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:
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.
© Wiley-Blackwell
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.
© Wiley-Blackwell
Watson and colleagues therefore make a number of recommendations:
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.
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
Here’s a nice little review from the increasingly impressive Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment which seems to be showcasing a lot of good conservation research lately.
© USGS
As we know, the world’s oceans are under huge threat, with predictions of 70 % loss of coral reefs by 2050, decline in kelp forests, loss of seagrasses, over-fishing, pollution and a rapidly warming and acidifying physical environment. Given all these stressors, it is absolutely imperative we spend a good deal of time thinking about the right way to impose restrictions on damage to marine areas – the simplest way to do this is via marine protected areas (MPA).
The science of MPA network design has matured over the last 10-20 years such that there is a decent body of literature now on what we need to do (now the policy makers just have to listen – some progress there too, but see also here). McLeod and colleagues in the latest issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment have published a review outlining the best, at least for coral reefs, set of recommendations for MPA network design given available information (paper title: Designing marine protected area networks to address the impacts of climate change). Definitely one for the Potential list.
Here’s what they recommend:
Size
Shape
Representation
Replication
Spread
Critical Areas
Connectivity
Ecosystem Function
Ecosystem Management
Of course, this is just a quick-and-dirty list as presented here – I highly recommend reading the review for specifics.
McLeod, E., Salm, R., Green, A., & Almany, J. (2009). Designing marine protected area networks to address the impacts of climate change Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 7 (7), 362-370 DOI: 10.1890/070211
© F. O'Connor
This ‘In Depth‘ Science Opinion piece from the ABC couldn’t have come at a better time. Written by Ian Gordon of the CSIRO, this opinion piece was written off the back of the special session on mammalian extinctions held at the recent International Congress of Ecology in Brisbane. Three previous ConservationBytes.com blogs in August (here, here and here) were devoted to specific talks at the Congress, including one about John Woinarksi’s gloomy tale of dwindling mammal populations in the Top End (which is especially frightening considering its also going on in our so-called ‘protected’ areas such as Kakadu, Litchfield and Garig Gunak Barlu National Parks!).
So, I recommend you have a read of my blog post on the shocking continued loss of Australian mammals, then read Ian’s piece copied below. Bottom lines – stop burning the shit out of our forests and encourage dingo population recovery and expansion.
Australia leads the world in mammal extinctions.
Over the last two hundred years 22 mammal species have become extinct, and over 100 are now on the threatened and endangered species list, compiled as part of the federal government’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
Evidence suggests Australia is on the cusp of another wave of mammal extinctions with a reduction in the abundance of some species and alarmingly, their range.
This is undoubtedly one of the major biodiversity conservation issues affecting Australia. It’s crucial we focus on the management solutions required to stop these species falling into extinction.
A South American success story
Working as a zoologist has allowed me to be involved in projects across the globe, looking at species at risk of extinction due to over-exploitation by humans.
Earlier this year I edited a book on the South American vicuña‘s comeback from the brink of extinction. Once abundant in the Andes, this wild relative of the llama suffered a sharp population drop in the 1960s due to international demand for its fleece.
An international moratorium on the sale of vicuña fleece in 1969 saw populations recover enough by 1987 for Andean communities to be able to harvest the fibre in a sustainable way. Population numbers of vicuña have remained healthy ever since, making it one of the few success stories of wildlife conservation worldwide.
Australia’s mammal extinction crisis
However Australia’s medium-sized mammals have had to deal with a different range of issues to the vicuña: the introduction of feral animals, particularly cats and foxes; increased grazing pressure; altered fire regimes; the clearing of habitat for development and production; and now, the effects of climate change.
It isn’t that any of these pressures are particularly important by themselves, but the fact that many of them act in concert has had a significant impact on causing the crashes in population numbers, and increasing the risk of species becoming extinct.
For example, the crescent nailtail wallaby was once an abundant and widespread macropod of central and western Australia. The pressures of feral cats and foxes coupled with clearing for agriculture and grazing, and altered fire regimes pushed this little species over the edge and it is now classified as extinct.
