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Threats to biodiversity insurance from protected areas

26 07 2012

A red-eyed tree frog (Agalychnis callidryas) from Barro Colorado Island in Panama. This small island, just 1500 ha (3700 acres) in area, is one of the tropical protected areas evaluated in this study (photo © Christian Ziegler <zieglerphoto@yahoo.co>, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute). Note: It is prohibited for any third party or agency to use or license this image; any use other then described above shall be subject to usage fees as determined solely by the photographer.

Much of conservation science boils down to good decision making: when, where and how we ‘set aside’ terrestrial or marine areas for specific protection against the ravages of human endeavour. This is the basis for the entire sub-discipline of conservation planning and prioritisation, and features prominantly in most aspects of applied conservation and restoration.

In other words, we do all this science to determine where we should emplace protected areas, lobby for getting more land and sea set aside so that we have ‘representative’ amounts (i.e., to prevent extinctions), and argue over the best way to manage these areas once established.

But what if this pinnacle of conservation achievement is itself under threat? What if many of our protected areas are struggling to insure biodiversity against human consumption? Well, it’d be a scary prospect, to say the least.

Think of it this way. We buy insurance policies to buffer our investments against tragedy; this applies to everything from our houses, worldly possessions, cars, livestock, health, to forest carbon stores. We buy the policies to give us peace of mind that in the event of a disaster, we’ll be bailed out of the mess with a much-needed cash injection. But what if following the disaster we learn that the policy is no good? What if there isn’t enough pay-out to fix the mess?

In biodiversity conservation, our ‘insurance’ is largely provided by protected areas. We believe that come what may, at least in these (relatively) rare places, biodiversity will persist despite our relentless consumerism.

Unfortunately, what we believe isn’t necessarily true.

Today I’m both proud and alarmed to present our latest research on the performance of tropical protected areas around the world. Published online in Nature this morning (evening, for you Europeans) is the 216-author (yes, that is correct – 216 of us) paper entitled “Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas” led by Bill Laurance. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: biodiversity, conservation, environment, Kakadu National Park, national parks, Protected area, threats, tropics, William Laurance
Categories : Africa, alien species, Amazon, amphibian, Asia, biodiversity, conservation, conservation biology, decline, deforestation, disease, environmental policy, fire, fragmentation, governance, habitat loss, harvest, human overpopulation, invasive species, logging, monitoring, predator, protected area, rain forests, reserve, South America

They always whinge about the maths

18 11 2010

“If you don’t know what a differential equation is, you are not a scientist” – Hugh Possingham 2009

—

At the end of 2009 I highlighted a new book edited by good mates Navjot Sodhi and Paul Ehrlich, Conservation Biology for All, in which Barry Brook and I had written a chapter. Now, despite my vested interest, I thought (and still think) that it was one of the best books on conservation biology yet published, and the subsequent reviews appear to be validating my subjective opinion.

I’ve given snippets of the book’s contents, from Paul Ehrlich‘s editorial on the human population’s rising negative influences on biodiversity, to a more detailed synopsis of our chapter, The Conservation Biologist’s Toolbox, and I’ve reproduced a review printed in Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

The latest review by Nicole Gross-Camp of the University of East Anglia published in Ecology is no less flattering – in fact, it is the most flattering to date. So this is by no means a whinge about a whinge; rather, consider it an academic lament followed by a query. First, the review:

—

Reaching higher in conservation

If a book could receive a standing ovation—this one is a candidate. Sodhi and Ehrlich have created a comprehensive introduction to conservation biology that is accessible intellectually, and financially, to a broad audience—indeed it is Conservation biology for all. The book is divided into 16 chapters that can stand alone and are complementary when read in sequence. The authors make excellent use of cross citations of chapters, a useful and often overlooked feature in texts of this nature. In the introductory chapter, Sodhi and Ehrlich eloquently summarize the gravity of the conservation crisis and still retain an optimistic outlook that encourages the reader to continue. I particularly found their recognition of population growth, consumption, and ethics in the conservation arena refreshing and a step toward what will likely become the next major issues of discussion and research in the conservation field. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Barry Brook, biodiversity, conservation biology, Conservation Biology for All, environment, Hugh Possingham, Navjot Sodhi, Paul Ehrlich, review
Categories : Australia, bad grammar, biodiversity, conservation, conservation biology, ecosystem, education, environmental science, human overpopulation, mathematics, modelling, monitoring, scientific writing, The University of Adelaide

Student opportunities with Australian Wildlife Conservancy

8 09 2010

A colleague of mine, Dr. Matt Hayward of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC), asked me to circulate some Honours, MSc and PhD student project opportunities. I thought this would be best done by publishing the call as a blog post.

