Oct | 2009 | ConservationBytes.com

Sick environment, sick people

30 10 2009

A quick post to talk about a subject I’m more and more interested in – the direct link between environmental degradation (including biodiversity loss) and human health.

To many conservationists, people are the problem, and so they focus naturally on trying to maintain biodiversity in spite of human development and spread. Well, it’s 60+ years since we’ve been doing ‘conservation biology’ and biodiversity hasn’t been this badly off since the Cretaceous mass extinction event 146-64 million years ago. We now sit squarely within the geological era more and more commonly known as the ‘Anthropocene’, so if we don’t consider people as an integral part of any ecosystem, then we are guaranteed to fail biodiversity.

I haven’t posted in a week because I was in Shanghai attending the rather clumsily entitled “Thematic Reference Group (TRG) on Environment, Agriculture and Infectious Disease’, which is a part of the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/World Health Organization Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) (what a mouthful that is). What’s this all about and why is a conservation ecologist (i.e., me) taking part in the group?

It’s taken humanity a while to realise that what we do to the planet, we eventually end up doing to ourselves. The concept of ecosystem services¹ demonstrates this rather well – our food, weather, wealth and well-being are all derived from healthy, functioning ecosystems. When we start to bugger up the inter-species relationships that define one element of an ecosystem, then we hurt ourselves. I’ve blogged about this topic a few times before with respect to flooding, pollination, disease emergence and carbon sequestration.

Our specific task though on the TRG is to define the links between environmental degradation, agriculture, poverty and infectious disease in humans. Turns out, there are quite a few examples of how we’re rapidly making ourselves more susceptible to killer infectious diseases simply by our modification of the landscape and seascape.

Some examples are required to illustrate the point. Schistosomiasis is a snail-borne fluke that infects millions worldwide, and it is on the rise again from expanding habitat of its host due to poor agricultural practices, bad hygiene, damming of large river systems and climate warming. Malaria too is on the rise, with greater and greater risk in the endemic areas of its mosquito hosts. Chagas (a triatomine bug-borne trypanosome) is also increasing in extent and risk. Some work I’m currently doing under the auspices of the TRG is also showing some rather frightening correlations between the degree of environmental degradation within a country and the incidence of infectious disease (e.g., HIV, malaria, TB), non-infectious disease (e.g., cancer, cardiovascular disease) and indices of life expectancy and child mortality.

I won’t bore you with more details of the group because we are still drafting a major World Health Organization report on the issues and research priorities. Suffice it to say that if we want to convince policy makers that resilient functioning ecosystems with healthy biodiversity are worth saving, we have to show them the link to infectious disease in humans, and how this perpetuates poverty, rights injustices, gender imbalances and ultimately, major conflicts. An absolute pragmatist would say that the value of keeping ecosystems intact for this reason alone makes good economic sense (treating disease is expensive, to say the least). A humanitarian would argue that saving human lives by keeping our ecosystems intact is a moral obligation. As a conservation biologist, I argue that biodiversity, human well-being and economies will all benefit if we get this right. But of course, we have a lot of work to do.

CJA Bradshaw

¹Although Bruce Wilcox (another of the TRG expert members), who I will be highlighting soon as a Conservation Scholar, challenges the notion of ecosystem services as a tradeable commodity and ‘service’ as defined. More on that topic soon.

Comments : 7 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, health, science
Categories : anthropocene, biodiversity, China, climate change, conservation, disease, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental economics, environmental policy, function, governance, human overpopulation, malaria, pollution

Value of a good enemy

25 10 2009

alienpredator I love these sorts of experiments. Ecology (and considering conservation ecology a special subset of the larger discipline) is a messy business, mainly because ecosystems are complex, non-linear, emergent, interactive, stochastic and meta-stable entities that are just plain difficult to manipulate experimentally. Therefore, making inference of complex ecological processes tends to be enhanced when the simplest components are isolated.

Enter the ‘mini-ecosystem-in-a-box’ approach to ecological research. I’ve blogged before about some clever experiments to examine the role of connectivity among populations in mitigating (or failing to mitigate) extinction risk, and alluded to others indicating how harvest reserves work to maximise population persistence. This latest microcosm experiment is another little gem and has huge implications for conservation.

