Funding to establish NatureTrackers

20th July 2018

The Bookend Trust is pleased to announce that they have received funding to establish the NatureTrackers program.

NatureTrackers coordinates schools and the community to track the progress of our threatened species and better understand their needs. These are 'citizen science' projects in which volunteers work with specialist scientists.

Where Where Wedgie is the first of a suite of NatureTrackers projects planned to monitor a wide range of threatened species annually. NatureTrackers brings together a multi disciplinary team with substantial expertise in field biology, statistics, education and social science, to design and establish the infrastructure needed to coordinate large scale citizen science surveys.

In 2017, the Tasmanian Community Fund offered the Bookend Trust half of the $500 000 needed to do this work, subject to the Trust raising the rest through other donors within a year.

Woolnorth Wind Farm Holding has now provided partial funding for Where? Where? Wedgie! as a part of the Musselroe Wind Farm eagle offset program. Combined with the Department of Education's support for the schools component of the project this year, this adds up to the matching funds required to access the Tasmanian Community Fund grant.

This means that we can develop the NatureTrackers program in earnest, with Where? Where? Wedgie! becoming an annual event, and initiating new surveys of additional groups of threatened species in the coming years.

The next Where? Where? Wedgie! survey is expected to take place in April or May next year, while we're hoping to run the first large-scale Claws on the Line survey - a project to update information on threatened burrowing crayfish population sizes - near the end of 2019.

The Bookend Trust will be inviting all participants and anyone else interested to review this year's Where? Where? Wedgie! findings at three Expos across Tasmania near the end of September. Dates will be announced soon. We hope to see you there!