The AWC is a non-government, non-profit organisation dedicated to the conservation of Australia’s wildlife and their habitats. AWC’s south-east region has a team of 7 ecologists who work closely with the land managers to carry out AWC’s Conservation and Science Program. The Science Program includes strategic research designed to help us manage threatened species more effectively. Several of these research projects are suitable for Honours, Masters or PhD projects.

This prospectus provides an outline of the student projects that are currently on offer in the south-east region. The majority of the projects are based on one sanctuary, although some aspects of the research may be done on other AWC sanctuaries and/or government conservation areas.

AWC will partially support these projects with equipment, staff time and expertise, and accommodation. In some cases, AWC may also provide some vehicle use and office facilities onsite at The Scotia Field Research Centre. We anticipate these projects will be collaborative efforts with input from students, academics and AWC staff, with appropriate acknowledgement for all involved. These projects are offered on a first in, first approved basis and have been offered to multiple universities.

More details on the sanctuaries and AWC are available here. If you are keen do one of these projects, please contact Matt Hayward and we will then formulate a research proposal and research agreement. Eight project descriptions follow. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: biodiversity, conservation, environment, Honours, Matt Hayward, MSc, opportunities, PhD, research, Scotia Sanctuary, South Australia, student, study, wildlife
Categories : Australia, cat, conservation, dingo, fox, invasive species, monitoring, predator, protected area, research, South Australia, southern Australia, threatened species

Long, deep and broad

24 08 2010

Thought that would get your attention ;-)

“More scientists need to be trained in quantitative synthesis, visualization and other software tools.” D. Peters (2010)

In fact, that is part of the title of today’s focus paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution by D. Peters – Accessible ecology: synthesis of the long, deep,and broad.

As a ‘quantitative’ ecologist (modeller, numerate, etc.) whose career has been based to a large degree on the analysis of large ecological datasets, I am certainly singing Peters’ tune. However, it’s much deeper and more important than my career – good (long, deep, broad – see definitions below) ecological data are ESSENTIAL to avoid some of the worst ravages of biodiversity loss over the coming decades and centuries. Unfortunately, investment in long-term ecological studies is poor in most countries (Australia is no exception), and it’s not improving.

But why are long-term ecological data essential? Let’s take a notable example. Climate change (mainly temperature increases) measured over the last century or so (depending on the area) has been determined mainly through the analysis of long-term records. This, one of the world’s most important (yet sadly, not yet even remotely acted upon) issues today, derives from relatively simple long-term datasets. Another good example is the waning of the world’s forests (see posts here, here and here for examples) and our increasing political attention on what this means for human society. These trends can only be determined from long-term datasets.

For a long time the dirty word ‘monitoring’ was considered the bastion of the uncreative and amateur – ‘real’ scientists performed complicated experiments, whereas ‘monitoring’ was viewed mainly as a form of low-intellect showcasing to please someone somewhere that at least something was being done. I’ll admit, there are many monitoring programmes producing data that aren’t worth the paper their printed on (see a good discussion of this issue in ‘Monitoring does not always count‘), but I think the value of good monitoring data has been mostly vindicated. You see, many ecological systems are far too complex to manipulate easily, or are too broad and interactive to determine much with only a few years of data; only by examining over the ‘long’ term do patterns (and the effect of extremes) sometimes become clear.