A fairly long-standing controversy in conservation biology, and in invasive species biology in particular, is whether intact ecosystems are in any way more ‘resilient’ to invasion by alien species (the latter most often being deliberately or inadvertently introduced by humans – think of Australia’s appalling feral species problems; e.g., buffalo, foxes and cats, weeds). Many believe by default that more ‘pristine’ (i.e., less disturbed by humans) communities will naturally provide more ecological checks against invasives because there are more competitors, more specialists and more predators. However, considering the ubiquity of invasives around the world, this assumption has been challenged vehemently.

The paper I’m highlighting today uses the microcosm experimental approach to show how native predators, when abundant, can reduce the severity of an invasion. Using a system of two mosquito species (one ‘native’ – what’s ‘native’ in a microcosm? [another subject] – and one ‘invasive’) and a native midge predator, Juliano and colleagues demonstrate in their paper Your worst enemy could be your best friend: predator contributions to invasion resistance and persistence of natives that predators are something you want to keep around.

In short, they found little evidence of direct competition between the two mosquitoes in terms of abundance when placed together without predators, but when the midges were added, the persistence of the invasive mosquito was reduced substantially. Of course, the midge predators did do their share of damage on the native mosquitoes in terms of reducing the latter’s abundance, but through a type of competitive release from their invasive counterparts, the midges’ reduction of the invasive species left the native mosquito free to develop faster (i.e., more per capita resources).

Such a seemingly academic result has huge conservation implications. In most systems, predators are some of the largest and slowest-reproducing species, so they are characteristically the first to feel the hammer of human damage. From bears to sharks, and tigers to wolves, big, charismatic predators are on the wane worldwide. Juliano and colleagues’ nice experimental work with insects reminds us that keeping functioning native ecosystems intact from all trophic perspectives is imperative.

CJA Bradshaw

Juliano, S., Lounibos, L., Nishimura, N., & Greene, K. (2009). Your worst enemy could be your best friend: predator contributions to invasion resistance and persistence of natives Oecologia DOI: 10.1007/s00442-009-1475-x

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, ecology, science
Categories : alien species, conservation, ecosystem function, extinction, invasive species, population dynamics, trophic cascades

Sleuthing the Chinese green slime monster

21 10 2009

greenslimemonster I just returned from a week-long scientific mission in China sponsored by the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I was invited to attend a special symposium on Marine and Deltaic Systems where research synergies between Australian and Chinese scientists were to be explored. The respective academies really rolled out the red carpet for the 30 or so Australian scientists on board, so I feel very honoured to have been invited.

During our marine workshop, one of my Chinese counterparts, Dongyan Liu from the Yantai Institute for Coastal Zone Research, presented a brilliant piece of ecological sleuthing that I must share with readers of ConservationBytes.com.

The first time you go to China the thing that strikes you is that everything is big – big population, big cities, big buildings, big projects, big budgets and big, big, big environmental problems. After many years of overt environmental destruction in the name of development, the Chinese government (aided by some very capable scientists) is now starting to address the sins of the past.

Liu and colleagues published their work earlier this year in Marine Pollution Bulletin in a paper entitled World’s largest macroalgal bloom caused by expansion of seaweed aquaculture in China, which describes a bloody massive outbreak of a particularly nasty ‘green tide’.

What’s a ‘green tide’? In late June 2008 in the coastal city of Qingdao not far from Beijing (and just before the 2008 Olympics), a whopping 1 million tonnes of green muck washed up along approximately 400 km² of coastline. It took 10,000 volunteers 2 weeks to clean up the mess. At the time, many blamed the rising eutrophication of coastal China as the root cause, and a lot of people got their arse kicked over it. However, the reality was that it wasn’t so simple.

The Yellow Sea abutting this part of the Chinese coast is so named because of its relatively high productivity. Warm waters combined with good mixing mean that there are plenty of essential nutrients for green things to grow. So, adding thousands of tonnes of fertilisers from Chinese agricultural run-off seems like a logical explanation for the bloom.

Qingdao green tide 2008 © Elsevier

However, it turns out that the bulk of the green slime was comprised of a species called Enteromorpha prolifera, and it just so happens that this particularly unsavoury seaweed loves to grow on the infrastructure used for the aquaculture of nori (a.k.a. amanori or zicai) seaweed (mainly, Porphyra yezoensis). Problem is, P. yezoensis is grown mainly on the coast hundreds of kilometres to the south.

