biodiversity | ConservationBytes.com

Classics: Ecosystem Services

2 09 2008

‘Classics’ is a category of posts highlighting research that has made a real difference to biodiversity conservation. All posts in this category will be permanently displayed on the Classics page of ConservationBytes.com

—

Ehrlich, P.R., H. A. Mooney. (1983). Extinction, substitution, and ecosystem services. BioScience 33, 248-254

I may be mistaken, but I think this is one of the earliest appearances of the term ‘ecosystem services‘, which is essentially the concept that intact biological communities and functioning species interactions provide humanity with a host of ‘services’ that support or improve our quality of life. The ongoing assault on species and habitats around the globe are, to use Ehrlich & Mooney’s words “accompanied by severe degradation of the public service functions of the systems”.

What are ecosystem services? The list is long and varied, and much of them remain largely unquantified, but I’ll attempt to list the more important ones here:

Reduce desertification (e.g., intact vegetation producing microclimates resistant to drying out)
Maintain soils (e.g., root structure of intact vegetation preventing soil erosion)
Crop pollination (e.g., insect diversity and biomass supported by surrounding intact vegetation)
Seed dispersal (e.g., animal seed dispersers)
Food provision (e.g., non-timber forest products)
Water purification (functioning microbial communities and vegetation ‘filter’ water)
Fuel provision (e.g., firewood)
Fibre provision (e.g., flax)
Climate regulation (e.g., growing vegetation sequestring carbon; evapotranspiration changing microclimates)
Flood regulation (e.g., intact forests reducing likelihood and frequency of intense floods)
Disease regulation (see also more recent post on this subject)
Waste decomposition/detoxification (e.g., dung beetles)
Nutrient cycling
Soil formation
Primary production
Pharmaceutical sources
Cultural appreciation (e.g., aesthetic, spiritual, educational, recreational…)

Add your favourite to the list – there are plenty of sources that expand on these. For starters try the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the Wikipedia entry, the Ecological Society of America and Gretchen Daily’s lab at Standford University.

What is the value of ecosystem services to humanity?

This is a fairly controversial area because of the difficulty of measuring the link between ecosystem function and the services they provide, but also by the decision to include direct and direct costs of providing the services artificially. However, many people have attempted to put them into financial terms – Robert Costanza and colleagues put together some figures (see here, here, and here for examples) that attracted some criticism. Nonetheless, ecosystems are estimated to provide us with trillions of dollars worth of goods and services. Some examples from the Ecological Society of America:

Much of the Mississippi River Valley’s natural flood protection services were destroyed when adjacent wetlands were drained and channels altered. As a result, the 1993 floods resulted in property damages estimated at twelve billion dollars partially from the inability of the Valley to lesson the impacts of the high volumes of water.
Over 100,000 different animal species – including bats, bees, flies, moths, beetles, birds, and butterflies – provide free pollination services. One third of human food comes from plants pollinated by wild pollinators. The value of pollination services from wild pollinators in the U.S. alone is estimated at four to six billion dollars per year.
Eighty percent of the world’s population relies upon natural medicinal products. Of the top 150 prescription drugs used in the U.S., 118 originate from natural sources: 74 percent from plants, 18 percent from fungi, 5 percent from bacteria, and 3 percent from one vertebrate (snake species). Nine of the top 10 drugs originate from natural plant products.

What does this mean for conservation of biodiversity? Well, since scientists and policy makers alike have embraced the concept, we now have a much more convincing argument for maintaining the intactness of natural ecosystems. In the past we found it hard to convince those struggling to make ends meet (or even to obtain their next meal) about the importance of preventing species extinctions. Why should someone worried about whether or not his or her family will survive another day give a rat’s arse about species conservation? Well, the degradation of ecosystem services ensuing from species extinctions means that everyone’s – including the poorest – lives are reduced in quality and duration as we destroy these systems. See a previous post on Conservation for the People for more information.

CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 10 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : biodiversity, biosequestration, carbon, conservation, ecosystem, ecosystem services

Classics: The Living Dead

30 08 2008

—

Tilman, D., May, R.M., Lehman, C.L., Nowak, M.A. (1994) Habitat destruction and the extinction debt. Nature 371, 65-66

In my opinion, this is truly a conservation classic because it shatters optimistic notions that extinction is something only rarely the consequence of human activities (see relevant post here). The concept of ‘extinction debt‘ is pretty simple – as habitats become increasingly fragmented, long-lived species that are reproductively isolated from conspecifics may take generations to die off (e.g., large trees in forest fragments). This gives rise to a higher number of species than would be otherwise expected for the size of the fragment, and the false impression that many species can persist in habitat patches that are too small to sustain minimum viable populations.

