prolific. His web page at the Australian National University (ANU) credits him with more than 520 scientific publications and 20 books. This book, Forest Pattern and Ecological Process, brings together his 25 years of research experience in the montane ash...

THE first edition of Sharks and Rays of Australia was published in 1994. This second edition is fully revised, with descriptions of 322 species of sharks, skates, rays, and chimaerids. Since 1994, the Class Chondrichthyes has been extensively revised and the second edition of Sharks and Rays of Australia includes 26 species that have been formally...

THESE days debate over climate change (aka global warming) pervades every facet of our lives from politics to conservation, from small talk to international conferences. Managing Climate Change presents the papers from one of those conferences, Greenhouse 2009. Remarkably, Greenhouse 2009 was the fifth in the Greenhouse series, occupied four days,...

ALTHOUGH Steadman’s book was published in 2006, it has lost none of its value. Without question, Extinction & Biogeography of Tropical Pacific Birds is one of the most interesting and informative books published on the birds of the Pacific Region in the last 100 years. It ranks in importance with Ernst Mayr’s Birds of the Southwest Pacific (1945) a...

The majority of our studies of woodland invertebrate have been conducted in the Wandoo (Eucalyptus wandoo and E. capitata) woodland region of Western Australia (see map below). This region, which is immediately to the east of the Jarrah/Marri (E. marginata/Corymbia calophylla) forest, gives way to lower mallee formations, before blending into the G...

Despite the clearing of the wheatbelt, Western Australia retains the most extensive and least disturbed temperate woodlands in southern Australia. The Great Western Woodlands falls beyond the clearing line and is a 16 million hectare region of eucalypt woodland associated with mallee, heaths, and salt lakes (Watson et al. 2008). Although the Great...

By the time you read this editorial, Pacific Conservation Biology may be fully online (http://www.informit.com.au/ ? see access instructions at the end of this article, or check for a link on the journal web site at http://pcb.murdoch.edu.au/). With support from the Oceania Section of the Society for Conservation Biology (http://www.conbio.org/Sect...

Oceania is a diverse region encompassing Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, New Zealand, and Polynesia, and it contains six of the world's 39 hotspots of diversity. It has a poor record for extinctions, particularly for birds on islands and mammals. Major causes include habitat loss and degradation, invasive species, and overexploitation. We identif...

On last night?s (11 November 2009) ABC Television, I watched Sir David Attenborough being interviewed for the 7.30 Report by Kerry O?Brien. Sir David is a household name throughout the English speaking world, if not universally. Since the beginnings of television, David Attenborough has brought the world of nature into our homes. He has probably se...

This paper reports a study of ground-dwelling, small mammals in coastal eucalypt forest in south-eastern Australiafrom1970through2005.Duringthistime,thestudyareaburntinanintense fireinDecember1972andwaspartially burntinNovember1980.Both fireswereassociatedwithprolongeddrought.Themammalsstudiedcomprisedtwodasyurid marsupials, Antechinus agilis and A...

Polynesia is a part of the world where tourism, especially focused on rich coral reefs, is an important part of the economy. But from the viewpoint of both tourism and conservation biology, it is one of the most threatened areas of the world. Here the ethical issues are somewhat different. How long can this dependence continue and at what cost? Wha...

When i was growing up in New York City during the 1940s, people (ordinary people anyway) assumed responsibility for their own actions. That was back when falling on an icy sidewalk meant being careless and not that the City had failed in its duty of care; when you could go fishing in the local park without first climbing a chain link fence designed...

Located in south-west Western Australia, the Great Western Woodlands (GWW) is Australia's largest and most intact landscape of temperate eucalypt woodlands, mallee and shrublands. Encompassing more than 15 million hectares, the GWW extends from Kalgoorlie in the north to Salmon Gums in the south, and from the rabbit-proof fence in the west to the N...

Good conservation is sound management based on good science and a thorough understanding of the natural history of the organisms and systems being managed. Even doing nothing, as some advocate for wilderness, is a management decision and one which should have its foundations in science and natural history. This idea that conservation management sho...

Following an intense bushfire in December 1972, small mammals were sampled from November 1973 to June 1976 on a few hectares of unburnt, grassy river flat in the Nadgee Nature Reserve, New South Wales. Hindsight shows the importance of these small unburnt patches as refuges for small mammals. A surprising proportion of wildlife survives a large bus...

What makes an educated scientist? Expert knowledge, including an understanding of experimental design and data analysis, is essential to being an innovative scientist and a leader in one?s field, but it is only part of a scientist?s education and may not even be the most important part. Paul Ehrlich and I have been fond of saying that research is n...

It is manifestly unfair to comment on the outcome of a national conference when the final report will not be released until May 30th, ten days after I write this editorial. However, the importance of the 2020 Summit held in Canberra the weekend of April 19?20 should not be underestimated. The Summit was an initiative of Australia?s Prime Minister,...

