The State of Australia's Birds
The State of Australia's Birds (SOAB) is a report series that tracks trends in Australia's bird populations. From 2003–2010, this was delivered as an annual report produced by the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (now known as BirdLife Australia) in the form of an illustrated colour magazine supplement. The 2015 version of the report marks the beginning of a new era in the series, with the introduction of the Australian Bird Index. Overview. The SOAB reports collate and analyse information on trends in the conservation status of bird populations in Australia. Some of  the material presented in SOAB is extracted from BirdLife Australia's monitoring projects, notably the Atlas of Australian Birds citizen science project. All issues are available for free download. 2003-2010 Reports. The reports were published as supplements to "Wingspan" magazine. The 2003 and 2008 editions of SOAB were five-yearly overviews, while the other editions were themed on various aspects of Australian avifauna (for example, SOAB 2010 was themed on Birds and Islands). 2015 and Future Reports. The 2015 (SOAB) report launched the first Australian Bird Indices for terrestrial birds and introduces Australia's Red List Index (RLI), a  means of tracking trends in the status of Australia's most threatened bird groups. BirdLife Australia plan to release a comprehensive SOAB report in 2020, that will include indices for all of Australia's bioregions, highlight trends for a wide range of terrestrial species, and provide an evaluation of the monitoring gaps. The 2020 report also aims to incorporate information from the National Environmental Science Program Threatened Species Index project, the first iteration of which was a Threatened Bird Index, showing declines across multiple threatened bird taxa.