These ‘living dead‘ or ‘zombie‘ species are therefore committed to extinction regardless of whether habitat loss is arrested or reversed. Only by assisted dispersal and/or reproduction can such species survive (an extremely rare event).

Why has this been important? Well, neglecting the extinction debt is one reason why some people have over-estimated the value of fragmented and secondary forests in guarding species against extinction (see relevant example here for the tropics and Brook et al. 2006). It basically means that biological communities are much less resilient to fragmentation than would otherwise be expected given data on species presence collected shortly after the main habitat degradation or destruction event. To appreciate fully the extent of expected extinctions may take generations (e.g., hundreds of years) to come to light, giving us yet another tool in the quest to minimise habitat loss and fragmentation.

CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 12 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : biodiversity, conservation biology, decline, deforestation, extinction, extinction debt, extinction vortex, habitat loss, inbreeding depression, island biogeography, living dead, minimum viable population, mvp, threatened species, zombie

Show me the (conservation) evidence

29 08 2008

Guest post from Professor William J. Sutherland, Miriam Rothschild Chair in Conservation Biology, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, United Kingdom:

—

We carry out research in conservation largely under the belief that this is making a difference to the planet. However, research (e.g., Sutherland et al. 2004) shows that little of this research is used in practice. There are many good reasons why practitioners only use a small fraction of the available science: most do not have access to the scientific search engines, they usually have very limited access to scientific journals and most importantly, they usually do not have the time or training to search the literature. Another important problem is that the most important source of information is the experience of practitioners, but this is rarely quantified or documented.

To help overcome these problems the website ConservationEvidence.com has been established. It has two main objectives: (1) providing a means for practitioners to document their experience through the online journal Conservation Evidence and (2) summarising the global literature including unpublished report and papers in languages other than English. Currently (August 2008), this has details of over 1200 interventions but the aim is to increase this to 10,000 interventions. The next stage, which is currently being worked on, is then to provide summaries of the consequences of different interventions.

The ambitious objective is to change the way in which global conservation practice is carried out so that practitioners have ready access to information on the effectiveness of interventions including the experience of other practitioners.

Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : biodiversity, conservation, conservation biology, environmental science, recovery, restoration, threatened species

Australian Wet Tropics Biosequestration Project

28 08 2008

Guest post from Penny van Oosterzee, Degree Celsius:

—

: © P. van Oosterzee

The Wet Tropics Regional Biosequestration Project Development Document was launched last week on the global stage, for public scrutiny, via the Climate Community and Biodiversity (CCB) website. There are only a dozen other cases in the world that have managed to reach this level of scrutiny.

The CCB standards are used in both the voluntary global markets and also for CDM (clean development mechanism) projects (only afforestation and reforestation) that have significant biodiversity outcomes. It is well known that land use, land use change, and forestry provides the most cost-effective means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally, and we believe the Wet Tropics project is at the leading edge of showing how.

The Wet Tropics Project is the world’s first regional biocarbon verification case based on community NRM (Natural Resource Management) activities, aggregating different bio-sequestration activities (reforestation, assisted natural regeneration, avoided deforestation, grazing land management, reduced use of fertiliser in agriculture) of myriad landholders in one verification case.

The initiative of using NRM Regional Plan’s as a basis for biosequestration project design is an innovation that can be rolled out across the state and nationally. Using Regional Plans ensures scientifically robust monitoring outcomes because of the adoption of systems already in place for monitoring. Economically the approach allows trading to occur at the regional and landholder level, and sets the stage for new livelihoods in regional Australia in a climate constrained world.

The Wet Tropics Project is itself a pilot for the NRM regions comprising the catchments of the Great Barrier Reef which are pivotal for its the survival. The Wet Tropics Project also helps to inform national policy debates since both Garnaut and the Federal Government’s Green Paper point out the importance of forestry and agriculture but fail to provide any way forward, and are on a watching brief for solutions.

