More than garden plants: extending the conversation of urban gardens as an important refuge for Australian birds

Inadequacies in public protected area networks dictates that private land will play an important role in the conservation of biodiversity in the coming decades. Household gardens are a key example of private lands that can serve as refuges for biodiversity, with birds as a popular flagship for garden biodiversity. Discussion has focused heavily on the species of plant a resident might select to attract birds to their garden. In this paper, we describe additional and important factors that should form part of this broader conversation on gardens for birds and biodiversity, with a specific aim of drawing attention to species that are at risk of localised extinctions in modern urban landscapes - urban adaptors. We present our commentary in two themes: (a) mitigating threats to birds in the urban environment and (b) enhancing the habitat value of the urban environment for a broader range of bird species. We provide a synthesis of the research of recent years that has explored the urban environment and its ability to support birds, but importantly, we extend on this by bringing together topics that have been somewhat lacking in the discussion to date. In a new approach to this conversation, this paper brings together key topics that can no longer be considered in isolation if we are to make significant conservation gains in the environments were most Australians now reside.