Countryside Critters (formerly Countryside Koalas): monitoring wildlife on private land

Countryside Critters (formerly Koalas) is an ongoing project that is monitoring the changing status of wildlife in privately owned forests. Until recently, Koalas were the focus of this program but the novel acoustic survey technique being used is ideal for efficiently detecting more wildlife species, especially when paired with additional remote devices. Prior to this work, there had been very few systematic studies looking at wildlife occupancy in private native forests.

Forest Science, NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD), in partnership with Local Land Services, is monitoring wildlife across private native forests in north-east NSW using acoustic, ultrasonic and unbaited camera trap surveys. The acoustic and ultrasonic survey methods rely on recording distinctive wildlife sounds and echolocation calls (produced by insectivorous bats) and processing these with cutting-edge AI trained to recognise calls of iconic forest species. Camera trap surveys capture images of native wildlife in private native forests. As of 2025, the acoustic surveys are moving into their seventh consecutive spring, with camera trap and ultrasonic surveys now in their second and third year.

Project in Action

The survey relies heavily on landholder participation. At present more than 100 properties from south of Newcastle to near the Queensland border are part of the project.

Mini-acoustic recorders, 'Audiomoths', are mailed to participating landholders. These recorders can be set-up to record sounds produced by wildlife that can be heard by humans or sounds that are produced by bats which otherwise are mostly outside the hearing range of humans. The recorders are set on trees in forest habitat on the property, retrieved after 7-10 days by the landholder and posted back to our ecology team for analysis. The aim is to record distinctive wildlife calls (e.g. koala bellows, forest owls, gliders, etc) that are produced during spring and the echolocation calls of bats that are also active at this time. Wildlife cameras are also set on tracks in forest habitat to detect wildlife that may be moving along these, including introduced predators (e.g., foxes).

Previous Work

Countryside Critters builds on previous work completed under the NSW Koala Strategy that used the same acoustic survey method to take a snapshot of koalas across private forests in north-east NSW. Those surveys took place in 2018-2021 and the project has now evolved into the current monitoring program. Published results of that original snapshot survey can be found here.

Trends so Far

While we have published results for the 2019 and 2020 surveys, we have now completed a preliminary 5-year trend for male koala occupancy from Countryside Critters. Results show a large decline after the 2018-2019 drought/2019 Black Summer fires. A gradual upwards trajectory is evident since that time. This trend is quite different from the stable trend found over this time in public forests and reasons for this difference are being explored.

The modelling accounts for variation in detection probability of koalas, but further analysis is underway to account for variations in koala habitat suitability across properties and the dramatic changes in weather that were experienced over the last few years.

Individual landholder annual reports will be updated to include the additional species from these surveys. Trend analysis of the additional species detected by acoustics over the past six years will take place in 2026 and for camera trap and bat detector data after they have been deployed for five years.

More Info

See below for more information on signing up to be part of the Countryside Critters project or simply contact the Ecology Team of DPIRD Forest Science via our project email: koalas@dpi.nsw.gov.au.

References

Law B, Kerr I, Gonsalves L, Brassil T, Eichinski P, Truskinger A & Roe P. (2022) 'Mini-acoustic sensors reveal occupancy and threats to koalas Phascolarctos cinereus in private native forests.' Journal of Applied Ecology, 59, 835-846. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14099