Making the biodiversity monitoring system sustainable: Design issues for large-scale monitoring systems

There is strong demand for information about the status of, and trends in, Australia's biodiversity. Almost inevitably, this demand for information has led to demand for a broad-scale monitoring system. However the decision to embark on a monitoring system should only be made once it has been established that a monitoring system is the optimal way to inform management. We stress the need to invest resources in assessing whether a monitoring system is necessary before committing resources to the design and implementation of the system. Current debate associated with the design of a biodiversity monitoring system has similarities to the debate within the range management profession in the early 1970s. The experience with range monitoring shows that large-scale monitoring systems such as those being proposed will require considerable resources, recurrently expended into the distant future, but with only a limited ability to adapt to new demands. Those involved in any biodiversity monitoring system will need to understand the implications of investing in a long-term monitoring programme. Monitoring sustainability will only be possible if the monitoring system is itself sustainable. We discuss a number of issues that need to be addressed before the system is at all sustainable. These attributes are a mix of biophysical, social and institutional attributes and highlight the view that monitoring systems of the type being suggested comprise an unusual mixture of attributes not found in typical scientific activity. The present paper is not a technical manual, but rather considers some of the design issues associated with designing and implementing large-scale monitoring systems.