The Wet Tropics initiative with its link to regional plans immediately enables entry into other global developments such as water quality credits and biodiversity credits.

See also the Degree Celsius website for more information.

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, ghg, greenhouse gas emissions, investment
Categories : biocarbon, biodiversity, biosequestration, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, conservation, deforestation, ecosystem services, environmental policy, investment, restoration

Cost, not biodiversity, dictates decision to conserve

26 08 2008

One for the Potential list:

—

I’ve just read a great new paper by Bode et al. (2008) entitled Cost-effective global conservation spending is robust to taxonomic group.

After the hugely influential biodiversity ‘hotspot‘ concept hit the global stage, there was a series of subsequent research papers examining just how we should measure the ‘biodiversity’ component of areas needing to be conserved (and invested in). The problem was that depending on which taxa you looked at, and what measure of ‘biodiversity’ you used (e.g., species richness, endemism, latent threat, evolutionary potential, functional redundancy), the priority list of where, how much and when to invest in conservation differed quite a lot. In other words, the congruency among listed areas was rather low (summarised nicely in Thomas Brooks‘ paper in Science Global biodiversity conservation priorities and examined also by Orme et al. 2005). This causes all sorts of problems for conservation investment planners – what to invest in and where?

Bode and colleagues’ newest paper demonstrates at least for endemism, the taxon on which you base your assessment is much less important for maximising species conservation than factors such as land cost and the degree of threat (e.g., as measured by the IUCN Red List).

Of course, their findings could be considered too simplistic because they don’t (couldn’t) evaluate other potentially more important components of ‘biodiversity’ such as genetic history (evolutionary potential) or ecological functional redundancy (the idea that a species becomes more important to conserve if no other species provide the same ecosystem functions); however, I think this paper is something of a landmark in that it shows that ‘socio-economic’ uncertainty generally outweighs uncertainty due to biodiversity measures. The long and short of this is that planners should start investing if there is evidence of heightened threat and land is cheap.

A few other missing bits means that the paper is more heuristic than prescriptive (something the authors state right up front). There is no attempt to take biodiversity, threat or land cost changes arising from climate change into account (see relevant post here), so some of the priorities are questionable. Related to this is the idea of latent risk (see relevant paper by Cardillo et al. 2006) – what’s not necessarily threatened now but likely will be in the very near future. Also, only a small percentage of species are listed in the IUCN Red List (see relevant post here), so perhaps we’re missing some important trends. Finally, I had to note that almost all the priority areas outlined in the paper happened to be in the tropics, which stands to reason given the current and ongoing extinction crisis occurring in this realm. See a more detailed post on ‘tropical turmoil‘.

Despite the caveats, I think this could provide a way forward to the conservation planning stalemate.

CJA Bradshaw

Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : biodiversity, conservation biology, ecological triage, endemic, endemism, environmental policy, extinction, governance, hotspot, planning, recovery, restoration, threatened species

Classics: Biodiversity Hotspots

25 08 2008

—

Myers, N., Mittermeier, R.A., Mittermeier, C.G., da Fonseca, G.A.B. & Kent, J. (2000). Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature, 403, 853-858

According to Google Scholar, this paper has over 2500 citations. Even though it was published less than a decade ago, already Myers and colleagues’ ‘hotspots’ concept has become the classic lexicon for, as they defined it, areas with high species endemism and degradation by humans. In other words, these are places on the planet (originally only terrestrial, but the concept has been extended to the marine realm) where at the current rates of habitat loss, exploitation, etc., we stand to lose far more irreplaceable species. The concept has been criticised for various incapacities to account for all types of threats – indeed, many other prioritisation criteria have been proposed (assessed nicely by Brooks et al. 2006 and Orme et al. 2005), but it’s the general idea proposed by Myers and colleagues that has set the conservation policy stage for most countries. One little gripe here – although the concept ostensibly means areas of high endemic species richness AND associated threat, people often take the term ‘hotspot’ to mean just a place with lots of species. Not so. Ah, the intangible concept of biodiversity!

CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 7 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : biodiversity, conservation, ecological triage, endemism, environmental policy, extinction, hotspot, population dynamics, recovery, restoration, threatened species

Investor creates first tropical biodiversity credits

23 08 2008

Post reproduced from TakeCover08:

An Australian investment company has launched what it describes as the first tropical biodiversity credit scheme, Mongabay.com reports (more detail here).

