Three field partners. One framework. One bay.
The program is built on a conceptual framework and a field tradition, delivered through three organisations with decades of presence at Moreton Bay. Each partner is here because of what only they can bring.
Conversations With Birds
Borys Daniljchenko, Environmental Educator (Retired), helped establish Queensland's first purpose-built field study centre at Jacobs Well in 1975 — the same site that remains a delivery partner for this program today. That continuity is deliberate.
Conversations With Birds is his personal initiative — the public-facing thread from which this program grows. The Shorebird Steward Program is its practitioner expression: the science, tools and field experience that turn public connection into on-ground conservation work at Moreton Bay.
Jacobs Well Environmental Education Centre
Established in the mid-1970s as Queensland's first purpose-built environmental field study centre, Jacobs Well EEC has been refining a single craft: how to take people into a living landscape and help them read what they see. That interpretive tradition is the bedrock of what the Shorebird Steward Program asks its Stewards to do.
The Centre sits at the edge of southern Moreton Bay, with direct access to the tidal flats, mangroves, saltmarsh and coastal waterways that define shorebird habitat in this region. Its flagship resource is the EDUCAT — a purpose-built 12-metre research catamaran that serves as a floating classroom for up to 40 participants, capable of landing directly on sand and mud study sites across the Bay. More than 1,500 students board the EDUCAT every year. Stewards in field training do the same. Study sites span South Stradbroke Island, Wavebreak Island, Pimpama River, and the intertidal systems of southern Moreton Bay — the mudflats and mangroves where the shorebirds are.
Programs encompass mangrove ecology, coastal management, plankton and marine science, bird watching, and Indigenous perspectives — all built on direct encounter with the environment. Research partnerships with the University of Queensland Marine Science, Griffith Marine, and the University of the Sunshine Coast keep the interpretive content tracking current science. For Stewards, Jacobs Well is a school of practice — where practice reflects experience, and where the thinking behind this program first took root.
REF Environmental
The Redcliffe Environmental Forum — REF Environmental — is a community-based not-for-profit established in 2005–2006 to protect the natural assets of the Moreton Bay region. Over two decades it has grown into a well-networked grassroots organisation working with community groups, researchers, and government agencies across the region's coastal ecosystems.
Its three pillars — rehabilitate, educate, facilitate — translate directly into the program's field requirements. Bushcare and wetland restoration work at Hays Inlet gives REF direct ecological skin in the game. Its education track record includes Ramsar workshops, citizen science programs, and events such as the 2023 World Migratory Bird Day gathering at Deception Bay, where guided foreshore walks gave participants their first encounter with newly-arrived Bar-tailed Godwits. As a facilitator, REF connects community groups and researchers across the Moreton Bay region in ways that extend the program's reach beyond what any single site can deliver.
The centrepiece for the Shorebird Steward Program is The HUB — REF's purpose-built facility at 7 Joseph Crescent, Deception Bay, on a deck overlooking the tidal flats. Leased from the Moreton Bay Regional Council, The HUB provides the program with a dedicated venue for field briefings, workshops and community events on the northern Moreton Bay coast, directly adjacent to shorebird habitat.
BIEPA
The Kakadu Beach Constructed Roost is one of Moreton Bay's most significant shorebird sites — a purpose-designed high-tide refuge that draws up to 2,500 Bar-tailed Godwits at peak season, managed by the City of Moreton Bay (COMB). It demonstrates something this program holds at its core: that deliberate, informed habitat management changes outcomes for birds.
BIEPA — the Bribie Island Environmental Protection Association — brings its Shorebird Working Group to the program as a structured community interface at the northern entrance to Pumicestone Passage, a Ramsar-listed waterway and one of the bay's key shorebird corridors. The Working Group monitors shorebird activity, advocates for site protection, and operates within the wider Moreton Bay conservation network alongside the City of Moreton Bay. Buckley's Hole — another significant Bribie Island roost site — is currently the subject of a new bird hide project BIEPA is leading.
BIEPA's Wildlife Warriors mission team monitors migratory shorebirds alongside loggerhead turtles, and its community engagement model — monthly public meetings, signature events, active volunteer project teams — provides exactly the kind of grounded, long-term presence the Shorebird Steward Program needs at the Bribie Island site. For Stewards, BIEPA demonstrates what the program asks of them: a community organisation that has made shorebirds its business, not its background.
More than any one organisation could provide
The program was designed around what these four partners collectively make possible. The combination is deliberate — framework, field tradition, and community infrastructure working as one.
A framework that holds
Conversations With Birds provides the conceptual architecture — Science to Kin, WITH not ABOUT — that gives the program its purpose and its voice. Without it, the field work is just bird watching.
Fifty years of interpretive practice
Jacobs Well EEC and the EDUCAT put Stewards directly onto the tidal flats with trained interpreters. The modelling of how a skilled educator reads a site and engages a public is as important as the birds themselves.
Sites across the bay system
The HUB at Deception Bay and the Kakadu Beach Constructed Roost at Bribie Island extend the program across the full northern reach of Moreton Bay — from southern tidal flats to Pumicestone Passage — giving Stewards experience across multiple site types.
Ready to train with our partners at the bay?
The program is open to community groups, educational institutions and individuals. Get in touch to find out about the next intake.