Other Initiatives

Conversations With Birds

The public-facing thread of the same initiative. Stories, science, AI bird characters, the Junior Steward pathway, and the Science to Kin journey. Gazza the Godwit, Karrick the Red-capped Robin, Maggie the Magpie. The pathway from curiosity to caring — for all ages, from young families to grandparents to classroom educators.

A personal initiative of Borys Daniljchenko, Environmental Educator (Retired) · Moreton Bay, Quandamooka Country

The Artemis Chronicle

Gazza is a male Bar-tailed Godwit with sixteen Pacific crossings behind him. This year, scientists attached an AI tracker to his back for the eleven-thousand-kilometre non-stop from Alaska to Moreton Bay. He wasn't consulted. A story about what the science actually feels like from inside — free to read.

EAAF Partnership

The East Asian–Australasian Flyway Partnership — the intergovernmental body coordinating shorebird conservation across 22 countries from Russia and Alaska to Australia and New Zealand. Maintains the network of internationally significant Flyway Network Sites.

Australasian Wader Studies Group (AWSG)

The primary shorebird monitoring and banding body in Australia and New Zealand. Source of population estimates, species accounts, and long-term count data used throughout the Shorebird Steward Program. Annual wader counts at Moreton Bay are AWSG-coordinated.

Queensland Wader Study Group (QWSG)

QWSG conducts field counts, banding and monitoring at Moreton Bay and across Queensland. A key source of local population data and the organisation through which Stewards can contribute count records to the broader dataset.

Global Flyways Network

Coordinates satellite tracking of individual shorebirds across multiple flyways, including the EAAF. The B6 tag record — 13,560 km Alaska to New Zealand in 11 days — is a Global Flyways data point. Provides publicly accessible tracking data via the Movebank platform.

BirdLife Australia

National bird conservation body. Produces the State of Australia's Birds report, the primary source of population trend data for Australian species. Runs the Shorebird 2020 monitoring program and advocates for habitat protection across the country.

Getbol (Korean Tidal Flats) UNESCO WHS

The 2021 inscription of Korean tidal flats as a UNESCO World Heritage Site brought international recognition to the Yellow Sea staging habitat on which shorebirds like the Bar-tailed Godwit depend. Understanding this decision is part of the Field Practice course context.

Birds Queensland

The primary birding and bird conservation society for Queensland. Members participate in shorebird counts, habitat monitoring and citizen science programs. A key referral point for Stewards seeking community connection to broader ornithological networks.

eBird (Cornell Lab)

The global bird recording database. Moreton Bay shorebird counts contributed to eBird become part of the global dataset informing flyway population assessments. Stewards are encouraged to contribute their field records to eBird as a complement to the program's field tools.

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 students, capable of landing directly on sand and mud study sites across the Bay. More than 1,500 students a year board the EDUCAT. Stewards in field training do the same. The vessel is how the science reaches the site.

Programs span mangrove ecology, coastal management, plankton and marine science, bird watching, and Indigenous perspectives — all curriculum-aligned, all built on direct encounter with the environment. The Centre's research partnerships with the University of Queensland, Griffith Marine, and the University of the Sunshine Coast ensure the interpretive content tracks current science. For Stewards, Jacobs Well is a school of field practice — where practice reflects experience, and where the thinking behind this program first took root.

REF Environmental

The Redcliffe Environmental Forum operates The HUB at 7 Joseph Crescent, Deception Bay — a purpose-built environmental facility on a deck overlooking the tidal flats of Deception Bay, leased from the Moreton Bay Regional Council. The HUB gives the Shorebird Steward Program a premier venue for field briefings, workshops and public events on the northern Moreton Bay coast. REF already carries shorebird credentials — bird surveys at adjacent Hays Inlet, a World Migratory Bird Day event in October 2023 where participants observed newly-arrived Bar-tailed Godwits on the foreshore, and deep Ramsar expertise built through community workshops. Its networks and proven event capacity make it a natural base for the program's Deception Bay corridor delivery.

BIEPA

The Kakadu Beach Constructed Roost is one of Moreton Bay's quiet success stories — a purpose-designed high-tide refuge managed by the City of Moreton Bay (COMB) that draws up to 2,500 Bar-tailed Godwits at peak season, making it one of the most significant shorebird roost sites in the Bay system. It demonstrates something the Shorebird Steward Program holds at its core: that deliberate, informed habitat management changes outcomes for birds.

The Bribie Island Environmental Protection Association brings its Shorebird Working Group to the program as a structured community interface — monitoring shorebird activity, advocating for site protection, and working alongside the City of Moreton Bay within the wider Moreton Bay conservation network. BIEPA's Wildlife Warriors mission team monitors migratory shorebirds alongside loggerhead turtles. Buckley's Hole, another significant roost site on the island, is currently the subject of a new bird hide project BIEPA is driving. 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 Bribie Island.