Jacobs Well EEC, REF Environmental and BIEPA. Three organisations facilitating the Shorebird Steward Program around the bay.
The program is open to community groups, educational institutions and individuals. Get in touch to find out about the next intake.
The program is delivered through three organisations with decades of presence at Moreton Bay. Each partner is here because of what only they can bring.
Jacobs Well EEC was established in the mid-1970s as Queensland's first purpose-built environmental field study centre. Its work is teaching people to read a landscape. The Shorebird Steward Program builds on that tradition.
The Centre sits at the edge of southern Moreton Bay. Its flagship resource is the EDUCAT, a 12-metre research catamaran used as a floating classroom for up to 40 participants. JWEEC's own schools program runs more than 1,500 students through the vessel each year, with study sites at South Stradbroke Island, Wavebreak Island, Pimpama River, and the intertidal systems of southern Moreton Bay. The Steward course uses JWEEC and the EDUCAT for the two-day field trip. Steward fieldwork itself is at City of Moreton Bay roost sites.
JWEEC's programs cover mangrove ecology, coastal management, marine science, bird watching, and Indigenous perspectives. Research partnerships with the University of Queensland, Griffith University, and the University of the Sunshine Coast keep the content current. Borys helped establish JWEEC in 1975, and the Shorebird Steward Program builds on what JWEEC has been teaching since.
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.
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 a principle the program is built on: 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.