Have your say: Published response
Published name
What are Australia's greatest challenges that science could help to address? What opportunities should we seize? What strengths should we maintain and/or build?
Invasive species: build biological control capacity.
Species extinction: manage invasive species, control land clearing including logging of native forests, prepare communities to be more resilient to natural disasters.
Invest more heavily in longer term data sets in order to better understand trends and adaptations. See below-people can help!
Maintain our research capability.
We should build the capacity of people to contribute to science. Citizen science is widely accepted as an important support to conventional science. But it can be much more than that with considered investment in support structure. Build on people's personal connection to nature and place. People care about where they live and with a little knowledge and encouragement, can help to take care of it.
Does Australia have the capability and capacity needed to address these challenges, opportunities and strengths? If not, how could we build this?
We have both the capability and capacity but we are not making best use of people resources. More investment in citizen (community) science is required. People are at the centre of environmental management, on public and private land. If responsibility for conservation and biosecurity is to be shared and devolved to communities at a project level then adequate support structures are imperative: scientific leadership, training for citizen scientists, appropriate and standardised approaches to data collection and monitoring protocols for citizen scientists, communication tools that allow people to find projects of interest, science information and knowledge publicly available. People are just about everywhere, scientists are not. Adequate investment in people science will pay off in the longer term. Australia will have a generally well informed public with a connection to the natural environment. Some of the longest term data sets have been collected by citizens and they are invaluable. Imagine being able to track biosecurity threats, monitor recovery and occurrence of threatened species, understanding how organisms are responding to a changing climate. Citizen science can make a huge contribution to filling information gaps and answering scientific questions. But it won't happen organically. It needs a thoughtful and structured approach informed by solid science and supported with adequate funding.