* Koala Likelihood Mapping

Species occupancy models are at the forefront of scientific/ecological endeavour. Over the last 6 months we have been working with the NSW Environment Protection Authority and Office of Environment & Heritage, examining aspects of their Koala Likelihood Mapping (KLM) project.  In addition to integrating many years of SAT data into the KLM, our work has focussed on filling in gaps  about koala presence/absence in areas with little or no previous survey effort and testing relationships between probability estimates for the KLM's highest confidence class and habitat occupancy estimates derived from field survey. Field work required refinement of existing SAT/RG-bSAT survey protocols so as to enable the rapid assessment of areas of koala habitat to quantify considerations of presence/absence. Our final report on the project - including details of the new Rapid-SAT survey method - has now been completed.