New Forests, a Sydney-based firm, has established the Malua Wildlife Habitat Conservation Bank in Malaysia as an attempt to raise funds for rainforest conservation.

The “Malua BioBank” will use an investment from a private equity fund to restore and protect 34,000 hectares of formerly logged forest.

The area will serve as a buffer between biological-rich forest reserve and oil palm plantations.

The credit scheme will generate “Biodiversity Conservation Certificates”, which will be sold to bankroll a perpetual conservation trust and produce a return on investment for the Sabah Government and the private equity fund.

Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : biodiversity, conservation, deforestation, habitat loss, planning, threatened species

Classics: Declining and small population paradigms

23 08 2008

—

Caughley, G. (1994). Directions in conservation biology. Journal of Animal Ecology, 63, 215-244.

Cited around 800 times according to Google Scholar, this classic paper demonstrated the essential difference between the two major paradigms dominating the discipline of conservation biology: (1) the ‘declining’ population paradigm, and the (2) ‘small’ population paradigm. The declining population paradigm is the identification and management of the processes that depress the demographic rate of a species and cause its populations to decline deterministically, whereas the small population paradigm is the study of the dynamics of small populations that have declined owing to some (deterministic) perturbation and which are more susceptible to extinction via chance (stochastic) events. Put simply, the forces that drive populations into decline aren’t necessarily those that drive the final nail into a species’ coffin – we must manage for both types of processes simultaneously , and the synergies between them, if we want to reduce the likelihood of species going extinct.

CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : biodiversity, conservation biology, decline, ecology, extinction, inbreeding depression, minimum viable population, mvp, population dynamics, stochasticity, threatened species

Classics: Red List of Threatened Species

22 08 2008

—

Mace, G.M. & Lande, R. (1991). Assessing extinction threats: toward a re-evaluation of IUCN threatened species categories. Conservation Biology, 51, 148-157.

I was recently fortunate enough to have the chance to speak with Georgina Mace, current president of the Society for Conservation Biology, to ask her which was the defining paper behind the hugely influential IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. There is little doubt that the Red List has been one of the most influential conservation policy tools constructed. Used as the global standard for the assessment of threat (i.e., extinction risk) for now > 40000 species, the Red List is the main tool by which most people judge the status, extinction risk, and recovery potential of threatened species worldwide. Far from complete (e.g., it covers about 2 % of described species), the Red List is an evolving and improving assessment by the world’s best experts. It has become very much more than just a ‘list’.

Indeed, it is used often in the conservation ecology literature as a proxy for extinction risk (although see post on Minimum Viable Population size for some counter-arguments to that idea). We’ve used it that way ourselves in several recent papers (see below), and there are plenty of other examples. From extinction theory to policy implementation, Mace & Lande’s contribution to biodiversity conservation via the Red List was a major step forward.

Classics: Minimum Viable Population size

21 08 2008

—

Shaffer, M.L. (1981). Minimum population sizes for species conservation. BioScience 31, 131–134

Small and isolated populations are particularly vulnerable to extinction through random variation in birth and death rates, variation in resource or habitat availability, predation, competitive interactions and single-event catastrophes, and inbreeding. Enter the concept of the Minimum Viable Population (MVP) size, which was originally defined as the smallest number of individuals required for an isolated population to persist (at some predefined ‘high’ probability) for some ‘long’ time into the future. In other words, the MVP size is the number of individuals in the population that is needed to withstand normal (expected) variation in all the things that affect individual persistence through time. Drop below your MVP size, and suddenly your population’s risk of extinction sky-rockets. In some ways, MVP size can be considered the threshold dividing the ‘small’ and ‘declining’ population paradigms (see Caughley 1994), so that different management strategies can be applied to populations depending on their relative distance to (population-specific) MVP size.

This wonderfully simply, yet fundamental concept of extinction dynamics provides the target for species recovery, minimum reserve size and sustainable harvest if calculated correctly. Indeed, it is a concept underlying threatened species lists worldwide, including the most well-known (IUCN Red List of Threatened Species). While there are a host of methods issues, genetic considerations and policy implementation problems, Shaffer’s original paper spawned an entire generation of research and mathematical techniques in conservation biology, and set the stage for tangible, mathematically based conservation targets.

