Justin Perry

James Cook University | JCU · Centre for Tropical and Freshwater Research (TropWATER)

Aim Biodiversity assessment and decisions rely on knowledge of the spatial distribution of species, yet most global biodiversity is inadequately represented by occurrence records. Efforts to improve our knowledge of biodiversity distribution include targeted taxon survey programmes aimed at generating records of new, or previously unrecorded, speci...

The term ‘Blue Carbon’ (BC) recognises the ability of mangroves, saltmarshes, and seagrasses to capture and store carbon in their soils and biomass. Given their anoxic sediment, BC ecosystems can sequester up to as much as four times more carbon per hectare, and store it 30–50 times faster, than terrestrial forests. Australia has some of the world’...

Monitoring is a critical component of conservation land management and the choice of methods can influence the final inventory of species recorded. The use of camera trapping has increased in recent years as a cost-effective method to record more species and to identify more cryptic and rare species. In this study we first examined data from detail...

Context Understanding habitat suitability for feral animals across a landscape is important for conservation planning because the spatial and temporal availability of water provides critical limits to native biodiversity and the processes that threaten it. Previous attempts to support management actions on feral pig populations through predictions...

Most of the planet’s vital ecosystems are managed on lands owned by Indigenous peoples. Indigenous people face many challenges in managing these lands, including rapidly growing threats causing species extinctions and ecosystem losses. In response, many Indigenous groups are looking for ethical ways to use digital technology and data analytical too...

Installing conservation fences to prohibit feral animal access to wetlands can become a barrier for non‐target species of interest. We collected 161 turtles (Chelodina rugosa, Emydura subglobosa worrelli, Myuchelys latisternum) from twenty floodplain and riverine wetlands during post‐wet (June–August) and late‐dry season (November–December) surveys...

Sustainability science research conducted with Indigenous collaborators must be Indigenous-led and achieve impacts that are grounded in local values and priorities, both for ethical reasons and to achieve more robust outcomes. However, there has been limited focus on determining how best to evaluate the way research is used, shared and created to a...

Presenting results from research into the impacts of feral animals on environmental and cultural values on Cape York Peninsula, Qld

The scholarship and practice of responsibly navigating the disruptive possibilities of new technologies has yet to fully consider Indigenous worldviews. We draw on Indigenous-led research in northern Australia’s Kakadu National Park to reflect on research practices for responsibly navigating the introduction of aerial drones as a tool for local Ind...

Delivered research outcomes that have led to direct changes in the way feral pigs and cattle are being managed across millions of hectares on Cape York Peninsula. Research partners have increased the baseline knowledge of feral pig impacts and management through the production of technical mapping products, software, monitoring tools and peer revie...

Feral pigs predate on freshwater turtles and damage wetland habitats in the process. Installing fences successfully averts access and damage, however, they become a barrier for freshwater turtles requiring land access during migration. We collected 161 turtles ( Chelodina rugosa , Emydura subglobosa worrelli, Myuchelys latisternum ) from twenty flo...

Global biodiversity indicators are often derived by intersecting observed or projected changes in anthropogenic pressures with underlying patterns in the distribution of biodiversity. However these patterns are typically delineated at a coarser resolution than the key ecological processes shaping both land-use and biological distributions. The ‘Bio...

Strategies for mitigating climate change through altered land management practices can provide win–win outcomes for the environment and the economy. Emissions trading for greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement in Australia's remote, fire‐prone, and sparsely populated tropical savannas provides a financial incentive for intensive fire management that aims t...

Australia’s northern savannas have among the highest fire frequencies in the world. The climate is monsoonal, with a long, dry season of up to 9 months, during which most fires occur. The Australian Government’s Emissions Reduction Fund allows land managers to generate carbon credits by abating the direct emissions of CO2 equivalent gases via presc...

Carbon farming initiatives have rapidly developed in recent years, influencing broad scale changes to land management regimes. In the open carbon market a premium can be secured if additional benefits, such as biodiversity conservation or social advancement, can be quantified. In Australia, there is an accepted method for carbon abatement that requ...

In Australia, the role of noisy miners Manorina melanocephala in biotic homogenization of the avifauna has been well established in modified landscapes, and is listed as a threatening process under national conservation legislation. However, less is known about the effect of the congeneric and more widely distributed yellow-throated miner, M. flavi...

