In 2021, as part of my honours, I collected biologging data from koalas at Hidden Vale, Granchester, South East Queensland. This project was in collaboration with the University of Queensland 'Performance Lab' under the supervision of Professor Robbie Wilson. The project has subsequently been continued by Gabriella Sparkes as part of her PhD. However, while Gabby has collected new data, this old data was never analysed. For various reasons, I am unable to publish the data, so we may as well make use of it in some other way!
For arboreal species, koalas are disproportionately represented in road-strike statistics and some populations are facing local extinction risk due to vehicle collisions. The Grandchester Local Council is very passionate about preserving their koala popualtion and want to decrease the chances of koala death by setting up wildlife friendly road rules, such as decreased speed-limits at high-risk wildlife-crossing times. They have contracted you (in this case, you might be a consultant, a researcher, or even a gov employee yourself) to make a recommendation on what times they should implement these road restrictions to best protect the koala population. They are providing you with koala movement data collected by researchers (me, hehe) in 2021. They would like you to create a recommendation report with interactive map to present at their next meeting. The questions they are most interested in are:
- How far are koalas travelling per night/day?
- When are koalas travelling during the night/day?
- If you had to choose 1x 3hr window to decrease speed limits, which hours would be best?
Jump in on Module 1 to get started with learning everything you'll need to give the council their report, map, and recommendation.