Want more information? We have published some papers and articles on the subject that elaborate more on the methods, expected ranges, subtleties and implications of the MVP concept that you can access below.

Traill, LW, CJA Bradshaw, BW Brook. 2007. Minimum viable population size. In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment)
Traill, LW, CJA Bradshaw, BW Brook. 2007. Minimum viable population size: a meta-analysis of 30 years of published estimates. Biological Conservation 139: 159-166
Brook, BW, LW Traill, CJA Bradshaw. 2006. Minimum viable population size and global extinction risk are unrelated. Ecology Letters 9: 375-382

CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 27 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : biodiversity, conservation, conservation biology, extinction, extinction vortex, inbreeding depression, minimum viable population, mvp, population dynamics

Classics: Island Biogeography

19 08 2008

—

MacArthur, R.H. & Wilson, E.O. (1967). The Theory of Island Biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ

Although this classic book was written before the discipline of conservation biology really kicked off, it has to be one of the more influential in terms of reserve design and the estimation of extinction rates. The original theory was proposed as a determinant of total species richness on islands as a function of island size. Put (almost too) simply the bigger the island, the more species it contains. This ultimately lead to the branch of biogeography/conservation biology that applied ‘species-area’ relationships to habitat fragments to extrapolate total species number and more importantly (in the context of the extinction crisis), estimate rates of species loss. The species-area literature is a hot-bed of critique and polemic, yet no one can deny that this seminal book really kicked off the idea that reduced and fragmented areas are bad for biodiversity. We wouldn’t have nature reserves today if it wasn’t for this simple, yet brilliant piece of work.

CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 6 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : biodiversity, conservation biology, deforestation, extinction, island biogeography, research, species-area curve

Tropical turmoil – a biodiversity tragedy in progress

18 08 2008

We recently published (online) a major review showing that the world is losing the battle over tropical habitat loss with potentially disastrous implications for biodiversity and human well-being.

Published online in the Ecological Society of America’s journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, our review Tropical turmoil – a biodiversity crisis in progress concludes that we are “on a trajectory towards disaster” and calls for an immediate global, multi-pronged conservation approach to avert the worst outcomes.

Tropical forests support more than 60 % of all known species, but represent only about 7 % of the Earth’s land surface. But up to 15 million hectares of tropical rainforest are being lost every year and species are being lost at a rate of up to 10000 times higher than would happen randomly without humans present.

This is not just a tragedy for tropical biodiversity, this is a crisis that will directly affect human livelihoods. This is not just about losing tiny species found in the canopies of big rain forest trees few people will ever see, this is about a complete change in ecosystem services that directly benefit human life. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 16 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : Africa, alien species, anthropocene, Asia, biodiversity, bushmeat, Central America, conservation, corruption, deforestation, ecosystem services, environmental policy, extinction, governance, habitat loss, human overpopulation, invasive species, restoration, science, South America, tropical

The Irwin Factor in Conservation Leadership

16 08 2008

In 2007 we were compelled to comment on an essential ingredient in the challenge to convince people that conserving biodiversity is in their best interest – inspirational and celebrity characters highlighting the extinction crisis.

Just how important is it to have charismatic conservation champions with celebrity status beating the drum for change? I used to think that it was essential (and some of my colleagues agree) if the majority of the human population is to alter destructive behaviour, especially considering that most people do not read the scientific literature (hence, media such as blogs that can appeal to a much wider audience).

However, there is a danger that overtly sensational representation of these issues may stimulate nothing at all, or even counter-productive behaviour. Indeed, this was our argument concerning Aussie ‘larrikin’ Steve Irwin. Our letter entitled Dangers of sensationalizing conservation biology published in the journal Conservation Biology was a response to Sébastien Paquette’s letter entitled Importance of the ‘Crocodile Hunter’ phenomenon published in the same journal.

An abbreviated version of our letter follows:

The global biodiversity crisis that spawned the discipline of conservation biology is closer to the forefront of the average person’s thoughts than it has ever been. The shift in popular thinking about conservation issues is in no small way due to the impressive and relevant work of conservation scientists worldwide. It is good science that provides the focus for the conservation spotlight, which continues to gain in intensity with problems such as anthropogenically driven climate change. That said, acknowledgement must be given to the power of advocacy wielded by people who have been successful in promoting awareness of conservation matters in the mass media.

