Data from: The use and utility of surrogates in biodiversity monitoring programmes

Monitoring programmes are intended to inform effective biodiversity
conservation and management (Legge et al. 2018). Well‐designed programmes
can establish baseline conditions, determine trends in threatened species
populations, quantify the effects of management, and provide warning of
ecosystem changes (Magurran et al. 2010). For these reasons, biodiversity
monitoring underpins the activities of land management agencies worldwide.
However, it is not always possible to directly monitor key variables at
ideal spatio‐temporal resolutions, due to resourcing or logistic
constraints. For example, direct monitoring of koalas (Phascolarctos
cinereus) can be cost‐ and time‐intensive as koalas are cryptic, occur at
low densities, and are difficult to reliably observe in dense forest
canopies (McAlpine et al. 2006).