Experts say growling grass frog and southern brown bandicoot not likely to be found at Endeavour Fern Gully

No record of some threatened species in area government says it's protecting them

Experts have cast doubt on government claims the Coalition is funding a conservation project in Victoria’s Endeavour Fern Gully to benefit threatened species – because the listed species are unlikely to occur in the area.

Endeavour Fern Gully is a 27-hectare (65 acre) rainforest property on the Mornington Peninsula. The environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, says the government had funded a broad Green Army project that “improves habitat through weed control and promotes greater conservation awareness of native vegetation in remnant bushland at Endeavour Fern Gully”.

“This is where a number of threatened species are known or likely to be, including the grey-headed flying-fox, the southern brown bandicoot (eastern), the growling grass frog and the clover glycine.”

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Yet ecologists said there was no record of some of these species in the area.

Geoff Heard, a lecturer of wildlife ecology at Charles Sturt University who studies the growling grass frog, said the species was unlikely to be found at that site.

“There’s no record of the species that I’m aware of at that location. It’s also the wrong habitat type – they don’t occur in forested areas, particularly rainforests and fern gullies,” Heard said.

“There are records of the species in other areas of the Mornington Peninsula, but the species doesn’t occur in hills and forested areas.”

Malcolm Legg, a Mornington Peninsula-based ecologist said there were also no known populations of southern brown bandicoots at Endeavour Fern Gully, but a small population had been discovered five kilometres away two years ago.

“That’s the only population we know of left in the Mornington Peninsula,” he said.

Other populations were located about half an hour away at Western Port Bay.

Guardian Australia contacted Endeavour Fern Gully, through the National Trust, to check whether any of the stated species were known at that site, but received no response.

Frydenberg’s comments came after Guardian Australia revealed on Wednesday that the government had claimed heritage building works at the Old Melbourne Gaol and the Polly Woodside – an old cargo ship on Melbourne’s south wharf - was the location of part of the $255m-worth of work protecting threatened species, including the grey-headed flying fox, the powerful owl and the eastern-barred bandicoot.

The project is just one of several that appear on a list of government-funded threatened species undertakings that are unrelated to threatened species work. Other items include graffiti removal and restoration of military remains at a park in Queensland, weeding and construction of a bike washdown station in Tasmania, and planting of trees through suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne.

Frydenberg initially said the restoration of the Polly Woodside was part of a broader Green Army project involving work in bushland at Endeavour Fern Gully, an hour away on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

His office issued a further statement to say the heritage conservation works at Old Melbourne Gaol and the Polly Woodside were incorrectly included on a departmental table that outlines projects with threatened species benefits, instead of the work at Endeavour Fern Gully.

But the government’s own description of the Endeavour Fern Gully project – which sits in former environment minister Greg Hunt’s electorate – raises questions about the extent of its benefits to threatened species because it is largely focused on property management, with some monitoring of species.

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“This project will involve conserving heritage gardens and native vegetation [at] Mornington Peninsula heritage properties. Activities will include removing agricultural fencing and maintaining native vegetation at Endeavour Fern Gully and Mulberry Hill (a heritage mansion south-east of Melbourne); and monitoring native species at Endeavour Fern Gully,” the description states.

Documentation produced by the environment and energy department raises questions about the $255m the government says it is spending on threatened species programs. A 236-page table shows much of the funding is being spent on generic environment programs, including 20 Million Trees and the now defunct Green Army, as well as projects unrelated to threatened species work.

Although Endeavour Fern Gully is not listed anywhere in the document, the table lists six other projects on the Mornington Peninsula. One of the projects, Restoring Bushland on the Mornington Peninsula, is described as a vegetation project where participants weed and improve tracks within a 28-hectare (67 acre) area across five different sites.

The document says the bushland revegetation would benefit numerous animals including migratory birds and a range of listed species – among them the koala, southern-brown bandicoot, humpback and right whales, and three different types of turtles: loggerhead, green, and leatherback.

Conservationists cast doubt on whether a weeding and revegetation project could have benefits for such a diverse group of animals, including marine life.

Heard said it was an example of projects “not being targeted at known remnant populations of threatened species or at mitigating known threatening processes at specific remnant populations”.

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“They’re completely untargeted at threatened species populations,” he said.

Euan Ritchie, an associate professor in wildlife ecology and conservation at Deakin University, said it was “rather tenuous to suggest that revegetation and/or weeding would benefit whales and sea turtles in Victoria”.

The Labor party has accused the government of overstating what it is spending on threatened species.

“Some of the projects that the government has claimed are about threatened species clearly have nothing to do with threatened species,” Labor’s environment spokesman, Tony Burke, said.

The Greens and environment groups have called for an independent auditor-general’s review of all environment and energy department expenditure on threatened species.

Frydenberg also defended the bike wash-down station’s threatened species credentials: “As for the wash-down station, it is designed to not only reduce invasive weed dispersal by mountain bikes into vulnerable Tasmanian bushland, but also raise awareness of weed impacts and educate mountain bikers on methods of reducing weed spread to improve outcomes for threatened plants and animals.”