Monitoring the effectiveness of fauna sensitive infrastructure along the Peak Downs Highway in Central Queensland reveals mixed results for koala conservation

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Schlagloth, Rolf
Santamaria, Flavia
Hewson, Michael
Danaher, Michael
Geddes, Charley
Kerlin, Douglas H
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2024
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The koala is endangered in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Collisions with vehicles are a major threat to the survival of the species. At the end of October 2022, a 1-month-long project was undertaken to monitor the use of habitat by koalas near fauna sensitive infrastructures consisting of between 160 and 400 m wildlife exclusion fencing leading to multi-span bridges (underpasses) along the Peak Downs Highway in Central Queensland. Three underpasses were monitored using 12 wildlife surveillance cameras operating 24 h/day. Video footage was analysed by artificial intelligence. Day-time walked transects were used to survey koalas in the surrounding habitat and individual koalas were photographed and identified. The surveillance cameras recorded several thousand animals across several groups/species, but only one koala was observed. Altogether 51 koala sightings were made during the walked transects. Three male koalas are presumed to have crossed the highway without using the underpasses as they were observed on both sides of the road. The cameras showed no evidence of these animals using the underpass. We recommend expanding the length of the fences to increase the likelihood of use of underpasses and a repeat of the survey at the beginning of the breeding season.

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Australasian Journal of Environmental Management

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© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

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This publication has been entered in Griffith Research Online as an advance online version.

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Environmental sciences

Human society

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Schlagloth, R; Santamaria, F; Hewson, M; Danaher, M; Geddes, C; Kerlin, DH, Monitoring the effectiveness of fauna sensitive infrastructure along the Peak Downs Highway in Central Queensland reveals mixed results for koala conservation, Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, 2024

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