Libby Rumpff

University of Melbourne | MSD · School of BioSciences

Indigenous peoples globally are actively seeking better recognition of plants and animals that are of cultural significance, which encompass both species and ecological communities. Acknowledgement and collaborative management of culturally significant entities in biodiversity conservation improves environmental outcomes as well as the health and w...

Global declines in ecosystem extent and condition mean there is an increasing demand for recovery and conservation plans. Conservation plans for ecological communities require a management framework with measurable, time‐bound objectives. Efficient and structured processes that facilitate timely and comparable conservation plans are essential, espe...

Aims Environmental managers require reliable and cost‐efficient monitoring methods for effective decision‐making. Understanding forage availability is important for managing wild, vertebrate herbivore populations. We developed a process for exploring the accuracy and cost efficiency of various biomass estimation techniques for a case study where se...

Reducing extinction risk is a common aim of threatened species management. However, over the period 1990 to 2020, extinction risk was recently assessed as having declined in only 25 out of the 199 Australian bird taxa eligible for assessment. Here we analyse patterns that emerge from these taxa. Some of these improvements may be only temporary; the...

Globally, Indigenous peoples are actively seeking better recognition of plants and animals that are of cultural significance, also known as Cultural Keystone Species, or Culturally Significant Entities (CSE), which encompass both species and ecological communities. The acknowledgement and collaborative management of CSE in biodiversity conservation...

The global decline in the extent and condition of ecological communities has resulted in an increasing demand for recovery and conservation plans. Conservation plans for ecological communities require a management framework with measurable, time-bound objectives, a targeted management strategy, and indicators that enable actions to be evaluated in...

Australia's biota is species rich, with high rates of endemism. This natural legacy has rapidly diminished since European colonization. The impacts of invasive species, habitat loss, altered fire regimes, and changed water flows are now compounded by climate change, particularly through extreme drought, heat, wildfire, and flooding. Extinction rate...

Environmental flows (e-flows) management takes place within a complex social-ecological system, necessitating the involvement of diverse stakeholders and an appreciation of a range of perspectives and knowledge types. It is widely accepted that incorporating participatory methods into environmental flows decision-making will allow stakeholders to b...

Catastrophic megafires can increase extinction risks; identifying species priorities for management and policy support is critical for preparing and responding to future fires. However, empirical data on population loss and recovery post-fire, especially megafire, are limited and taxonomically biased. These gaps could be bridged if species' morphol...

Biodiversity is in chronic decline, and extreme events – such as wildfires – can add further episodes of acute losses. Fires of increasing magnitude will often overwhelm response capacity, and decision-makers need to make choices about what to protect. Conventionally, such choices prioritise human life then infrastructure then biodiversity. Based o...

Context and challenges • There are far more species of invertebrates than any other component of Australia’s biodiversity, and many have highly localised ranges: hence, it is likely that much of the biodiversity loss in the 2019-20 wildfires was experienced by invertebrate species. • However, profound knowledge gaps render it especially challengin...

Our lives are marked by love and grief and hope. The chapters in this book are largely dispassionate accounts, tallying losses of nature, and describing actions taken for its recovery. However, although such knowledge is necessary, it is not sufficient. We could not complete this book without recognising that those losses of biodiversity–the damage...

As replications of individual studies are resource intensive, techniques for predicting the replicability are required. We introduce the repliCATS (Collaborative Assessments for Trustworthy Science) process, a new method for eliciting expert predictions about the replicability of research. This process is a structured expert elicitation approach ba...

There are severe problems with the decision-making processes currently widely used, leading to ineffective use of evidence, faulty decisions, wasting of resources and the erosion of public and political support. In this book an international team of experts provide solutions. The transformation suggested includes rethinking how evidence is assessed...

There are severe problems with the decision-making processes currently widely used, leading to ineffective use of evidence, faulty decisions, wasting of resources and the erosion of public and political support. In this book an international team of experts provide solutions. The transformation suggested includes rethinking how evidence is assessed...

Participants in the grains industry undertake general surveillance monitoring of grain crops for early detection of pests and diseases. Evaluating the adequacy of monitoring to ensure successful early detection relies on understanding the probability of detection of the relevant exotic crop pests and diseases. Empirical data on probability of detec...

Monitoring vegetation restoration is challenging because monitoring is costly, requires long‐term funding, and involves monitoring multiple vegetation variables that are often not linked back to learning about progress toward objectives. There is a clear need for the development of targeted monitoring programs that focus on a reduced set of variabl...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service oversees the recovery of many species protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). Recent research suggests that a structured approach to allocating conservation resources could increase recovery outcomes for ESA listed species. Quantitative approaches to decision support can efficiently allocate limited fi...

Monitoring ground layer biomass, and therefore forage availability, is important for managing large, vertebrate herbivore populations for conservation. Remote sensing allows for frequent observations over broad spatial scales, capturing changes in biomass over the landscape and through time. In this study, we explored different satellite-derived ve...

The numerous environmental flows assessment methods that exist typically assume a stationary climate. Adaptive management is commonly put forward as the preferred approach for managing uncertainty and change in environmental flows. However, we contend that a simple adaptive management loop falls short of meeting the challenges posed by climate chan...

