Monitoring indicates rapid and severe decline of native small mammals in Kakadu National Park, northern Australia

作者：John C. Z. Woinarski, M. Armstrong, K. Brennan, A. Fisher, Anthony D. Griffiths, Brydie M. Hill, D. Milne, C J Palmer, Simon Ward, Mark Watson, S. Winderlich, Stuart Young · 发表于：Wildlife Research · 年份：2010 · DOI：10.1071/wr09125 · 被引用次数：262 · 研究领域：Wildlife Ecology and Conservation、Species Distribution and Climate Change、Zoonotic diseases and public health

Context. Australia has a lamentable history of mammal extinctions. Until recently, the mammal fauna of northern Australia was presumed to have been spared such loss, and to be relatively intact and stable. However, several recent studies have suggested that this mammal fauna may be undergoing some decline, so a targeted monitoring program was established in northern Australia’s largest and best-resourced conservation reserve. Aims. The present study aims to detect change in the native small-mammal fauna of Kakadu National Park, in the monsoonal tropics of northern Australia, over the period of 1996–2009, through an extensive monitoring program, and to consider factors that may have contributed to any observed change. Methods. The small-mammal fauna was sampled in a consistent manner across a set of plots established to represent the environmental variation and fire regimes of Kakadu. Fifteen plots were sampled three times, 121 plots sampled twice and 39 plots once. Resampling was typically at 5-yearly intervals. Analysis used regression (of abundance against date), and Wilcoxon matched-pairs tests to assess change. For resampled plots, change in abundance of mammals was related to fire frequency in the between-sampling period. Key results. A total of 25 small mammal species was recorded. Plot-level species richness and total abundance decreased significantly, by 54% and 71%, respectively, over the course of the study. The abundance of 10 species declined significantly, wherea...