Liu and colleagues examined both satellite imagery and detailed oceanographic data from the period prior to the green tide and not only spotted green splotches many kilometres long, they also determined that the current flow and wind direction placed the trajectory of any green slime mats straight for Qingdao.

So, how does it happen? Biofouling by E. prolifera on P. yezoensis aquaculture frames is dealt with mainly by manual cleaning and then dumping the unwanted muck on the tidal flats. When the tide comes back in, it washes many thousands of kilos of this stuff back out to sea, which then accumulates in rafts and continues to grow in the warm, rich seas. Subsequent genetic work also confirmed that the muck at sea was the same stock as the stuff growing on the aquaculture frames.

Apart from some lovely sleuthing work, the implications are pretty important from a biodiversity perspective. Massive eutrophication coupled with aquaculture that inadvertently spawns a particularly nasty biofouling species is a good recipe for oxygen depletion in areas where the eventual slime monster starts to decay. This can lead to so-called ‘dead’ zones that can kill off huge numbers of marine species. So, the proper management of aquaculture in the hungry Goliath that is China becomes essential to reduce the incidence of dead zones.

Fortunately, it looks like Liu and colleagues’ work is being taken seriously by the Chinese government who is now contemplating financial support for aquaculturists to clean their infrastructure properly without dumping the sludge to sea. A simple policy shift could save a lot of species, a lot of money, and a lot of embarrassment (not to mention prevent a lot of bad smells).

CJA Bradshaw

Liu, D., Keesing, J., Xing, Q., & Shi, P. (2009). World’s largest macroalgal bloom caused by expansion of seaweed aquaculture in China Marine Pollution Bulletin, 58 (6), 888-895 DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2009.01.013

Comments : 8 Comments »
Tags: algae, biodiversity, China, conservation, ecology, marine, science
Categories : algae, aquaculture, Asia, China, coasts, conservation, environmental policy, eutrophication, marine, research

October Issue of Conservation Letters

18 10 2009

The second-to-last issue in 2009 (October) of Conservation Letters is now out. Click here for full access.

Household goods made of non-timber forest products. © N. Sasaki

Papers in this issue:

Cacao boom and bust: sustainability of agroforests and opportunities for biodiversity conservation

Spatial socioeconomic data as a cost in systematic marine conservation planning

The diffusion approximation overestimates the extinction risk for count-based PVA (previously highlighted here on ConservationBytes.com)

Critical need for new definitions of “forest” and “forest degradation” in global climate change agreements

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Tags: biodiversity, conservation, conservation letters, science
Categories : biodiversity, conservation, deforestation, habitat loss, marine, marine protected area, MPA, planning, protected area, PVA

Life and death on Earth: the Cronus hypothesis

13 10 2009

Cronus

Bit of a strange one for you today, but here’s a post I hope you’ll enjoy.

My colleague, Barry Brook, and I recently published a paper in the very new and perhaps controversial online journal , the Journal of Cosmology. Cosmology? According to the journal, ‘cosmology’ is:

“the study and understanding of existence in its totality, encompassing the infinite and eternal, and the origins and evolution of the cosmos, galaxies, stars, planets, earth, life, woman and man”.

The journal publishes papers dealing with ‘cosmology’ and is a vehicle for those who wish to publish on subjects devoted to the study of existence in its totality.

Ok. Quite an aim.

Our paper is part of the November (second ever) issue of the journal entitled Asteroids, Meteors, Comets, Climate and Mass Extinctions, and because we were the first to submit, we managed to secure the first paper in the issue.

Our paper, entitled The Cronus hypothesis – extinction as a necessary and dynamic balance to evolutionary diversification, introduces a new idea in the quest to find that perfect analogy for understanding the mechanisms dictating how life on our planet has waxed and waned over the billions of years since it first appeared.

