An interdisciplinary analysis of recreational birdwatching and wetland extent in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia

To fulfill obligations under the Ramsar Convention and achieve the objectives of a National Biodiversity Strategy, the Australian Government has committed to improving the ecological characteristics of wetlands across the continental Murray-Darling Basin, Australia's largest surface water resource. Allocating a portion of an increasingly climate-constrained water resource to environmental flows for this purpose necessitates careful evaluation of environmental and economic benefits. We combined a large citizen science dataset of birdwatching visitation over 72 consecutive months at ten Basin wetland birdwatching hotspots with spatiotemporal data on site-specific proxies of environmental and ecological condition. Using an interdisciplinary combination of regression analysis, citizen science data, an online birdwatchers' survey and in-depth birdwatcher interviews, we found that improved ecological condition was associated with increased birdwatcher visitation. Our findings contribute to the policy debate by identifying increased birdwatching visitation and related expenditure as potential co-benefits of improving ecological condition at Basin wetland birdwatching hotspots.