On the Wednesday following each lecture (i.e. excluding final lecture), a quiz will become available on iLearn (worth 2.5%) that you will have up to two weeks to complete (see timetable). The 12 online exercises will consist of short answers and multiple choice questions that revise the content of each lecture (including tutorial discussions), encourage thinking and research skills, in alignment with the Austral Ark textbook chapters. The exercises may involve consulting the peer-reviewed literature, external websites, and chapters within the required textbook Austral Ark. See full unit guide for individual quiz due dates.

Choose ONE conservation issue in Australia, and discuss at least one of the above challenges associated with the issue in a short written essay in 1500 words. Consult and cite the primary scientific literature, and any supporting information from government documents, the media etc. You must cite the peer-reviewed scientific literature to support your claims and provide a formatted reference section. The aim of your essay is to provide a brief, objective, and scientifically informative evaluation of the main challenge(s) to effective conservation with respect to your chosen issue.

Many conservation strategies lack up-to-date insights from recent research findings, which is often because of poor communication of science outside of academia. It is just as important that scientific research be published as it is that can be understood by those who need to use the information. This leads to a long time between publication of scientific findings and their recognition and integration within conservation planning. For this assessment, you are required to choose a specific topic of recent conservation interest in Australia (or New Zealand/ Oceania) (e.g. in the past five years). The topic you choose may be in relation to a threatened/invasive species, habitat or other threatening process such as fire, disease spread or human disturbance. Your task is to give a 12-minute pre-recorded presentation (using powerpoint slides with audio only) to pitch an update on a conservation issue of interest, integrating the scientific literature published in the last FIVE years (since 2011).

The media often reports scientific results and discoveries in mis-informed or mis-leading ways, in the interests of capturing reader attention or other motive. This occurs across many fields in science, but is also frequently the case in conservation biology. As scientists, it is important that we recognise when the media may be mis-representing other’s work, or omitting certain aspects of results to tell a ‘clear’ story. As conservation biologists we can be confronted with this, and therefore must learn to highlight discrepancies and learn to better communicate our work to the public, the media, managers and policy makers. This task is designed to raise your awareness of these issues and ability to recognise and evaluate them by directly verifying media articles that report on conservation research through consultation of both scientific and non-scientific literature.

In a 3000-word report in your own words, you will assess how effectively the media is communicating the scientific literature.To do this, you will choose two recent (< 5 years old) media articles that each focus on a particular published scientific paper from a journal within conservation biology. Each media article must be on a separate conservation topic, with a different scientific paper associated with it. The chosen media articles should focus on conservation topics within or relevant to Australasia (defined as: Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and the South Pacific Islands). Each media article assessment is worth 15% and should be 1500 words (± 150 words) for each (x 2 media articles = 3000 words and 30%).  Further details in iLearn Unit guide.