But as you’ll see, it’s not just the ‘long’ that is required to determine which land- and sea-use decisions will be the best to minimise biodiversity loss – we also need the ‘deep’ and the ‘broad’. But first, the ‘long’. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: biodiversity, conservation, ecology, evolution, long-term data, modelling
Categories : climate change, connectivity, conservation, deforestation, ecological literacy, ecosystem function, environmental policy, environmental science, monitoring, research, science, science communication

Biodiversity SNAFU in Australia’s Jewel

16 06 2010

I’ve covered this sad state of affairs and one of Australia’s more notable biodiversity embarrassments over the last year (see Shocking continued loss of Australian mammals and Can we solve Australia’s mammal extinction crisis?), and now the most empirical demonstration of this is now published.

The biodiversity guru of Australia’s tropical north, John Woinarksi, has just published the definitive demonstration of the magnitude of mammal declines in Kakadu National Park (Australia’s largest national park, World Heritage Area, emblem of ‘co-management’ and supposed biodiversity and cultural jewel in Australia’s conservation crown). According to Woinarski and colleagues, most of those qualifiers are rubbish.

The paper published in Wildlife Research is entitled Monitoring indicates rapid and severe decline of native small mammals in Kakadu National Park, northern Australia and it concludes:

The native mammal fauna of Kakadu National Park is in rapid and severe decline. The cause(s) of this decline are not entirely clear, and may vary among species. The most plausible causes are too frequent fire, predation by feral cats and invasion by cane toads (affecting particularly one native mammal species).

I’ve done quite a bit of work in Kakadu myself, and the one thing that hits you every time you travel through it is the lack of visible wildlife. Sure, you’ll see horses, pigs and buffalo, as well as cane toads and cats, but getting a glimpse of anything native, from Conilurus to Varanus, and you’d consider yourself extremely lucky.

We’ve written a lot about the feral animal problem in Kakadu and even developed software tools to assist in density-reduction programmes. It doesn’t appear that anyone is listening.

Another gob-smacking vista you’ll get when travelling through Kakadu any time from April to December is that it’s either been burnt, actively burning or targeted for burning. They burn the shit out of the place every year. No wonder the native mammals are having such a hard time.

Combine all this with the dysfunctional management arrangement, and you cease to have a National Park. Kakadu is now a lifeless shell that does precious little for conservation of biodiversity (and 3 of the 5 criteria it had to satisfy to become a World Heritage Area are specifically related to natural resource ‘values’). I say, delist Kakadu now and let’s stop fooling ourselves.

Ok, back from the rant. Woinarski and others superimposed a mammal monitoring programme over top a fire-regime experiment for vegetation. Although they couldn’t sample every plot every season, they staggered the sampling to cover the area as best they could over the 13 years of monitoring (1996-2009). What they observed was staggering. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 14 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, decline, Kakadu National Park, mammals
Categories : Australia, biodiversity, conservation, environmental policy, fire, invasive species, mammal, modelling, monitoring, protected area, reserve, tropical

Avoiding the REDD monster

22 01 2010

A short post about a small letter that recently appeared in the latest issue of Conservation Biology – the dangers of REDD.

REDD. What is it? The acronym for ‘Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation’, it is the idea of providing financial incentives to developing countries to reduce forest clearance by paying them to keep them standing. It should work because of the avoided carbon emissions that can be gained from keeping forests intact. Hell, we certainly need it given the biodiversity crisis arising mainly from deforestation occurring in much of the (largely tropical) developing world. The idea is that someone pollutes, buys carbon credits that are then paid to some developing nation to prevent more forest clearance, and then biodiversity gets a helping hand in the process. It’s essentially carbon trading with an added bonus. Nice idea, but difficult to implement for a host of reasons that I won’t go into here (but see Miles & Kapos Science 2008 & Busch et al. 2009 Environ Res Lett).

Venter and colleagues in their letter entitled Avoiding Unintended Outcomes from REDD now warn us about another potential hazard of REDD that needs some pretty quick thinking and clever political manoeuvring to avoid.

While REDD is a good idea and I support it fully with carefully designed implementation, Venter and colleagues say that without good monitoring data and some well-planned immediate policy implementation, there could be a rush to clear even more forest area in the short term.

Essentially they argue that when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, there could be a 2-year gap when forest loss would not be counted against carbon payments, and its in this window that countries might fell forests and expand agriculture before REDD takes effect (i.e., clear now and avoid later penalties).