When Malcolm Jones and I taught first year students in Resource Management at the University of New England early in the 1990s, we set a major project based on an analysis of media coverage of environmental issues. I particularly remember a report on water pollution on Sydney?s beaches. Using column inches, size of headlines, location in the newspa...

One of the great challenges facing humanity in the twenty-first century is the conservation and restoration of biodiversity (Convention on Biodiversity 1992). In this chapter we present the landscape-ecological underpinnings of a new nongovernment organization (NGO)-driven conservation initiative in Australia, namely the WildCountry Project. Global...

The six papers in this theme issue of Pacific Conservation Biology were presented at a symposium organized by the WildCountry Science Council (see Recher 2003 for an account of WildCountry) at the Adelaide meeting of the Ecological Society of Australia in 2004. The symposium theme of ?dispersive fauna? is central to the philosophy and principles of...

This publication comprises the proceedings of the Australasian Shorebirds Conference held in Canberra in 2003. It is No. 18 of Wetlands International Global Series and International Wader Studies 17 of the International Wader Study Group. Although publication was delayed, the papers in this proceedings remain an important contribution to internatio...

The Australasian section of the Society for Conservation Biology welcomes you to its inaugural meeting ?The Biodiversity Extinction Crisis ? An Australasian and Pacific Response? at the University of New South Wales from July 10?12, 2007. Registration is now open. This will be the first meeting of its kind in the Australasian region and aims to dra...

This is the second edition of this very useful list of Australian vertebrates. The first edition was published in 1998 and has been frequently consulted when needing a name or to check my appalling spelling of Latin.

The Board of Australasian Section of the Society for Conservation Biology is very busy organizing the inaugral conference (see below).

One of the biggest threats to the survival of many plant and animal species is the destruction or fragmentation of their natural habitats. The conservation of landscape connections, where animals, plants, and ecological processes can move freely from one habitat to another, is therefore an essential part of any new conservation or environmental pro...

The south-western subspecies of the Crested Shrike-tit (Falcunculus frontatus leucogaster) is uncommon and declining in abundance. Moreover, populations fail to persist in even large remnants of native vegetation within agricultural areas. Reasons for the scarcity of Shrike-tits in south-western Australia, their decline, and their failure to surviv...

Abstract This study reports on the foraging profile of a wandoo woodland avifauna at Dryandra in Western Australia, Australia. Despite its geographical isolation, wandoo woodland shares a large number of species with woodland bird communities in eastern Australia and there are broad similarities in community foraging profiles. Insect-eating birds u...

Chemical knockdown and branch clipping procedures were used in wandoo (Eucalyptus wandoo) woodland and jarrah (E. marginata)/marri (E. calophylla) open-forest to sample arboreal invertebrate faunas on three species of Western Australian eucalypts. Jarrah was sampled in both habitats and had significantly lower invertebrate populations and a less di...

The relationship between length and weight was calculated for nine taxa of eucalypt forest and woodland invertebrates from south-eastern New South Wales. Length and weight were highly correlated. For the majority of taxa the relationship was best described by a power model. There were no significant differences between the length-weight regressions...

The foraging ecology of eucalypt forest and woodland birds was studied on three 10 ha plots in southeastern Australia. Quantitative data were obtained for 41 species of which 31 were insectivorous, eight were nectar-feeders, and two were parrots that fed primarily on eucalypt seeds. Birds-of-prey, large omnivores and frugivores were uncommon. Insec...

Abstract Chemical knockdown procedures were used to sample canopy arthropods at 3 month intervals over 1 year at two sites, one in eastern Australia and the other in western Australia. Samples were taken from narrow-leaved ironbark, Eucalyptus crebra, and grey box, Eucalyptus moluccana, in the east and from jarrah, Eucalyptus marginata, and marri,...

Abstract Chemical knockdown is a commonly used method for sampling canopy arthropods. The procedure is susceptible to high winds and in certain conditions may be virtually unusable. Here we introduce a new procedure, branchlet shaking, and compare it with chemical knockdown. Samples produced by branchlet shaking yield fewer arthropods per tree and...

Abstract Levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium were measured for the foliage of two co-dominant eucalypts at each of two sites, one in eastern Australia and the other in Western Australia. In eastern Australia, foliage was sampled in the canopy and subcanopy for narrow-leaved ironbark Eucalyptus crebra and grey box E. mollucana and in Wester...

Bird communities in southeastern New South Wales, as determined by classification and ordination techniques, were seldom discrete. The most cohesive assemblage was associated with wet sclerophyll and rainforest habitats. These moist forests also supported the richest avifaunas and had high population densities. Although most birds occurred througho...

Changes in coastal heath vegetation were measured for 6 years following a wildfire and the data compared with the pre-fire vegetation. For the first 2 years changes were related to time; after that environmental factors dominated the process of regeneration. During the first 4 years plant species spread rapidly and maximum species diversity per plo...

