For nearly four decades, UNSW scientists, with researchers from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment and other state agencies, have been surveying Australia’s waterbirds once a year.
The push for a new environmental crime has attracted high-profile backers including French President Emmanuel Macron, Pope Francis and Greta Thunberg. But we must get the details right.
At the end of June, the NSW government declared a massive new national park in north-western NSW - a welcome and timely development, according to UNSW ecologist Professor Richard Kingsford, who did the first comprehensive aerial surveys of the area’s waterbirds in the 1990s.
A group of birds that are not usually found in Australia attracted hundreds of birders to a relatively remote town on the north coast of NSW, resulting in a boost to the economy.
