יומן של Great Southern BioBlitz 2020 - Coffs Harbour Region

This year’s Great Southern Bioblitz has been quite a success overall considering it is in its first year. With 3000+ participants from 155 regions around the southern hemisphere, we reached a total of more than 90 000 observations of over 12 000 different species in just 4 days!

Our locals from the Coffs and Bellingen region did our area proud, finishing high up on the totals leader board. A huge thankyou to everyone who participated from our zone, particularly those of you who downloaded and used the iNaturalist app for the first time. We hope that you enjoyed your day(s) exploring local natural environments and hopefully learning a thing or two about the organisms that live there. Please continue to submit any interesting sightings you come across, as they may one day become an important record!
The overall victory went to the seasoned campaigners in Cape Town, South Africa, who have previously participated in similar events for the City Nature Challenge. We have a long way to go if we want to compete with Cape Town, but our stats were nonetheless very impressive:

Results for Coffs/Bellingen in overall event:

• Overall position – 7th (out of 155 participating regions)
• Overall position based on number of species – 3rd!!
• Most species out of the 28 Australian regions!
• Third most observations of the Australian regions
• 17th best participation overall

Totals for the Coffs/Bellingen Region over 4 days:

• Total observations – 3413
• Total species - 1311
• Total participants – 47

Species stats:

• Plants – 1388 sightings of 509 different species
• Insects – 659 sightings of 275 different species
• Molluscs – 616 sightings of 252 different species
• Birds – 355 sightings of 113 different species
• Arachnids - 125 sightings of 47 different species
• Fungi – 47 sightings of 17 different species
• Crustaceans – 42 sightings of 22 different species
• Mammals – 22 sightings of 10 different species
• Reptiles – 21 sightings of 10 different species
• Fish – 20 sightings of 13 different species

Top 5 most observed sightings in our area:

• Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae) - (12 observations)
• Magpie-Lark (Grallina cyanoleuca) – (12 observations)
• Elkhorn Fern (Platycerium bifurcatum) – (12 observations)
• Common Brown Ringlet (Hypocysta metirius) – (12 observations)
• Coastal Banksia (Banksia integrifolia) – (12 observations)

We had 16 sightings of vulnerable or endangered species in our area, including 5 sightings of the Grey-headed Flying Fox and this sighting of the Sphagnum Frog (Philoria sphagnicolus) by @baileyensis: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/60938567

Thanks so much to all of our local observers during the event, in particular our top 20 observers:
@dianadavey, @adrian2370, @briancadam, @ralfmagee, @kimwin, @luke__e, @cesdamess, @shaunbamford, @mdebrauwer, @jane508, @jen94, @rebecca984, @happywombat, @ratite, @alyssa_bamford, @sienna12345, @fmksandy, @dorothy104, @coffstrails, @nicklambert

Also a huge thank you to our top identifiers, without whom we would have many, many more unknowns and a much smaller species list! @thebeachcomber, @mmmr91, @ben_travaglini, @adrian2370, @cesdamess, @ briancadam, @dustaway, @scottwgavins, @heathwallum, @reiner, @twan3253, @extraneus, @torhek, @indrabone, @paul1046, @lifeisamazing, @sultana, @vicfazio3, @predomalpha, @pewin, @nicklambert

All stats and sightings for the Coffs/Bellingen region can be found on our iNaturalist project by clicking this link:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/great-southern-bioblitz-2020-coffs-harbour-region

Remember, each of our 3413 observations was photographed, uploaded, and identified within the time period and shows what a small group of local people is capable of achieving in a short amount of time. Hopefully the up-to-date data generated from this event and other local sightings will be of use for things such as analysis of distributions of species in the area.

Thanks once again for your participation and we hope to see you all again next time around!

We’ll finish with a few of the many highlights:

• A Needle Bug Water Scorpian (Ranatra dispar) found by @euan_provost

• A New Holland Honeyeater (Phylidonyris novaehollandiae), uncommonly seen in our area, photographed by @kimwin
  

• A washed up Dunker's Pipehorse (Solegnathus dunckeri) found by @tanikacs
  

• This beautiful Butterfly-Wing Sand Shell (Naticarius alapapilionis) found by @adrian2370

• A Bird-dropping Arkys Spider (Arkys curtulus) seen by @nicklambert
  

We used the scope of our zone to the full while observing during the event. Here are some sightings from the very edges of our area:

• The northernmost observation was of a Grasstree (Xanthorrhoea sp.) at Halfway Creek by @dianadavey - https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/61202377
• The most southern observation was recorded at Oyster Creek of a Grey Mangrove seedling (Avicennia marina) by @erahman - https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/60912146
• The westernmost observation was this (as yet) unidentified plant seen at Point Lookout by @baileyensis - https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/60938292
• While out most eastern sighting of some Zoysia macrantha grass came from Station Creek and was seen by @dianadavey - https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/61276623

Hello again (mostly) local iNat and environmental enthusiasts!

I am using this journal as a way to communicate with other locals in the area for two reasons:

• Next year's BioBlitz
• The possibility of starting a new project in partnership with the NSW government as part of their 'Forest Monitoring and Improvement Program'.

I've just got off the phone with Cassie Thompson from the Natural Resources Commission , who has identified our Coffs and Bellingen area Great Southern BioBlitz project as something we could build into a citizen science partnership for this area. They are trying to link with citizen science organisations and projects already in place to gather data on local forests.

Here are some of the main points we covered:

• They are interested in obtaining accurate and curated data directly from a local project
• Data will focus on all species present in forests including state forests, national parks, private native forests and crown forested land
• Particular focus on threatened species in conjunction with common species
• Possibility of being provided with remote monitoring systems ie remote video and recording devices to enable monitoring of local forests for difficult to find species (sound recorders, camera traps etc)
• Workshops and training

This could possibly be an opportunity for locals (such as ourselves) to provide data directly to a government organisation, in order to (hopefully) protect our local forests and ensure they are managed correctly.

I know there are other local environmental and citizen science projects in our area aimed at protecting the ecosystems we have left and hope to link with them if something comes of this. I am envisioning a local community of naturalists helping and learning from each other, contributing something meaningful and usable. We all know the potential iNaturalist has for citizen science and it would be nice to expand it locally and possibly have a real impact.

If you have any thoughts, questions, ideas, comments or people that may be interested (including yourself of course!) in contributing to such a local project/partnership, please comment below or get in touch.

More information on the project can be found here: https://nrc.nsw.gov.au/forest-monitoring