Trunk-associated invertebrates were sampled on marri trees (Eucalyptus (Corymbia) calophylla) along a transect from Karragullen, near Perth, through to Dryandra, 150 km to the south-east. This represents a drop in annual rainfall from 1078 to 504 mm, which is accompanied by a change from jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) forest to wandoo (Eucalyptus wa...

As top predators, birds may have significant effects on arthropod abundances and affect the trophic structure of arthropod communities through predation of lower order predators (e.g. spiders) and by competition for prey. We investigated the effects of bird predation on canopy arthropods in south-western Australia by using plastic bird mesh to excl...

This is the last editorial I write as Editor of Pacific Conservation Biology. I took over as editor from Craig Moritz in 1997 with Volume III and it is time to let another assume the pleasures, frustrations and responsibilities of guiding Pacific Conservation Biology over the next few years. A fresh mind and new ideas can only help Pacific Conserva...

It is now just a bit more than six months to the inaugural meeting of the Australasian region of SCB ?The Biodiversity Extinction Crisis, a Pacific and Australasian Response?, which will be held July 10?12 2007 at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. This conference faces the major problems for biodiversity conservation in our region, existin...

D. L. Serventy censused birds in Kings Park, Perth, between 1928 and 1937 and again between 1952 and 1955. Abundance was estimated by the frequency with which species were detected on censuses. The counts were repeated in 1986 by H. F. Recher. A total of 44 species were recorded during censuses. Since the first counts, were made, 14 species decreas...

I have to admit that writing this editorial has been especially difficult. There are a number of reasons for the difficulty, but foremost was my feeling that I needed to be positive and uplifting, offering hope for environmental sanity and biodiversity conservation. Unfortunately, I found this very limiting and every effort at writing seemed to sin...

Hello to all SCB members. Please remember that this is your newsletter. The Section Board does not just want to report to the membership on our activities, but would like to see the News and Views section used as a sounding board for our members. We invite you to take advantage of this unique opportunity and send any articles, notices of events and...

The beginning and end of each geological epoch is marked by a major, often cataclysmic, event affecting Earth?s biophysical environment. Most often major periods in Earth?s history requiring a new epoch to be named are remarkable by the mass extinction of dominant life forms and their eventual replacement by new groups of organisms which then domin...

We aim to assess current knowledge, and identify gaps in knowledge concerning bell-miner-associated dieback (BMAD) in south-eastern Australia. We review BMAD as a form of forest dieback, and bell miner and psyllid interrelations. We then consider indirect and direct causal factors associated with local functional scales (tree crown), and finally, i...

A survey of Australian Magpies, Gymnorhina tibicen, in Kings Park, Perth, Western Australia, in 1938 identified 84 individuals in nine groups. The survey was repeated 62 years later in 2000 and identified 98 magpies in 19 groups. The sex and age composition of the population during the two surveys was broadly similar, with 69% of the birds in 1938...

Powderbark wandoo (Eucalyptus accedens) has a powdery triterpenoid-containing substance on the surface of its smooth bark, which is formed from sloughing peridermal cells. When compared with the similar-appearing wandoo (E. wandoo), which occurs in the same area and which does not accumulate powder, fewer bark-associated arthropods are found. Expos...

The existing system of nature reserves in Australia is inadequate for the long-term conservation and restoration of native biological diversity because it fails to accommodate, among other elements, large scale and long-term ecological processes and change, including physical and biotic transport in the landscape. This paper is an overview of the c...

In this issue of Pacific Conservation Biology, Bob Fox responds to the conservation and animal welfare policies of environmentalists and animal rights activists. It would be easy to dismiss his reaction as those of a frustrated public servant and a person who enjoys hunting. I have sympathy with Bob's ideas and not just because I also enjoy hunting...

Abstract Trunk–associated invertebrates were sampled on two rough-barked tree species (jarrah, Eucalyptus marginata and marri, E. calophylla) at Karragullen, in the hills near Perth, Western Australia, and on these two species plus two smooth-barked species (wandoo, E. wandoo, and powderbark wandoo, E. accedens) at Dryandra, a drier site situated 1...

ALL of us are aware of the changes to our lives and surroundings brought by growing numbers of people and by new and improved technologies. Many of these changes have brought opportunities undreamed of by past generations; for many of us our lives are healthier and longer than at any time in human history and we share unimaginable wealth and prospe...

DAVID Lindenmayer and Jerry Franklin are the two most influential forest conservation biologists of the past decade and will probably remain so for the coming decade. Each has contributed significantly to forest research, management, biodiversity conservation and policy. Lindenmayer is an Australian based at the Australian National University in Ca...

IN 1996, the Australian Federal, State and Territory governments ratified the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia's Biological Diversity (Commonwealth of Australia 1996). This strategy states that production systems must be sustainable and not result in further loss of biological diversity. Although there is a considerable amount of...