Welcome to NatureWatch Sunshine Coast!
NatureWatch is a citizen science program to assist council in monitoring and maintaining our environment reserves through community participation.
We host fun, educational and outdoor activities in council reserves as well as presentations, and workshops for the community to enjoy and learn about nature. We train anyone who wants to become citizen scientists in wildlife and flora (plant) monitoring techniques.
NatureWatch activities are open to anyone and all activities are free! Simply register in the NatureWatch Sunshine Coast program to receive news about opportunities or sign-in to check the calendar for upcoming events.
Nest Box Monitoring: spring is here! Activities are scheduled from September until the end of November. Sign-in into your account to check out the calendar and sign-up to an activity.
I would like to volunteer
NatureWatch and other citizen science activities
- Guided educational walk in nature
- Field monitoring of nest boxes
- Report observations on flying foxes
- Take photos of seasonal landscape changes
- Acoustic and visual bird surveys
- Identifying and counting butterflies
- Data processing (e.g. identifying species of animals or plants online from anywhere)
- Fauna surveying (e.g. record and monitor the lifecycle of certain animals over difference seasons)
- Vegetation monitoring (e.g. weeding and re-vegetating reserves with native trees)
Nest Box Monitoring
Nest boxes are artificial shelters that can support over 100 species of Australian native animals for nesting and raising their young.
They are essential because tree hollows only occur in very old trees and most of those trees have been taken out of the environment at a faster pace that tree hollows can form.
To support the diversity of animals that exists on the Sunshine Coast, different nest box designs and different installation methods have been used.
We need accurate and current information that will help to determine the effectiveness of those nest boxes, which led to this citizen science project under the NatureWatch Sunshine Coast program.
Here is the link: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/naturewatch-sunshine-coast-nest-box-monitoring
Mission Statement
The main goal of NatureWatch Sunshine Coast is to effectively and systematically monitor systems for evaluations at network scale for ecological outcomes, such as biodiversity protection and improving the health and resilience of ecosystems.