The power of media, such as television, to influence public thought on conservation issues is, however, both a blessing and a curse. Its great benefit is that it promotes awareness of the natural world among the urbanized citizenry who are disconnected from the plight of biodiversity. Modern “nature celebrities” such as Sir David Attenborough, Jacques Cousteau, Al Gore, and Steve Irwin have fostered and promoted an appreciation and fascination of natural systems by people who would never otherwise have the opportunity to observe them. The curse, however, is subtler and insidious. The overarching requirement of popular entertainment is that it be eye-catching, sensational, and even eccentric if it is to attract sufficient attention to survive. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : anthropocene, biodiversity, celebrity, conservation, environmental policy, ethics, science, Steve Irwin

Global warming and biodiversity extinction

14 08 2008

My colleague Barry Brook recently posted a discussion on the impacts of climate change on biodiversity extinction rates and patterns. A very good introduction to the subject.

CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, climate change, conservation, extinction, science
Categories : anthropocene, biodiversity, climate change, conservation, environmental science, extinction, extinction vortex, science, trophic cascades

Captive breeding for conservation

7 08 2008

My first attempt at this potentially rather controversial section of ConservationBytes.com. Inspired by my latest post (30/07/2008), I must comment on what I believe is one of the biggest wasters of finite conservation (financial) resources – captive breeding for population recovery. The first laureate of the Toothless category goes to 7 authors (Snyder et al.) who I believe deserve at least a round of beers for their bold paper published way back in 1996 in Conservation Biology – Limitations of captive breeding in endangered species recovery.

The paper describes basically that in most situations, captive breeding for population recovery is ill-conceived, badly planned, overly expensive and done without any notion of the particular species’ minimum viable population size (the population size required to provide a high probability of persistence over a long period). Examples of ridiculous cloning experiments done in the name of ‘conservation’ (one example with which I am familiar is the case of the SE Asian banteng cloning experiment – these conservation-challenged scientists actually claimed “We hope that the birth of these animals will open the way for a new strategy to help maintain valuable biodiversity and to respond to the challenge of large-scale extinctions ahead.” after spending amounts that would make Bill Gates blush). Come on! Minimum viable population sizes number in the thousands to tens of thousands (e.g., Brook et al. 2006; Traill et al. 2007), not to mention the genetic diversity necessary for persistence captive populations generally lack (see Frankham et al. 2004).

In the spirit of ecological triage, we must focus on conservation efforts that have a high probability of changing the extinction risk of species. Wasting millions of dollars to save a handful of inbred individuals (insert your favourite example here) WILL NOT, in most cases, make any difference to population viability (with only a few exceptions). Good on Snyder et al. (1996) for their analysis and conclusions, but zoos, laboratories and other captive-rearing organisations around the world continue to throw away millions using the ‘conservation’ rationale to justify their actions. Rubbish. I’m afraid there is little evidence that the Snyder et al. paper changed anything. (post original published in Toothless 31/07/2008).

CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : biodiversity, captive breeding, conservation, ecological triage, extinction, extinction vortex, inbreeding depression, minimum viable population, mvp, recovery, science

The Great Disruption

6 08 2008

If ever there was a plea for conservation actions that really do something to reverse the catastrophic ecosystem and ensuing economic crashes that are happening worldwide, its embodied in this essay by Paul Gilding. I won’t write much more on the subject because Paul says it so much more eloquently and thoroughly than I can. Please read his Scream Crash Boom 2: The Great Disruption.

CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, Economics, science
Categories : anthropocene, biodiversity, carbon, climate change, conservation, environmental policy, extinction, governance, science

Wasting precious money on the conservation-irrelevant

30 07 2008

I’ve just attended the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists held in Montréal, Canada (by the way, if you are ever thinking of staying at Le Centre Sheraton in Montréal, my advice is to make a wide berth – one of the least-satisfying, over-priced, deliberately scrooging hotels I have ever had the displeasure of occupying).

The conference itself was interesting, if not somewhat tangential to most of the major conservation issues facing fish, amphibians and reptiles in the modern context (it is only fair though to state that it wasn’t a ‘conservation’ conference per se). One thing that did astound me though was an open-microphone presentation by someone from the Oceanário de Lisboa in Portugal who described the €100000 operation to release a very large (> 3.5 m wingspan) manta ray (Manta birostris) from its restrictive enclosure. Yes, you read correctly – €100000 to save one individual manta ray. Not even a threatened species (currently classified as ‘Near Threatened’ on the IUCN Red List), these good people at what I am sure is an excellent aquarium spent more money on one animal than most projects spend on the conservation of entire species.