How do we avoid this? The authors suggest that the implementation of policies to reward early efforts to reduce forest clearance and to penalise those who rush to do early clearing need to be put in place NOW. Rewards could take the form of credits, and penalties could be something like the annulment of future REDD discounts. Of course, to achieve any of this you have to know who’s doing well and who’s playing silly buggers, which means good forest monitoring. Satellite imagery analysis is probably key here.

CJA Bradshaw
Oscar Venter, James E.M. Watson, Erik Meijaard, William F. Laurance, & Hugh P. Possingham (2010). Avoiding Unintended Outcomes from REDD Conservation Biology, 24 (1), 5-6 DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01391.x

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Tags: biodiversity, conservation, deforestation, REDD, Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, science
Categories : agriculture, biosequestration, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, conservation, deforestation, environmental policy, habitat loss, logging, monitoring, tropical

Few people, many threats – Australia’s biodiversity shame

31 07 2009

I bang on a bit about human over-population and how it drives biodiversity extinctions. Yet, it isn’t always hordes of hungry humans descending on the hapless species of this planet – Australia is a big place, but has few people (just over 20 million), yet it has one of the higher extinction rates in the world. Yes, most of the country is covered in some fairly hard-core desert and most people live in or near the areas containing the most species, but we have an appalling extinction record all the same.

A paper that came out recently in Conservation Biology and was covered a little in the media last week gives some telling figures for the Oceania region, and more importantly, explains that we have more than enough information now to implement sound, evidence-based policy to right the wrongs of the past and the present. Using IUCN Red List data, Michael Kingsford and colleagues (paper entitled Major conservation policy issues for biodiversity in Oceania), showed that of the 370 assessed species in Australia, 80 % of the threatened ones are listed because of habitat loss, 40 % from invasive species and 30 % from pollution. As we know well, it’s mainly habitat loss we have to control if we want to change things around for the better (see previous relevant posts here, here & here).

Kingsford and colleagues proceed to give a good set of policy recommendations for each of the drivers identified:

Habitat loss and degradation

Implement legislation, education, and community outreach to stop or reduce land clearing, mining, and unsustainable logging through education, incentives, and compensation for landowners that will encourage private conservation
Establish new protected areas for habitats that are absent or poorly represented
In threatened ecosystems (e.g., wetlands), establish large-scale restoration projects with local communities that incorporate conservation and connectivity
Establish transparent and evidence-based state of environment reporting on biodiversity and manage threats within and outside protected areas.
Protect free-flowing river systems (largely unregulated by dams, levees, and diversions) within the framework of the entire river basin and increase environmental flows on regulated rivers

Invasive species

Avoid deliberate introduction of exotic species, unless suitable analyses of benefits outweigh risk-weighted costs
Implement control of invasive species by assessing effectiveness of control programs and determining invasion potential
Establish regulations and enforcement for exchange or treatment of ocean ballast and regularly implement antifouling procedures

Climate change

Reduce global greenhouse gas emissions
Identify, assess, and protect important climate refugia
Ameliorate the impacts of climate change through strategic management of other threatening processes
Develop strategic plans for priority translocations and implement when needed

Overexploitation

Implement restrictions on harvest of overexploited species to maintain sustainability
Implement an ecosystem-based approach for fisheries, based on scientific data, that includes zoning the ocean; banning destructive fishing; adopting precautionary fishing principles that include size limits, quotas, and regulation with sufficient resources based on scientific assessments of stocks and; reducing bycatch through regulation and education
Implement international mechanisms to increase sustainability of fisheries by supporting international treaties for fisheries protection in the high seas; avoiding perverse subsidies and improve labelling of sustainable fisheries; and licensing exports of aquarium fish
Control unsustainable illegal logging and wildlife harvesting through local incentives and cessation of international trade

Pollution

Decrease pollution through incentives and education; reduce and improve treatment of domestic, industrial, and agriculture waste; and rehabilitate polluted areas
Strengthen government regulations to stop generation of toxic material from mining efforts that affects freshwater and marine environments
Establish legislation and regulations and financial bonds (international) to reinforce polluter-pays principles
Establish regulations, education programs, clean ups, labelling, and use of biodegradable packaging to reduce discarded fishing gear and plastics

