Planning for a climate-resilient Wet Tropics
- Ceri Pearce
- 27 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Ceri Pearce | Birds With Altitude Project Leader & Cassowary Coast Area Coordinator
BirdLife Northern Queensland (BLNQ) participated in the Community-centred Climate Change Adaptation Planning for Biodiversity workshop series, led by Griffith University and James Cook University. The workshops were held approximately monthly from May 2026 and brought together researchers, conservation organisations, Indigenous groups, natural resource managers and community representatives to consider how Wet Tropics species and ecosystems could be helped to adapt to a changing climate.
The project recognised that climate change presented a complex suite of risks. Increasing temperatures and changing rainfall patterns were expected to interact with other pressures, including invasive species and development. Importantly, the project aimed to combine scientific information with local and Traditional Knowledge to identify practical adaptation options and develop pathways for deciding when different management actions might be needed.
The workshop series began by examining projected climate hazards and exposure for the year 2090 across the Wet Tropics, including increasing temperatures and heatwaves, drought, extreme rainfall, sea-level rise and changes to tropical cyclones. Participants contributed their local knowledge to help identify particularly vulnerable places, species and ecosystems.
This was followed by a vulnerability assessment of 41 threatened or iconic species and habitats identified as potential candidates for more detailed consideration. We were provided with information on the habitat and resource requirements of each candidate.
Working in small groups, we considered each candidate's exposure and sensitivity to climate risks, other existing threats, and its capacity to adapt. These assessments were scored to produce an overall prioritisation. However, rather than simply taking the seven highest-scoring candidates, the group also considered which combination would allow us to explore different ecological systems, climate risks and adaptation challenges in greater depth.
From a BirdLife perspective, it was particularly pleasing that a strong case was made for the endangered Fernwren (Oreoscopus gutturalis) to be included. This Wet Tropics endemic is closely associated with cool, moist upland rainforest and was one of the species of particular interest to the Birds With Altitude project.
The final shortlist comprised Fernwren, Lumholtz's Tree-kangaroo, Spectacled Flying-fox, Spotted-tailed Quoll, Platypus, high-altitude mountaintop frogs and endangered littoral rainforest. The selection deliberately encompassed a diversity of environments and ecological functions. For example, Lumholtz's Tree-kangaroo also provided an opportunity to consider endangered Mabi Forest, the Platypus brought an aquatic ecosystem into the process, and the Spotted-tailed Quoll represented a top predator.
These seven species and ecological communities became the focus of the subsequent workshops, which moved from identifying climate risks towards developing practical adaptation responses. This reflected the broader project approach, which included identifying and prioritising focal species and ecosystems, undertaking climate-risk assessments using high-resolution climate information, and developing adaptation decision pathways.
By the fifth workshop, held at James Cook University's Cairns campus on 20 August, the emphasis had shifted firmly from “what might happen?” to “what could we do about it?”. Participants worked on prioritising and sequencing adaptation actions and identifying the ecological or environmental triggers that might signal when an action should begin, change or cease. We also considered alternative actions and the dependencies between different management responses.
To bring the work of the five workshops together, participants developed posters for the selected species and ecosystems. These drew together the key climate hazards and their likely impacts, triggers for management action, foundational actions, early and ongoing actions, key turning and stopping points, and the major insights emerging from the adaptation planning process. The exercise provided a useful visual summary of how climate risks, monitoring and management actions could be linked through an adaptation pathway.
For Fernwren, the workshop process highlighted significant research gaps, not only in understanding the species’ responses to climate change, but also in fundamental aspects of its biology, ecology and behaviour.
Addressing these gaps will be important for identifying and evaluating potential adaptation strategies to support the species. The need for urgent restoration of suitable high-altitude habitat was also identified. Given the time required for restored rainforest to mature and develop habitat suitable for Fernwren, restoration to expand habitat, strengthen habitat corridors and protect potential climate refugia would need to begin well before climate impacts substantially reduced the amount of suitable habitat available to the species.
The workshop series provided a valuable opportunity for BLNQ to contribute our knowledge of Wet Tropics birds while also exploring how climate adaptation planning could move beyond documenting risk to identifying practical actions and, importantly, determining when those actions might be needed.
An additional workshop was planned for September for participants to develop practical skills in the mapping and modelling tools used to support the climate adaptation planning process, providing an opportunity to explore the spatial data and modelling behind the workshop assessments in greater depth.
BLNQ sincerely thanks Griffith University and James Cook University for the opportunity to participate in and contribute to this valuable workshop series. Particular thanks go to Professor Brendan Mackey, Associate Professor Diane Jarvis, Dr Edward Morgan (who was the engine behind the whole show!), Dr Tek Raj Bhatt and Dr Alice Buhrich for their expertise, guidance and commitment throughout the process.