Aim Invertebrates make up the vast majority of fauna species but are often overlooked in impact assessment and conservation response. The extent to which the 2019–2020 Australian megafires overlapped with the range of vertebrate species has been well documented; consequently, substantial resourcing has been directed towards their recovery. Here, we...

Aim After environmental disasters, species with large population losses may need urgent protection to prevent extinction and support recovery. Following the 2019–2020 Australian megafires, we estimated population losses and recovery in fire‐affected fauna, to inform conservation status assessments and management. Location Temperate and subtropical...

Aim Existing abiotic and biotic threats to plant species (e.g., disease, drought, invasive species) affect their capacity to recover post‐fire. We use a new, globally applicable framework to assess the vulnerability of 26,062 Australian plant species to a suite of active threats after the 2019–2020 fires. Location Australia. Time period 2019–2020...

Biodiversity conservation decisions are difficult, especially when they involve differing values, complex multidimensional objectives, scarce resources, urgency, and considerable uncertainty. Decision science embodies a theory about how to make difficult decisions and an extensive array of frameworks and tools that make that theory practical. We so...

Adaptive management has become the preferred approach for managing environmental flows globally, and successful implementation recognizes multiple dimensions of variability and complexity in socio-ecological systems. This paper outlines an environmental flow assessment methodology that explicitly addresses the uncertainty and change inherent in ada...

Livestock grazing in riparian areas has significant impacts on waterway ecosystems. In Australia, livestock grazing is allowed on many public waterway frontages under long-term licences. Many barriers to removing or restricting grazing on riparian areas exist, including concerns that removing grazing from historically grazed sites may favour invasi...

Classical biological control is important for long-term, sustainable management of invasive species such as weeds. To be acceptable for introduction, new biocontrol agents must not damage crops, native plants, or other valued non-target species. Host-specificity experiments inform risk assessment of new biocontrol agents by prioritising and testing...

Aim The incidence of major fires is increasing globally, creating extraordinary challenges for governments, managers and conservation scientists. In 2019–2020, Australia experienced precedent‐setting fires that burned over several months, affecting seven states and territories and causing massive biodiversity loss. Whilst the fires were still burni...

Monitoring vegetation restoration is challenging because ‘best practice’ monitoring is costly, requires long-term funding, and involves monitoring multiple vegetation variables which are often not linked back to learning about progress toward objectives. There is a clear need for the development of targeted monitoring programs that focus on a reduc...

This paper explores judgements about the replicability of social and behavioural sciences research, and what drives those judgements. Using a mixed methods approach, it draws on qualitative and quantitative data elicited using a structured iterative approach for eliciting judgements from groups, called the IDEA protocol (‘Investigate’, ‘Discuss’, ‘...

Land managers decide how to allocate resources among multiple threats that can be addressed through multiple possible actions. Additionally, these actions vary in feasibility, effectiveness, and cost. We sought to provide a way to optimize resource allocation to address multiple threats when multiple management options are available, including mutu...

Replication is a hallmark of scientific research. As replications of individual studies are resource intensive, techniques for predicting the replicability are required. We introduce a new technique to evaluating replicability, the repliCATS (Collaborative Assessments for Trustworthy Science) process, a structured expert elicitation approach based...

Fire's growing impacts on ecosystems Fire has played a prominent role in the evolution of biodiversity and is a natural factor shaping many ecological communities. However, the incidence of fire has been exacerbated by human activity, and this is now affecting ecosystems and habitats that have never been fire prone or fire adapted. Kelly et al. rev...

Ecological restoration of degraded ecosystems requires the facilitation of natural regeneration by plants, often augmented by large‐scale active revegetation. The success of such projects is highly variable. Risk factors may be readily identifiable in a general sense, but it is rarely clear how they play out individually, or in combination. We addr...

The leaf beetle Leptinotarsa texana Schaeffer (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) was introduced to South Africa from the USA to control silverleaf nightshade Solanum elaeagnifolium Cav. (Solanales: Solanaceae). Subsequent post-release studies in South Africa found the beetle to be an effective, host-specific biocontrol agent of S. elaeagnifolium. Leptinot...

Effectively managing the risks of fire to ecosystem resilience and threatened species is a core commitment of Victoria’s Safer Together policy. Through collaboration with Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, and its partner agencies, the project team have developed a decision-making framework, including a Fire Analysis Module for Ec...

Monitoring is an essential component of adaptive management, and a carefully designed program is needed to ensure high-quality data and inferences over realistic time scales. Co-operation among agencies and incorporating citizen science may help enhance learning while reducing the financial costs of monitoring. We seek to realise this potential whi...

1.Ecological restoration of degraded ecosystems requires the facilitation of natural regeneration by plants, often augmented by large-scale active revegetation. The success of such projects is highly variable. Risk factors may be readily identifiable in a general sense, but it is rarely clear how they play out individually, or in combination.2.We a...

Recovery planning for threatened ecological communities could be made more efficient with a formal process for generalising knowledge on how ecosystems respond to different threats. This project aims to build on current progress in using State-Transition-Models (STMs) to support management decisions across many listed southern Australian eucalypt w...

