After years dedicated to conserving his property on the NSW Mid North Coast, Andy McCoubrie was confident it was home to a host of wildlife.<\/p>\n
But it was not until he installed cameras and audio recorders that he realised just how diverse that wildlife was.<\/p>\n
“[We’ve got] lots of microbats which we didn’t really know about,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I think seven species of microbats identified, owls, lots of sugar gliders, squirrel gliders, koalas.”<\/p>\n
Andy and Nette McCoubrie say the project opened up conversations about conservation. (ABC Rural: Lauren Bohane)<\/p>\n
Mr McCoubrie was one of about 250 conservation agreement landholders trained to use wildlife cameras and audio recorders as part of a NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust pilot project.<\/p>\n
The project saw the NSW government support landholders in protecting and managing biodiversity on their properties.<\/p>\n
“It’s a lot of people that have set aside profit or traditional farming practice \u2026 and said, ‘I want to focus on looking after our Australian creatures and our Australian plants,'” Mr McCoubrie said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The cameras captured some unexpected shots. (Supplied: NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust)<\/p>\n
“To actually take land that has value for people and go, ‘I’m going to put that monetary value aside and give it to the future of the world’ \u2026 it’s a really nice thing to be involved in.”A lifetime of survey work<\/p>\n
Across eight regions in NSW, more than 1.4 million camera images and 15,000 hours of audio recordings were logged throughout the 12-month pilot, which began in August 2024.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
From left to right, James Lidsey, Alice McGrath and Joel Stibbard have helped participating landholders. (Supplied: Biodiversity Conservation Trust)<\/p>\n
The images and recordings featured 1,213 different species, including 46 threatened species, some of which were detected outside their known ranges.<\/p>\n
“We got so many threatened species, including the sooty owl, the powerful owl, heaps of different microbats, including threatened microbat species,” said BCT education team leader Alice McGrath.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The project has recorded more than 1,200 different species. (Supplied: Biodiversity Conservation Trust)<\/p>\n
She said the work added up to 720,000 hours \u2014 or more than 80 years \u2014 of volunteer survey work.<\/p>\n
“That’s a lifetime of volunteer effort to get out there onto their properties, set their cameras up, record using the app,” Ms McGrath said.Plans to expand<\/p>\n
With the 12-month pilot project now wrapping up across the state, the BCT hoped localised hubs could soon be established to continue to loan out cameras and recording equipment, as well as expand the project into other regions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A brush-tail possum and baby caught on camera. (Supplied: NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust)<\/p>\n
“We really want to invest in building our landholders’ skills so they can take this and keep going,” Ms McGrath said.<\/p>\n
“[We want to] keep building on the knowledge and the data set for each of these landscapes because looking at the trends over time will help us inform management.<\/p>\n
“See[ing] what the species are doing over seasons and time will be really useful.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A bowerbird attempts to take the strap securing the conservation project’s bait container. (Supplied: NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust)<\/p>\n
Mr McCoubrie found the project brought a wider audience to local conservation.<\/p>\n
“Everyone has it from a kid, that they love to play with a creature or learn about an animal, so when you start to tell people what you’re involved in \u2026 they’re really interested,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s not just talking to those landholders that are involved in a conservation agreement, it’s the wider conversation you have with people that aren’t super focused on but definitely are interested.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Threatened and vulnerable species like the spotted-tailed quoll have also been detected. (Supplied: Biodiversity Conservation Trust)<\/p>\n
He would like to see non-conservation agreement landholders brought on board.<\/p>\n
“I’m sure there are farmers out there that have tracts of bush on their property that they’re not farming that they’d probably love to be involved in that sort of work,” Mr McCoubrie said.<\/p>\n
The second stage of the project began in March this year and will wrap up in March 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After years dedicated to conserving his property on the NSW Mid North Coast, Andy McCoubrie was confident it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,51779,101195,26006,101194,105,338],"class_list":["post-150701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-citizen-science","tag-monitoring-wildlife","tag-native-animals","tag-nsw-biodiversity-conservation-trust-pilot-project","tag-technology","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}