In early 2025, Wildlife Queensland’s short-beaked echidna ecologist, Dr Kate Dutton-Regester, successfully secured a Wettenhall Environment Trust grant for $9,292 to establish the ‘Building a Baseline: Echidna Conservation Through Community Engagement’ project.


The short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) is often perceived as a common species, but this assumption is not based on robust data. The absence of information in some regions, such as the Lockyer Valley, makes it especially challenging to determine the conservation status of echidnas in these areas. Without baseline information on their distribution, abundance, and trends, effective conservation strategies cannot be developed or implemented and threats can easily be underestimated.

Key objectives

The project aims to collect baseline data on short-beaked echidnas in the Lockyer Valley, South East Queensland, raise awareness, and support long-term conservation efforts for this unique species. 

Project Officers will achieve this by:

• establishing baseline data on echidna distribution and abundance in the Lockyer Valley region 
• deploying camera traps to monitor echidnas and gather essential data on their presence and activity 
• engaging citizen scientists through training workshops, teaching them how to deploy and monitor camera traps on private properties and in conservation parks 
• fostering community involvement and awareness by building local knowledge about echidna ecology and significance 
• initiating a long-term monitoring program that can track longitudinal trends in echidna populations over time 
• laying the foundation for expanding to other SEQ regions through collaboration with councils and citizen scientists. 

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the Wettenhall Environment Trust for supporting ‘Building a Baseline: Echidna Conservation Through Community Engagement’.