The ALA Australian Biodiversity Data Mobilisation Program (ABDMP) was developed to promote and improve the scientific understanding of Australia’s rare and remarkable biodiversity. In our third year of the program, the ABDMP was expanded to include both a ‘general’ funding stream and a ‘biosecurity-specific’ funding stream. Through a competitive application process, we are pleased to announce the successful biosecurity projects for 2024. The general round of projects will be announced shortly.
Successful Biosecurity Projects:
- Biosecurity Tasmania: This project will mobilise more than 73,000 invertebrate specimen records from the Tasmanian Agriculture Invertebrate Collection (TAIC). This includes more than 450 type specimens and unique records from Macquarie Island. Cumulatively these records will provide a significant increase in spatial areas of many Tasmanian species not currently represented in the ALA, accelerating the documentation of Australia’s invertebrate fauna.
- Western Australian Herbarium – Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions. To improve the detection of invasive plants across Western Australia, this project will capture high-resolution images of herbarium specimens and mobilise this information to the ALA. These images, along with existing data for 36,700 specimens and an additional 800 to be digitised, will be made publicly available. This will greatly improve the ability of land managers and biosecurity groups to identify and manage invasive species.
- Primary Industries and Regions South Australia- South Australia Research and Development Institute (SARDI)- Aquatic and Livestock Sciences. SARDI holds valuable data on invasive, introduced, and native marine species collected in South Australia and beyond. Currently, these records (particularly those for invasive species) are inaccessible to the public. This project will mobilise this data by extracting it from SARDI databases, ensuring quality control, and making it open access through the ALA.
We congratulate the successful biosecurity projects for 2024 and thank our review panel for their time and expertise in evaluating many high-calibre applications for this funding stream.