Have these people not heard of ecological (or ‘conservation’) triage? Similar to medical triage in emergency or wartime situations, ecological triage directs finite resources to those species that require the most attention and have the highest chance of long-term persistence. I’m not sure who coined the term (perhaps Holt & Viney 2001), but the concept has been developed by a number of excellent conservation planning researchers over the last few years to become the cornerstone of modern conservation investment strategies (see Possingham et al. 2002; Hobbs & Kristjanson 2003; Wilson et al. 2007). Ecological triage essentially means that immediate conservation action and resources are directed toward populations that are highly threatened but where the probability of persistence is high. The flip side is that we shouldn’t waste our precious resources either on irrelevant and useless actions like the one described above.

Saving one manta ray would not change the species’ long-term persistence probability – full stop. In an age where conservation action and research are suffering from human apathy and stupidity, surely we can spend our money more wisely. For example, that €100000 could have purchased some primary rain forest somewhere and saved literally thousands of species from extinction. What a waste.

Comments : 11 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : biodiversity, conservation, conservation biology, ecological triage, IUCN, manta ray, planning, science

From the mountains to the sea

18 07 2008

The theme of this year’s Society for Conservation Biology annual meeting in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA.

The positives: I was fortunate to meet some great established and up-and-coming conservation biologists that I had not yet met face to face; the people were friendly; the organisation was efficient; and many of the talks were good, solid science.

The negatives: I truly felt a lack of excitement or passion at the conference. There was nothing to suggest that we are in the midst of a conservation crisis; perhaps we as scientists have seen and heard it so much that the ‘crisis’ tone has been lost in our delivery. Have we given up? The quality of the the research and the dedication of those involved suggest otherwise, but I can’t help think that there is a spark missing from those responsible for convincing the rest of the world that we are in serious trouble. It’s almost as if we’ve come full circle – the early days of conservation biology (the discipline) struggled to find its place among the more classic scientific research fields, but over 50 years of excellent and ground-breaking research has secured its place among the most relevant of today’s scientific endeavours. Conservation scientists began to take on bolder roles as advocates in addition to being purely objective information providers. The world’s sad state has ratified the importance of what we do like never before, but it would be sadder still if we slipped back into the passionless role of mere data providers.

I hope the next conference inspires me more. No offence intended to the conference organisers – my statements reflect the apparent laissez-faire of all of us.

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : biodiversity, conservation, conservation biology, extinction, impact, research, science

InVEST for ecosystem services

18 07 2008

I’m currently attending the Society for Conservation Biology‘s Annual Meeting in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA and blogging on presentations I think are worth mentioning.

A great talk that I had the pleasure of moderating was given by Taylor Ricketts of the World Wildlife Fund. He and an impressive team of conservation scientists have recently put together some spatially explicit software – InVEST – that quantifies the values of ecosystem services and compares those to biodiversity values (richness, endemism, etc.). A clever way to find the right balance between ecosystem functions that benefit humans and species preservation, this software and approach appears to be a great way to optimise land use in our changing environment. Definitely one to watch. The first paper describing this is by Erik Nelson and colleagues (including Ricketts) and will be appearing shortly in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science
Categories : biodiversity, carbon trading, ecosystem services, function, planning, science

Realistic conservation investment

18 07 2008

I’m currently attending the Society for Conservation Biology‘s Annual Meeting in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA and blogging on presentations I think are worth mentioning.

In a surprise shift from the previously planned final plenary talk, Prof. Helene Marsh of James Cook University gave a nice example of how good research can be melded with non-technical opinion to weight threatened species for recovery investment. Using a north Queensland example, she described how technical assessments of relative threat risk combined with weightings from non-technical policy makers can provide the most realistic and relevant conservation investment when used simultaneously. Based on their paper in 2007 (‘Optimizing allocation of management resources for wildlife‘), Prof. Marsh outlined a quantitative approach to meld these decision-making components with real-world outcomes. I’d like to see some of the real outcomes in terms of recovery of north Queensland threatened species, but at least the State appears to be on the right track by using this tool.

CJA Bradshaw