Introduction: Recent studies at sites in northern Australia have reported severe and rapid decline of several native mammal species, notwithstanding an environmental context (small human population size, limited habitat loss, substantial reservation extent) that should provide relative conservation security. All of the more speciose taxonomic group...

Introduction: Recent studies at sites in northern Australia have reported severe and rapid decline of several native mammal species, notwithstanding an environmental context (small human population size, limited habitat loss, substantial reservation extent) that should provide relative conservation security. All of the more speciose taxonomic group...

Context Global mammal populations continue to be threatened by environmental change, and recent decadal monitoring in northern Australia suggests a collapse in mammal abundance in key locations. Cape York Peninsula has globally significant natural values but there is very little published about the status and distribution of mammals in this region....

AimWe explored whether one native bird (the yellow-throated miner Manorina flavigula) greatly affected the composition of avifaunas in > 500,000 km2 in northern Australia.LocationRangelands of north-eastern AustraliaMethods Repeated avian surveys were conducted in 368 locations, for which in-site vegetation and landscape-contextual measurements wer...

There are almost 400 naturalized grass species in Australia and most terrestrial and many freshwater ecosystems are subject to invasion by one or more species. Some species can dominate the ground stratum of the vegetation and thus radically transform the structure, composition and ecological functioning of the ecosystem. In these situations, the s...

Species are largely predicted to shift poleward as global temperatures increase, with this fingerprint of climate change being already observed across a range of taxonomic groups and, mostly temperate, geographic locations(1-5). However, the assumption of uni-directional distribution shifts does not account for complex interactions among temperatur...

Overabundant native species can have a significant cascading effect on other components of wildlife, and those that deplete other species, often promoted by anthropogenic change to vegetation cover and habitat, are called reverse keystone species. Birds in the genus Manorina are widely reported as being such species, and in highly disturbed or frag...

The tropical savanna of northern Australia is extensive and relatively homogenous compared to the open woodlands of temperate Australia. The avifauna of this biome is unevenly dispersed in the landscape. A standard count method for birds using a timed search along a 100-m transect with eight repeated counts per site over 4 days, has been used exten...

The study of the ecology of species assemblages provides information on the function and resilience of ecosystems and helps predict the response of species to environmental change. Mixed-species flocks are a particular mode of avian assemblage and are suggested to have benefits for foraging and predator vigilance. In this study we examine for the f...

Context. There is growing evidence that vertebrates inhabiting the extensive savannas of northern Australia are undergoing a widespread decline as a result of the effects of anthropogenic land management such as the grazing of domestic stock. Despite the ubiquity of pastoral grazing in the Australian savannas, few studies have examined the changes...

Tropical savanna environments are characterised by annual and decadal patterns of resource change, which can affect the patterning of mobile fauna such as birds. In this study, we sampled 60 sites in northern Queensland, four times from 2004 to 2008. We investigated how the bird richness and abundance, and species turnover changed over the sample y...

Ecological monitoring is important for tracking trends in species and ecosystems over time and is the basis of conservation planning and government policy. Given there are increasing constraints on funding opportunities for conservation research there need to be simple approaches to assess the costs and effectiveness of surveys that highlight where...

Birds with restricted geographical distributions are particularly vulnerable to environmental change. In order to evaluate their conservation status it is necessary to have accurate records of their distribution and how that distribution has changed over time. The determinants of the distribution and abundance of the Carpentarian Grasswren (Amytorn...

Summary Para Grass (Urochloa mutica (Forssk.) Nguyen) has invaded large areas of north Australian wetlands, out-competing native flora. Post-fire observations indicated that the native grass, Wild Rice (Oryza meridionalis Ng), re-established where gaps in Para grass mats had been created by burning. We tested whether it was fire itself or simply th...

An essential component of conservation science is repeated surveys over time to monitor species that might be responding to local factors, such as land management, or more broadly to global change. A systematic survey of the avifauna of Cape York Peninsula was conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s providing an ideal basal dataset for measurin...

SUMMARY D-condition mapping  Candidate D condition areas can be mapped at a regional scale using temporal remote sensed datasets, based on cover indices and cover index trends over a selected period. Such mapping has been produced for the Burdekin catchment based on Landsat TM dry-season image dates between 1996 and 2006. The dataset produced here...