Disease

Establish early-detection programs for pathological diseases and biosecurity controls to reduce translocation
Identify causes, risk-assessment methods, and preventative methods for diseases
Establish remote communities of organisms (captive) not exposed to disease in severe outbreaks

Implementation

Establish regional population policies based on ecologically sustainable human population levels and consumption
Ensure that all developments affecting the environment are adequately analysed for impacts over the long term
Promote economic and societal benefits from conservation through education
Determine biodiversity status and trends with indicators that diagnose and manage declines
Invest in taxonomic understanding and provision of resources (scientific and conservation) to increase capacity for conservation
Increase the capacity of government conservation agencies
Focus efforts of nongovernmental organisations on small island states on building indigenous capacity for conservation
Base conservation on risk assessment and decision support
Establish the effectiveness of conservation instruments (national and international) and their implementation

A very good set of recommendations that I hope we can continue to develop within our governments.

CJA Bradshaw

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Tags: biodiversity, conservation, policy, science
Categories : Australia, biodiversity, climate change, conservation, coral reefs, deforestation, disease, ecosystem function, education, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, fish, fisheries, fragmentation, habitat loss, harvest, hotspot, human overpopulation, illegal fishing, invasive species, IUCN, IUU fishing, marine protected area, monitoring, New Zealand, protected area, Red List, research, reserve, restoration, threatened species

Eastern Seaboard Climate Change Initiative

30 04 2009

: © A. Perkins

I’ve just spent the last few days in Sydney attending a workshop on the Eastern Seaboard Climate Change Initiative which is trying to come to grips with assessing the rising impact of climate change in the marine environment (both from biodiversity and coastal geomorphology perspectives).

Often these sorts of get-togethers end up doing little more than identifying what we don’t know, but in this case, the ESCCI (love that acronym) participants identified some very good and necessary ways forward in terms of marine research. Being a biologist, and given this is a conservation blog, I’ll focus here on the biological aspects I found interesting.

The first part of the workshop was devoted to kelp. Kelp? Why is this important?

As it turns out, kelp forests (e.g., species such as Ecklonia, Macrocystis, Durvillaea and Phyllospora) are possibly THE most important habitat-forming group of species in temperate Australia (corals and calcareous macroalgae being more important in the tropics). Without kelp, there are a whole host of species (invertebrates and fish) that cannot persist. The Australian marine environment is worth something in the vicinity of $26.8 billion to our economy each year, so it’s pretty important we maintain our major habitats. Unfortunately, kelp is starting to disappear around the country, with southern contractions of Durvillaea, Ecklonia and Hormosira on the east coast linked to the increasing southward penetration of the East Australia Current (i.e., the big current that brings warm tropical water south from Queensland to NSW, Victoria and now, Tasmania). Pollution around the country at major urban centres is also causing the loss or degradation of Phyllospora and Ecklonia (e.g., see recent paper by Connell et al. in Marine Ecology Progress Series). There is even some evidence that disease causing bleaching in some species is exacerbated by rising temperatures.

Some of the key kelp research recommendations coming out of the workshop were:

Estimating the value of kelp to Australians (direct harvesting; fishing; diving)
Physical drivers of change: understanding how variation in the East Australian Current (temperature, nutrients) affects kelp distribution; understanding how urban and agricultural run-off (nutrients, pollutants, sedimentation) affects distribution and health; understanding how major storm events (e.g., East Coast Lows and El Niño-Southern Oscillation) affects long-term persistence
Monitoring: what is the distribution and physical limits of kelp species?; how do we detect declines in ‘health’?; what is the associated biodiversity in kelp forests?
Experimental: manipulations of temperature/nutrients/pathogens in the lab and in situ to determine sensitivities; sensitivity of different life stages; latitudinal transplants to determine localised adaption
Adaptation (management): reseeding; managing run-off; managing fisheries to maintain a good balance of grazers and predators; inform marine protected area zoning; understanding trophic cascades

The second part of the discussion centred on ocean acidification and increasing CO₂ content in the marine environment. As you might know, increasing atmospheric CO₂ is taken up partially by ocean water, which lowers the availability of carbonate and increases the concentration of hydrogen ions (thus lowering pH or ‘acidifying’). It’s a pretty worrying trend – we’ve seen a drop in pH already, with conservative predictions of another 0.3 pH drop by the end of this century (equating to a doubling of hydrogen ions in the water). What does all this mean for marine biodiversity? Well, many species will simply not be able to maintain carbonate shells (e.g., coccolithophore phytoplankton, corals, echinoderms, etc.), many will suffer reproductive failure through physiological stress and embryological malfunction, and still many more will be physiologically stressed via hypercapnia (overdose of CO₂, the waste product of animal respiration).