Context: Evaluating predator management efficacy is difficult, especially when resources are limited. Carefully designing monitoring programs in advance is critical for data collection that is sufficient to evaluate management success and to inform decisions. Aims: The aim was to investigate how the design of camera trap studies can affect the abil...

We discuss here the merits of an explicit resource allocation framework and introduce a prototype decision tool that we developed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to facilitate transparent and efficient recover allocation decisions.

Ecologists often classify species into binary groupings such as woodland or non-woodland birds. However, each ecologist may apply a different classification, which might impede progress in ecology and conservation by precluding direct comparison between studies. This study describes and tests a method for deriving empirically-based, ecologically-re...

Achieving global targets for restoring native vegetation cover requires restoration projects to identify and work toward common management objectives. This is made challenging by the different values held by concerned stakeholders, which are not often accounted for. Additionally, restoration is time-dependent and yet there is often little explicit...

Making decisions about the management and conservation of nature is necessarily complex, with many competing pressures on natural systems, opportunities and benefits for different groups of people and a varying, uncertain social and ecological environment. An approach which is narrowly focused on either human development or environmental protection...

State and transition models (STMs) are used to organize and communicate information regarding ecosystem change, especially the implications for management. The fundamental premise that rangelands can exhibit multiple states is now widely accepted and has deeply pervaded management thinking, even in the absence of formal STM development. The current...

Many objectives motivate ecological restoration including improving vegetation condition, increasing the range and abundance of threatened species, and improving aggregate measures of biodiversity such as richness and diversity. While ecological models have been used to examine the outcomes of ecological restoration, there are few attempts to devel...

Ecosystem‐based management requires predictive models of ecosystem dynamics. There are typically insufficient empirical data available to parameterise these complex models, and so decision‐makers commonly rely on beliefs elicited from experts. However, such expert beliefs are necessarily limited because (i) only a small proportion of ecosystem comp...

State-and-transition models (STMs) have been successfully combined with Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs) to model temporal changes in managed ecosystems. Such models are useful for exploring when and how to intervene to achieve the desired management outcomes. However, knowing where to intervene is often equally critical. We describe an approach to...

Ecological restoration of modified and degraded landscapes is an important challenge for the 21st century, with potential for major gains in the recovery of biodiversity. However, there is a general lack of agreement between plant- and animal- based approaches to restoration, both in theory and practice. Here, we review these approaches, identify l...

There is a longstanding debate regarding the need for ecology to develop consistent terminology. On one hand, consistent terminology would aid in synthesizing results between studies and ease communication of results. On the other hand, there is no proof that standardizing terminology is necessary and it could limit the scope of research in certain...

We devised a participatory modeling approach for setting management thresholds that show when management intervention is required to address undesirable ecosystem changes. This approach was designed to be used when management thresholds: must be set for environmental indicators in the face of multiple competing objectives; need to incorporate scien...

This workshop was the second of two aimed at developing predictive models of the mallee ecosystem, with a focus on uncertainty, and on connections between the threatened malleefowl (Leipoa ocellata) and the rest of the ecosystem.

Decisions affecting the management of natural resources in agricultural landscapes are influenced by both social and ecological factors. Models that integrate these factors are likely to better predict the outcomes of natural resource management decisions compared to those that do not take these factors into account. We demonstrate how Bayesian Net...

Plant and animal survey detection rates are important for ecological surveys, environmental impact assessment, inva-sive species monitoring, and modeling species distributions. Species can be difficult to detect when rare but, in general, how detection probabilities vary with abundance is unknown. We developed a new detectability model based on the...

Decision-making for conservation management often involves evaluating risks in the face of environmental uncertainty. Models support decision-making by (1) synthesizing available knowledge in a systematic, rational and transparent way and (2) providing a platform for exploring and resolving uncertainty about the consequences of management decisions...

The information outlines two example questions that represent the style of the test questions used in the six workshops; one example question is for weed ecologists and the other for health epidemiologists. (DOC)

Expert judgements are essential when time and resources are stretched or we face novel dilemmas requiring fast solutions. Good advice can save lives and large sums of money. Typically, experts are defined by their qualifications, track record and experience [1,2]. The social expectation hypothesis argues that more highly regarded and more experienc...

Adaptive Management (AM) is widely advocated as an approach to dealing with uncertainty in natural resource management as it provides an explicit framework for motivating, designing and interpreting the results of monitoring. One of the major factors impeding implementation is the failure to use appropriate process models; a core element of AM. Pro...

We investigate the utility of using historical data sources to track changes in flowering time of coastal species in south-eastern Australia in response to recent climate warming. Studies of this nature in the southern hemisphere are rare, mainly because of a paucity of long-term data sources. Despite this, we found there is considerable potential...

We investigated the relationship between the number of growth rings (a surrogate for approximate age of stems) and basal girth for Eucalyptus pauciflora (Maiden & Blakely) L.A.S. Johnson & Blaxell. Using basal-girth measurements and growth-ring counts obtained from trees felled on ski slopes at three Victorian alpine ski resorts, as well as seedlin...