Gaia

In the 1960s, James Lovelock conceived the novel idea of Gaia – that the Earth functions like a single, self-regulating organism where life itself interacts with the physical environment to maintain conditions favourable for life (Gaia was the ancient Greeks’ Earth mother goddess). Embraced, contested, denounced and recently re-invigorated, the idea has evolved substantially since it first appeared. More recently (this year, in fact), Peter Ward countered the Gaia hypothesis with his own Greek metaphor – the Medea hypothesis. Essentially this view holds that life instead ‘seeks’ to destroy itself in an anti-Gaia manner (Medea was the siblicidal wife of Jason of the Argonauts). Ward described his Medea hypothesis as “Gaia’s evil twin”.

One can marvel at the incredible diversity of life on Earth (e.g., conservatively, > 4 million protists, 16600 protozoa, 75000-300000 helminth parasites, 1.5 million fungi, 320000 plants, 4-6 million arthropods, > 6500 amphibians, 10000 birds and > 5000 mammals) and wonder that there might be something in the ‘life makes it easier for life’ idea underlying Gaia. However, when one considers that over 99 % of all species that have ever existed are today extinct, then a Medea perspective might dominate.

Medea

Enter Cronus. Here we posit a new way of looking at the tumultuous history of life and death on Earth that effectively relegates Gaia and Medea to opposite ends of a spectrum. Cronus (patricidal son of Gaia overthrown by his own son, Zeus, and banished to Hades) treats speciation and extinction as birth and death in a ‘metapopulation’ of species assemblages split into biogeographic realms. Catastrophic extinction events can be brought about via species engineering their surroundings by passively modifying the delicate balance of oxygen, carbon dioxide and methane – indeed, humans might be the next species to fall victim to our own Medean tendencies. But extinction opens up new niches that eventually elicit speciation, and under conditions of relative environmental stability, specialists evolve because they are (at least temporarily) competitive under those conditions. When conditions change again, extinction ensues because not all can adapt quickly enough. Just as all individuals born in a population must eventually die, extinction is a necessary termination.

We think the Cronus metaphor has a lot of advantages over Gaia and Medea. The notion of a community of species as a population of selfish individuals retains the Darwinian view of contestation; self-regulation in Cronus occurs naturally as a result of extinction modifying the course of future evolution. Cronus also makes existing mathematical tools developed for metapopulation theory amenable to broader lines of inquiry.

For example, species as individuals with particular ‘mortality’ (extinction) rates, and lineages with particular ‘birth’ (speciation) rates, could interact and disperse among ‘habitats’ (biogeographical realms). ‘Density’ feedback could be represented as competitive exclusion or symbioses. As species dwindle, feedbacks such as reduced community resilience that further exacerbate extinction risk (Medea-like phase), and stochastic fluctuation around a ‘carrying capacity’ (niche saturation) arising when environmental conditions are relatively stable is the Gaia-like phase. Our Cronus framework is also scale-invariant – it could be applied to microbial diversity on another organism right up to inter-planetary exchange of life (panspermia).

What’s the relevance to conservation? We’re struggling to prevent extinction, so understanding how it works is an essential first step. Without the realisation that extinction is necessary (albeit, at rates preferably slower than they are currently), we cannot properly implement conservation triage, i.e., where do we invest in conservation and why?

We had fun with this, and I hope you enjoy it too.

CJA Bradshaw

Bradshaw, C.J.A., & Brook, B.W. (2009). The Cronus Hypothesis – extinction as a necessary and dynamic balance to evolutionary diversification Journal of Cosmology, 2, 201-209 Other: http://journalofcosmology.com/Extinction100.html

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, Cronus, evolution, extinction, Gaia, Medea, science, speciation
Categories : biodiversity, conservation, demography, extinction, habitat loss, harvest, invasive species, metapopulation, modelling, niche model, population dynamics, speciation

Managing for extinction

9 10 2009

ladder Ah, it doesn’t go away, does it? Or at least, we won’t let it.

That concept of ‘how many is enough?’ in conservation biology, the so-called ‘minimum viable population size‘, is enough to drive some conservation practitioners batty.

How many times have we heard the (para-) phrase: “It’s simply impractical to bring populations of critically endangered species up into the thousands”?

Well, my friends, if you’re not talking thousands, you’re wasting everyone’s time and money. You are essentially managing for extinction.

Our new paper out online in Biological Conservation entitled Pragmatic population viability targets in a rapidly changing world (Traill et al.) shows that populations of endangered species are unlikely to persist in the face of global climate change and habitat loss unless they number around 5000 mature individuals or more.