Many good studies have come out in the last few years demonstrating the sensitivity of certain species to reductions in pH (some simultaneous with increases in temperature), but some big gaps remain in our understanding of what higher CO₂ content in the marine environment will mean for biota. Some of the key research questions in this area identified were therefore:

What is the adaptation (evolutionary) potential of sensitive species? Will many (any) be able to evolve higher resistance quickly enough?
In situ experiments outside the lab that mimic pH and pCO₂ variation in space and time are needed to expose species to more realistic conditions.
What are the population consequences (e.g., change in extinction risk) of higher individual susceptibility?
Which species are most at risk, and what does this mean for ecosystem function (e.g., trophic cascades)?

As you can imagine, the conversation was complex, varied and stimulating. I thank the people at the Sydney Institute of Marine Science for hosting the fascinating discussion and I sincerely hope that even a fraction of the research identified gets realised. We need to know how our marine systems will respond – the possibilities are indeed frightening. Ignorance will leave us ill-prepared.

CJA Bradshaw

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Tags: biodiversity, climate change, conservation, marine, science
Categories : acidification, Australia, biodiversity, biogeography, climate change, coasts, conservation, conservation biology, decline, deforestation, ecosystem function, eutrophication, fisheries, habitat loss, kelp, marine protected area, monitoring, protected area, southern Australia, temperate, trophic cascades

Shifting baselines

19 02 2009

A term first coined by Daniel Pauly (who we’ve previously covered as a Conservation Scholar), and one I could easily classify as a conservation Classic, it essentially describes the way changes to a system are measured against previous baselines, which themselves may represent changes from the original state of the system (definition modified from Wikipedia). Pauly originally meant it in a fisheries context, where “… fisheries scientists sometimes fail to identify the correct “baseline” population size (e.g., how abundant a fish species population was before human exploitation) and thus work with a shifted baseline“.

It’s easily considered a mantra in fisheries (there’s even a dedicated Scienceblog on the topic, and several other fisheries-related websites [e.g., here & here]), but it has been extended to all sorts of other conservation issues.

As it turns out, however, quantifying ‘shifting baselines’ in conservation is rather difficult, and there’s little good evidence in most systems (despite the logic and general acceptance of its ubiquity by conservation scientists). Now Papworth and colleagues have addressed this empirical hole in their new paper entitled Evidence for shifting baseline syndrome in conservation published online recently in Conservation Letters.

Papworth et al. discuss two kinds of shifting baselines: (1) general amnesia (“… individuals setting their perceptions from their own experience, and failing to pass their experience on to future generations”) and (2) personal amnesia (“… individuals updating their own perception of normality; so that even those who experienced different previous conditions believe that current conditions are the same as past conditions”), and they provide three well-quantified examples: (a) perceptions of bushmeat hunters in Gabon, (b) perceptions of bushmeat hunters in Equatorial Guinea and (c) perceptions of bird population trends in the UK.

Although the data have issues, all three cases demonstrate convincing evidence of the shifting baselines syndrome (with the UK example providing an example of both general and personal amnesia). Now, this may all seem rather logical, but I don’t want the reader to underestimate the importance of the Papworth paper – this is really one of the first demonstrations that it is a real problem in vastly different systems (i.e., not just fisheries). I think it’s hard evidence that the issue is a big one and cannot be ignored when presenting historical data for conservation purposes.

Humans inevitably have short memories when it comes to environmental degradation – this essentially means that in most demonstrations of biodiversity decline, it’s probably a lot worse even than the data might suggest. Policy makers take note.

