Teams to survey Australia's biodiversity

Scientists and volunteers will spend the next three years surveying the far-flung
corners of the continent to find the missing pieces of Australia's animal and plant
diversity.

The $10 million Bush Blitz program will send research teams to remote national
reserves throughout the country in a search for new species, and to better document
those already known.
Groups of 10 to 12 scientists, together with volunteer "citizen scientists" and
support staff, will conduct six major surveys each year.
In the process the teams will be building a better snapshot of the plant and animal
life in the national reserves, which make up 11 per cent of Australia's land mass.
Launching the program at a national reserve in Darkwood in northern NSW, Environment
Minister Peter Garrett said the surveys would help uncover some of the thousands of
native species that have yet to be documented.
"Bush Blitz is nature discovery on a huge scale - teams of scientists will scour
hundreds of reserves and expect to find hundreds of species that are completely new
to science," he said.
"Australia is home to more than 560,000 native species, many found nowhere else on
earth, yet only one quarter of this biodiversity has been scientifically
documented."
Mr Garrett toured a survey camp at Darkwood, in the New England National Park, where
he was introduced to a recently caught barred frog, a swain's leaf-tailed gecko, a
golden crown snake and a brown tree snake.
"Quite often we have a sense that the environment is under some pressure and threat
and that's true," and at times squeamish Mr Garrett said.
"But what we don't have as much of a sense of is the already great expanse of
species there. That is becoming filled in with this type of scientific effort."
The program has been jointly funded by the federal government, which chipped in $6
million, and miner BHP Billiton, who has made a $4 million contribution.
International conservation group Earthwatch will help manage the research sites, and
co-ordinate the volunteer "citizen scientists".
Earthwatch Australia's Executive Director, Richard Gilmore, said it was those
volunteers, and links with government and business, that made such a large project
possible.
"The national reserve system is larger in area than Germany, England and New Zealand
combined," Mr Gilmore said.
"(Bush Blitz is) bringing together business, and community groups, and government,
and volunteers, in a way that probably hasn't been done before. This is an important
large-scale project that just couldn't be done by one group, or by scientists
alone."
Scientist Frank Lemckert, from the NSW government body Industry and Investment NSW,
said Bush Blitz would travel to areas usually ignored by researchers.
"This program is going to go to a whole lot of areas you wouldn't usually go to, and
it is not just going to look at the charismatic, fluffy, furry things," he said.
"These surveyors will look at everything."
Dr Lemckert said the information gathered would help future conservation efforts.
"It's really about knowing about the environment that we have and that we came here
with is being protected, so our children have what we have," he said.
"If we don't know it's there, we're not going to be able to save it. Until we
actually understand them we can't conserve them, so this survey will be a chance to
do that, so we can leave behind for our children and their children the same legacy
that we have ourselves. I don't want to say, "Sorry kids, I saw it, but you didn't."