After several meta-analytic, time series-based and genetic estimates of the magic minimum number all agreeing, we can be fairly certain now that if a population is much less than several thousands (median = 5000), its likelihood of persisting in the long run in the face of normal random variation is pretty small.

We conclude essentially that many conservation biologists routinely underestimate or ignore the number of animals or plants required to prevent extinction. In fact, aims to maintain tens or hundreds of individuals, when thousands are actually needed, are simply wasting precious and finite conservation resources. Thus, if it is deemed unrealistic to attain such numbers, we essentially advise that in most cases conservation triage should be invoked and the species in question be abandoned for better prospects

A long-standing idea in species restoration programs is the so-called ‘50/500’ rule; this states that at least 50 adults are required to avoid the damaging effects of inbreeding, and 500 to avoid extinctions due to the inability to evolve to cope with environmental change. Our research suggests that the 50/500 rule is at least an order of magnitude too small to stave off extinction.

This does not necessarily imply that populations smaller than 5000 are doomed. But it does highlight the challenge that small populations face in adapting to a rapidly changing world.

We are battling to prevent a mass extinction event in the face of a growing human population and its associated impact on the planet, but the bar needs to be a lot higher. However, we shouldn’t necessarily give up on critically endangered species numbering a few hundred of individuals in the wild. Acceptance that more needs to be done if we are to stop ‘managing for extinction’ should force decision makers to be more explicit about what they are aiming for, and what they are willing to trade off, when allocating conservation funds.

CJA Bradshaw

(with thanks to Lochran Traill, Barry Brook and Dick Frankham)

Traill, L.W., Brook, B.W., Frankham, R.R., & Bradshaw, C.J.A. (2009). Pragmatic population viability targets in a rapidly changing world Biological Conservation DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2009.09.001

Comments : 8 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, minimum viable population, science
Categories : conservation, conservation biology, decline, ecological triage, investment, living dead, management, minimum viable population, mvp, population viability analysis, PVA, Red List, threatened species

Connectivity paradigm in extinction biology

6 10 2009

network I’m going to do a double review here of two papers currently online in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. I’m lumping them together because they both more or less challenge the pervasive conservation/restoration paradigm that connectivity is the key to reducing extinction risk. It’s just interesting (and slightly amusing) that the two were published in the same journal and at about the same time, but by two different groups.

From our own work looking at the correlates of extinction risk (measured mainly by proxy as threat risk), the range of a population (i.e., the amount of area and number of habitats it covers) is the principal determinant of risk – the smaller your range, the greater your chance of shuffling off this mortal coil (see also here). This is, of course, because a large range usually means that you have some phenotypic plasticity in your habitat requirements, you can probably disperse well, and your not going to succumb to localised ‘catastrophes’ as often. It also probably means (but not always) that your population size increases as your range size increases; as we all know, populations must be beyond their minimum viable population size to have a good chance of persisting random demographic and environmental vagaries.

Well, the two papers in question, ‘Both population size and patch quality affect local extinctions and colonizations‘ by Franzén & Nilssen and ‘Environment, but not migration rate, influences extinction risk in experimental metapopulations‘ by Griffen & Drake, show that connectivity (i.e., the probability that populations are connected via migration) are probably the least important components in the extinction-persistence game.

Using a solitary bee (Andrena hattorfiana) metapopulation in Sweden, Franzén & Nilssen show that population size and food patch quality (measured by number of pollen-producing plants) were directly (but independently) correlated with extinction risk. Bigger populations in stable, high-quality patches persisted more readily. However, connectivity between patches was uncorrelated with risk.

Griffen & Drake took quite a different approach and stacked experimental aquaria full of daphnia (Daphnia magna) on top of one another to influence the amount of light (and hence, amount of food from algal growth) to which the populations had access (it’s interesting to note here that this was unplanned in the experiment – the different algal growth rates related to the changing exposure to light was a serendipitous discovery that allowed them to test the ‘food’ hypothesis!). They also controlled the migration rate between populations by varying the size of holes connecting the aquaria. In short, they found that environmentally influenced (i.e., food-influenced) variation was far more important at dictating population size and fluctuation than migration, showing again that conditions promoting large population size and reducing temporal variability are essential for reducing extinction risk.

