Do That Fauna in Eucalypt and Pine Plantations in the Green Triangle of South-Eastern South Australia and South-Western Victori
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Do that Fauna in Eucalypt and Pine Plantations in the Green Triangle of south-eastern South Australia and south -western Victoria Richard Loyn, Ed McNabb, Phoebe Macak and Garry Cheers 2009 Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research Technical Report Series 186 Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research Technical report Series 186 Fauna in Eucalypt and Pine Plantations in the Green Triangle of south-eastern South Australia and south-western Victoria Richard Loyn, Edward McNabb, Phoebe Macak and Garry Cheers Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research 123 Brown Street, Heidelberg, Victoria 3084 March 2009 Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research Department of Sustainability and Environment Heidelberg, Victoria Report produced by: Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research Department of Sustainability and Environment PO Box 137 Heidelberg, Victoria 3084 Phone (03) 9450 8600 Website: www.dse.vic.gov.au/ari © State of Victoria, Department of Sustainability and Environment 2009 This publication is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 , no part may be reproduced, copied, transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical or graphic) without the prior written permission of the State of Victoria, Department of Sustainability and Environment. All requests and enquires should be directed to the Customer Service Centre, 136 186 or email [email protected] Citation: Loyn, R., McNabb, E., Macak, P. and Cheers, G. (2009) Fauna in Eucalypt and Pine Plantations in the Green Triangle of south-eastern South Australia and south-western Victoria. Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research Technical Report Series No. 186. Department of Sustainability and Environment, Heidelberg, Victoria ISSN 1835-3827 (print) ISSN 1835-3835 (online) ISBN 978-1-74208-935-5 (print) ISBN 978-1-74208-936-2 (online) Disclaimer: This publication may be of assistance to you but the State of Victoria and its employees do not guarantee that the publication is without flaw of any kind or is wholly appropriate for your particular purposes and therefore disclaims all liability for any error, loss or other consequence which may arise from you relying on any information in this publication. Front cover photo: Composite photo of pine plantation GT52 & blue gum plantation GT29 (Ed McNabb). Authorised by: Victorian Government, Melbourne. Printed by: NMIT Printroom, 77-91 Georges Road, Preston 3072 Contents List of figures and tables.................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................... iii Summary.......................................................................................................................................... iv 1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................1 2 Methods....................................................................................................................................2 2.1 Day-time area searches for birds and other species ..................................................................5 2.2 Nocturnal searches for mammals and other species .................................................................5 2.3 Ultrasonic bat detection ............................................................................................................5 3 Results and Discussion............................................................................................................7 3.1 Diurnal birds .............................................................................................................................7 3.2 Habitat guilds............................................................................................................................7 3.3 Feeding guilds...........................................................................................................................7 3.4 Nesting guilds ...........................................................................................................................9 3.5 Migration guilds........................................................................................................................9 3.6 Status guilds..............................................................................................................................9 3.7 Seasonal patterns.......................................................................................................................9 3.8 Individual species......................................................................................................................9 3.9 Nocturnal birds .......................................................................................................................12 3.10 Bats .................................................................................................................................13 3.11 Other mammals.......................................................................................................................15 3.12 Reptiles and frogs ...................................................................................................................15 4 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................16 References........................................................................................................................................29 Appendix 1 .......................................................................................................................................31 i List of figures and tables Figures Figure 1. Map of sites surveyed for fauna in the Green Triangle region of south-eastern South Australia and south-western Victoria....................................................................................... 3 Figure 2. A retained old scent-bark considered as a distinct site ....................................................... 6 Figure 3. White-throated treecreeper.................................................................................................. 8 Figure 4. The brown thornbill appeared equally common in all three treed habitats....................... 10 Figure 5. Scarlet robins were found in both pine and blue gum plantations .................................... 11 Figure 6. Common bronzewing........................................................................................................ 12 Figure 7. Southern boobooks were observed in pine and blue gum plantations .............................. 13 Figure 8. Sonogram of bat call from retained old scent-bark tree within blue gum plantation........ 14 Tables Table 1. Mean abundance of birds and other animals observed per 10 counts during day-time searches in four broad habitats............................................................................................... 17 Table 2. Mean abundance of birds, grouped by various guilds observed per 10 counts during day- time searches in four broad habitats....................................................................................... 19 Table 3. Mean abundance of birds observed per 10 counts during day-time searches in summer and winter ..................................................................................................................................... 21 Table 4. Seasonal mean abundance of birds, grouped by various guilds ......................................... 24 Table 5. Mean numbers of mammals and nocturnal birds (and two other bird species whose calls were heard at night)................................................................................................................ 26 Table 6. Bats detected per night in four broad habitats.................................................................... 27 ii Acknowledgements This study was commissioned by the Green Triangle Regional Plantation Committee through Dr John Kellas, and we are very grateful for their support and encouragement throughout. Numerous managers of plantations, forest and farmland gave ready access to land under their control, and facilitated our work in various ways. Special thanks to Ron Dodds of Greening Australia (GA) who played an important role in the study’s inception, as a joint project with GA’s work in assessing the condition of remaining native vegetation. Jeremy Freeman and Doug Phillips of GA helped substantially in site selection and preparing GIS maps. Anthony Walsh (Integrated Tree Cropping), Peter Jelliff (Timbercorp) and Doug Phillips (Greening Australia) provided logistic and field support: this was greatly appreciated, especially as backup for nocturnal work. Bryan Haywood (Forestry South Australia) and other local naturalists provided information on their local observations. Geoff Sutter (ARI) and Willemyn de Vos helped with field work. Darren Schunke of South East Resource Information Centre provided our base map layer, and Daniel Purdey and Kasey Stamation (ARI) helped collate data for this report. Lindy Lumsden and Ryan Chick (ARI) helped with identifying bat calls, and Graeme Newell (ARI) provided comments on a draft. Several members of the Green Triangle Regional Plantation Committee