Modelling and Design of Habitat Features: Will Manufactured Poles Replace Living Trees as Perch Sites for Birds?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper presents the results of ambitious modelling aimed at reflection on the supply of the habitat resources in degraded environments with the human-made biobased elements, namely utility poles. The authors address the vital issue of disappearing arboreal habitats, which leads to the diminishing amount of old trees and therefore also to the imbalanced biological diversity. The authors argue that current artificial replacements for tree homes in the shape of poles for perching and boxes for nesting can cause ecological traps, waste, and pollution. In purpose to analyse the real large-scale and long-term ecological impact of such approaches, the authors use high-fidelity scans of habitat structures in combination with field observations of bird behaviour to model landscape-scale dynamics of habitat supply over time. The results of research demonstrate the effects of variety of living and manufactured habitat structures on the endangered bird population in the restoration site.

The concept is interesting and opens the door for a multidisciplinary discussion among experts in the field. The methodology is very clearly presented and the results are convincingly discussed leading to valuable and well justified conclusions. I truly recommend this paper for publication in Sustainability journal.

Author Response

Thank you for the excellent and useful feedback. We include a table that lists responses to all changes requested by you, the editor and the other Referees. We highlight your requested changes in yellow. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The research is novel and the approach useful to put together who makes assessment with whom make design. However, the ms is very long and the materials and methods require a strong revision to become more schematic in their contents and structure. I suggest authors to follow a similar structure in material and methods and in the presentation of the results to help the reader in the understanding of the contents.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable feedback. We include a document with a table showing all requested changes and our actioned responses. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper presents a spatio-temporal model for assessing native habitat quality in the contemporanry Australian context, the potential impact of artificial interventions and forcasting rehabilitation decades into the future.

This paper addresses an important gap in practice and literature. It is presented to be replicable, the parameters selected are well defined and implemented in the geospatial modelling (including cost), and parameters not selected are outlined for future research.

Page 15 mentions meanually tracing branches - what was stopping this process from being automated, or why was this considered the best way forward?

Page 5 first paragraph "support" should be "supports"

Page 23 is blank, after page 24 pagination needs to be fixed

Acknowledgement section "Gib-bons" should be "Gibbons"

Supplimentary material not finalised and needs completion

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable feedback. We include a document with a table showing all requested changes and our actioned responses. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript has been strongly improved and can be accepted for publication