22 March 2018

Northern Hub researcher Justin Perry (CSIRO) recently travelled to Canberra with Sandy Whyte (Aak Puul Ngantam APN), representatives of the Western Cape Turtle Threat Abatement Alliance from Cape York NRM and Pormpuraaw Land and Sea Rangers, and the Qld Dept of Environment and Science’s Nest To Ocean Turtle Protection Program managers.

The group presented to the Australian Government’s Dept of the Environment & Energy on the success of the Cape York Peninsula marine turtle predation work. Their talk highlighted the importance of community participation and planning, and the use of monitoring and data analysis to guide predator management. Over 50 staff including the First Assistant Secretary (Biodiversity Conservation Division) heard the presentation and watched part of this video, with very good feedback received.

The group also met with different policy and program areas while to discuss data management, sharing threatened species data collected on Indigenous land, and monitoring and metrics. This exciting and rewarding work has been funded by the Nest To Ocean Turtle Protection Program, a NERP Northern Hub project and a NESP Northern Hub project on Defining indicators of success for improved feral animal management.

The NESP project is currently bringing the turtle and feral pig data together, analysing data and providing ongoing support to APN for feral animal control and monitoring research. It’s also contributing to costs for APN to employ a scientific support position to help with on-ground data collection and management. For more information please contact project leader, Justin Perry: justin.perry@csiro.au.

Feral pigs are a major predator of marine turtle eggs. Photo NT DEPWS.