CJA Bradshaw

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Tags: biodiversity, conservation, science, shifting baselines
Categories : biodiversity, climate change, climate shift, conservation biology, decline, fish, fisheries, harvest, impact, monitoring

Marine conservation in South Australia

26 01 2009

Just before the holidays last year I participated in the Conservation Council of South Australia‘s (CCSA) Coast & Marine in a Changing Climate Summit 2008. It was an interesting, mature and intelligent summit with some good recommendation surfacing. Although I certainly didn’t agree with all the recommendations (view the entire report here), I must say up front that I have been very impressed with the CCSA’s approach in their ‘Blueprint’ summit series to address South Australia’s environmental problems.

Many environmental groups, especially regional ones, are seen by many as raving environists¹ with little notion for balance or intelligent debate. CCSA is definitely not one of those. They are very careful to engage with scientists, public servants, industry leaders and politicians to hone their recommendations into something realistic and useful. Indeed, I am now certain the only way to convince people of the necessity of dealing with the world’s environmental mess is to make intelligent, scientifically defensible arguments about how environmental degradation worsens our quality of life (yes, this is the principal aim of ConservationBytes.com). So, good on the CCSA for a rationale approach.

Enough about the CCSA for now – let’s move onto some of their marine-related recommendations. I won’t reprint the entire summary document here, but a few things are worthy of repetition:

Significantly increase the amount of resources available for marine species research and taxonomy, especially for non-commercial species.

Despite my obvious conflict of interest, I couldn’t agree more. One of the principal problems with our ability to plan for inevitable environmental change to lessen the negative outcomes for biodiversity, industry and people in general is that we have for too long neglected marine research in Australia. Given that most Australians live near the coast and almost all of us rely on the oceans in some way, it is insane that marine research in this country is funded almost as an afterthought. How can we possibly know what we’re doing to our life-support system if we don’t even know how it works?

Take climate change for example. The majority of climate change predictions are merely single-species predictions based on physiological tolerances. Most almost completely ignore species interactions. Any given species must compete with, eat and be eaten by others, so it’s insane not to combine community relationships into predictive models.

A strict monitoring regime should be implemented in all ports and harbours to continuously monitor [sic] for introduced marine pests in order to inform better management, in conjunction with the species outlined in the Monitoring section of the National System for the Prevention and Management of Marine Pest Incursions.

Many people, and scientists in particular, have traditionally turned their noses up at so-called ‘monitoring’. However, as a few Australian colleagues of mine recently observed, the marine realm has a huge, gaping hole in monitoring data necessary to determine the future of Australia’s marine environment. Take it from me, a scientist who regularly uses time-series data to infer long-term patterns (see Publications), it’s essential that we have more long-term data on species distributions, reproductive output, survival, etc. to make inference about the future.

Recreational fishing should be licensed, with the license fees being directed towards increased research of non-commercial species and education of recreational fishers.

I really like this one. It seems South Australia is the only state in the country that doesn’t have mandatory recreational fishing licences. Absolute madness. Given the capacity of recreational fishing to outstrip commercial harvests for some species (e.g., King George whiting Sillaginodes punctatus), we need vastly better monitoring via licences to determine local impacts. Not to mention the necessary generation of money to support monitoring and research, which to the average recreational fisher, would not be such a hefty price to pay. The political drive to keep the status quo is woefully outdated and counter-productive. See one of my previous posts on the potential impacts of recreational fishing.

There is a need for a co-ordinated, state/Adelaide-wide stormwater strategy. Currently the Stormwater Management Authority examines individual projects but does not manage a bigger picture with a co-ordinated approach.

A colleague of mine recently published an article showing how South Australian waters, being more oligotrophic on average than other areas of the country, are particularly susceptible to nutrient overloading. The main losers are seagrasses and macroalgae (kelp) forests – the Adelaide metropolitan coast has lost up to 70 % of its kelp forests since major urbanisation began last century.

There are many more recommendations that you can peruse at your leisure, and many of them will be updated this year once the CCSA incorporates all the received comments. I thank them for the opportunity to take part in their worthy aims.

CJA Bradshaw

¹My colleague, Barry Brook, invented this excellent term to describe those people who blindly support anything ‘green’ without really thinking of the consequences. It’s also a great way to differentiate serious ‘environmentalists’ and conservation biologists from raving ‘greenies’.