So what’s the upshot for conservation? Well, many depressed populations are thought to be recoverable by making existing and fragmented habitat patches more connected via ‘corridors’ of suitable habitat. The research highlighted here suggests that more emphasis should be placed instead on building up existing population sizes and ensuring food availability is relatively constant instead of worrying about how many trickling migrants might be moving back and forth. This essentially means that a few skinny corridors connecting population fragments will probably be insufficient to save our imperilled species.

CJA Bradshaw

Franzen, M., & Nilsson, S. (2009). Both population size and patch quality affect local extinctions and colonizations Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1584

Griffen, B., & Drake, J. (2009). Environment, but not migration rate, influences extinction risk in experimental metapopulations Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1153

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, extinction, science
Categories : connectivity, conservation, demography, ecology, extinction, fragmentation, metapopulation, minimum viable population, population dynamics, stochasticity

Protecting Australian wilderness

1 10 2009

Today I highlight a new paper just out online in Diversity and Distributions by James Watson and colleagues: Wilderness and future conservation priorities in Australia. It’s certainly one for the Potential list.

Jim Jim Falls, Kakadu National Park

Australia has a pretty bad biodiversity conservation track record – we have some of the worst mammal extinction trends in the world, and we’ve lost at least 50 % of our forested area since European colonisation. Despite our relatively large system of parks and reserves, things aren’t going to well (even in the parks!).

Our rapidly expanding influence means that we have to start protecting larger and larger areas if we want to have any chance of slowing the modern extinction crisis. This means we have to go beyond dedicated biodiversity reserves and sequester more ‘wilderness’ (defined as “…large areas that have experienced minimal habitat loss“). Watson and colleagues therefore used Australia as a good example to determine the extent to which the national protected area network captures ‘wilderness’, and how Australia’s planned expansion of the reserve system will include ‘wilderness’ in the future.

Although there wasn’t much planning involved initially, Australia (like many other countries) started to take biodiversity conservation seriously in the mid-1990s, such that now we have about 11 % of our 7.7 million km² land area within a National Reserve System. Planning didn’t feature heavily in the early years, but it has been embraced now by nearly all planning bodies within government.

Using estimates of the total wilderness area in Australia (Fig. a), Watson and colleagues determined how much was included in the Reserve System (Fig. b), and how this value changed between 2000 and 2006.

Of the 2.93 million km² of wilderness (38 % of land area, mostly in northern and western Australia), only 14 % was protected in 2000. This value increased marginally to 19 % by 2006 as the size of the Reserve System itself increased by 37 % (i.e., from 652597 to 895326 km²).

Bottom line – our growth in reserve area didn’t really capture the necessary wilderness; instead, gains were made in areas largely modified by humans. Even where wilderness has been captured, it’s predominately in ‘multiple use’ regions (incorporating mining, forestry and grazing, for example).

This isn’t a bad thing really – by focussing on areas of high biodiversity value that are under relatively high threat embraces the biodiversity hotspot approach to conservation and emphasises restoration. This is, of course, needed. But not incorporating a wider component of the habitats within wilderness could bias conservation toward range-restricted species.

Watson and colleagues therefore make a number of recommendations:

We should strive to quantify and map spatially the important ecological and evolutionary processes that drive the distribution and abundance of biodiversity so they can be explicitly incorporated into reserve area prioritisations.
We should focus on predicting the magnitude and distribution of future threats and incorporate them into the spatial prioritisation framework.
We should incorporate realistic constraints (e.g., financial costs) into prioritisation.
We need to map and analyse a range of social and economic factors that define opportunities for conservation in conjunction with information on conservation values, threats and costs.

The bottom line is that we need to find a better balance between planning that protects threatened species and ecosystems in already highly fragmented (threatened) landscapes, and planning that protects large areas of wilderness that still contains most of its conservation values (wilderness). We’re getting there, but slowly, and hopefully in time to save our remaining threatened species from extinction.

CJA Bradshaw

Watson, J., Fuller, R., Watson, A., Mackey, B., Wilson, K., Grantham, H., Turner, M., Klein, C., Carwardine, J., Joseph, L., & Possingham, H. (2009). Wilderness and future conservation priorities in Australia Diversity and Distributions DOI: 10.1111/j.1472-4642.2009.00601.x