Roads, fire and noisy miners: determinants of woodland bird distribution in southern Queensland forests

Roads, fire and noisy miners: determinants of woodland bird distribution in southern Queensland forests

The Brigalow Belt contains some of the largest areas of continuous woodland in eastern Australia, yet the avifauna appears to be dominated by the aggressive noisy miner, usually considered an edge species. Over one million ha of these woodlands are to be moved from forestry to conservation tenure, but they are currently bisected by extensive road networks and all but Callitris woodland is subject to frequent fuel-reduction burns. We investigated the influence of road edges and vegetation type and structure on the avifauna of a 300,000ha woodland. The avifauna differed significantly among Callitris, grassy Corymbia, and shrubby Corymbia woodland, but not with proximity to roads. Noisy miners were rare in Callitris woodland but were 3x more common than any other species in Corymbia woodland. The presence of a shrub layer in Corymbia woodland was associated with fewer noisy miners. The species richness and abundance of bird species smaller than noisy miners was significantly lower in grassy Corymbia woodland than Callitris or shrubby Corymbia woodland, with abundance 6x higher in sites without noisy miners. We conclude that Callitris forest is potentially an important refuge for smaller birds, and current burning regimes which reduce the shrub layer are suboptimal for avian conservation.

NOTE: This was a Poster paper. Conference publication consists of only the abstracts of papers presented at the conference. Paper itself was a spoken paper so no print copy available. Abstract only posted here.