Impact assessment & Management of the Northern Quoll in the Pilbara Sunil Samaraweera & Sam Luccitti Rio Tinto Iron Ore (WA), Perth, Australia I’ll keep it brief…I think much of what I will explain in this talk is known to most of you. However, its worthwhile taking the time to highlight some of the challenges of working with Northern Quoll in a Pilbara mine development context.

Context Setting EIA under the Commonwealth EPBC Act Rio Tinto, like all proponents, is obliged under the Cwth EPBC Act to consider potential impacts of mining activities on Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES). Other impacts to species as whole include introduction of invasive species, introduction of disease, interference with recovery actions.

Context Setting EIA under the Commonwealth EPBC Act Quantify project impacts to NQ. Determine the significance of impact (i.e. controlled action?). Implement actions to reduce, minimise and mitigate impacts. Where significant residual impacts persist, provide direct offsets to achieve ‘improve or maintain’ outcome for NQ. Monitor & evaluate NQ to demonstrate benefits of management. Significant impact to population – long-term decrease in the size, fragmentation or disruption to breeding cycle of a population. Challenging due to imperfect understanding of basic biology and ecology at the regional, sub-regional and project scales. Rio Tinto, like all proponents, is obliged under the Cwth EPBC Act to consider potential impacts of mining activities on Matters of National Environmental Significance (MNES). Other impacts to species as whole include introduction of invasive species, introduction of disease, interference with recovery actions.

NQ Challenges - impact assessment Lack of spatial and temporal context at regional and site-scales Understanding critical habitat vs foraging and dispersal habitat in the Pilbara Is all rocky habitat ‘critical to NQ survival’ in the Hamersley Ranges? Spatial mapping of habitat at EIA-appropriate scale is lacking. Understanding of key drivers of NQ habitat ‘quality’ Foraging and denning resource requirements. Threats broadly understood though largely inferred - little empirical data from Pilbara. Relative importance of threats unknown – likely to be complex interactions. Importance of habitat connectivity Resilience to disturbance Limited understanding of response to seasonal conditions and stochastic events (e.g. fire). Difficulty placing short-term EIA biological surveys into context Limited understanding of population fluctuations in response to seasonal conditions and stochastic events makes it difficult to place biological surveys undertaken for EIA purposes (which are necessarily a snap-shot in time) in proper context. Likely to be similarly large fluctuations in response to seasonal conditions as has been reported from other regions Some evidence of large population fluctuations in Pilbara (e.g. Biota & How, 2005) Rio Tinto has done some preliminary work on the development of a habitat quality ‘metric’ for internal Net Positive Impact accounting purposes – NQ metric largely a function of estimated relative importance of threatening processes i.e. fire, ferals, grazing, etc.

NQ Challenges – management & monitoring Management to ‘improve or maintain’ NQ Response to management intervention largely untested in Pilbara. Therefore difficult to predict improvements over time. Expert estimates and judgements are an important tool to assist management decisions. Empirical studies (BACI) required to test expert predictions and refine management approach. Monitoring to assess effectiveness of management actions: Detecting changes in NQ populations within a region of large climate variability is difficult Identification of ecologically appropriate surrogates may be required. (requires an understanding of fine-scale habitat preferences, diet, etc.)

Key areas for research Habitat distribution of NQ across the Pilbara at EIA-appropriate scale Better understanding critical habitat & how to quantify habitat quality Denning habitat. Foraging requirements including relative importance of prey resources. Structural attributes of habitat (landform, vegetation) Long-term monitoring to better understand: Seasonality, Response to natural stochastic events (e.g. fire), and Response to key existing threats (e.g. feral predators, habitat loss etc.). Experiments embedded in adaptive management framework to determine effective management of key threats (in particular, role of fire and feral predators). Development of Pilbara-specific protocols for survey and monitoring When can we confidently demonstrate absence?

Acknowledgments Northern Quoll and Pilbara Leaf-nosed Bat photos courtesy of Biota Environmental Sciences.