The problem is also more far-reaching than we first assumed. Many people may think that animals are becoming extinct in the south of Australia where habitat destruction is quite evident.
But the populations of iconic species in the north of Australia such as the northern quoll, golden bandicoot and the Carpentarian rock-rat are also collapsing. In our lifetime populations of some species have greatly reduced in number, and others have completely disappeared in landscapes that are considered to be in excellent condition.
The golden bandicoot, listed as a vulnerable species, used to be found across much of the north of Australia. It is now only found in very small populations in the Northern Territory and on the isolated Burrow Island off the coast of Western Australia.
Time to bring back the dingo?
Further research on the impacts of fire, grazing, invasive species and climate change on Australian mammals would be extremely valuable, but ecologists recognise that crucial management decisions need to be made now.
We’ve found ourselves in a position where we have identified the threats to Australian mammal species and documented the loss of these species, the role of science must turn more directly to identifying the opportunities for assisting the survival of these mammals.
In August I chaired a panel with Professor Chris Johnson from James Cook University at the International Congress of Ecology, to discuss what management could be put in place now to help beleaguered populations of small mammals recover.
Johnson’s main focus is to bring back the top-order predator.
He believes there is now good evidence that a stable population of dingoes suppresses the numbers and activity of foxes and cats, and some other feral animal species as well.
He argues that the effect of using a top predator like the dingo to hold down populations of foxes and cats is that the total intensity of predation on smaller native mammals can be reduced.
Bringing back the dingo has many sheep and cattle farmers raising their eyebrows because the wild dogs are known to kill stock. But guardian sheepdogs can protect stock herds by fighting off dingoes if they come too close. This still allows the dingoes to have a beneficial effect in the ecosystem.
Current trials of Maremma dogs, a type of sheepdog, at Dunluce sheep station in northwest Queensland demonstrate that they can be effective dingo deterrents in a pastoral zone.
This is just one potential solution that may work in some areas. Reinstating mosaic fire regimes, where patches of land are burnt at different times to allow the land to recover in stages, and controlling grazing around sensitive habitat of endangered mammals are other potential solutions that are currently under trial in various parts of the country.
Working together
Even though science doesn’t have all the answers I believe that it is more important than ever for land managers and scientists to work together to put new management regimes on the ground.
Our scientific knowledge can provide guidelines for land managers to reduce the pressures on our biodiversity. Through monitoring how species and ecosystems respond to on-ground management we can then learn and adapt our advice to meet future challenges facing Australia’s threatened species.
We need to act now: the international community is watching Australia and we have an opportunity to show how we can apply science through collaborative agreements with land managers to reduce the threats and protect endangered species.
We’ll then be able to add Australian animals to the short list of species, like the vicuña, that have been brought back from the brink of extinction.
© energyportal.eu
I have the dubious pleasure today of introducing a recently published paper of ours that was at the same time both intellectually stimulating and demoralising to write. I will make no apologies for becoming emotionally involved in the scientific issues about which my colleagues and I write (as long as I can maintain with absolute sincerity that the data used and conclusions drawn are as objectively presented as I am capable), and this paper probably epitomises that stance more than most I’ve written during my career.
The topic is especially important to me because of its subtle, yet potentially disastrous consequences for biodiversity and climate change. It’s also a personal issue because it’s happening in a place I used to (many, many years ago) call home.
Despite comprising about a third of the world’s entire forested area and harbouring some of the lowest human densities anywhere, the great boreal forest that stretches across Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and a huge chunk of Russia is under severe threat.
Surprised that we’re not talking about tropical deforestation for once? Surprised that so-called ‘developed’ nations are pilfering the last great carbon sink and biodiversity haven left on the planet? If you have read any of the posts on this blog, you probably shouldn’t be.
The paper today appeared online in Trends in Ecology and Evolution and is entitled Urgent preservation of boreal carbon stocks and biodiversity (by CJA Bradshaw, IG Warkentin & NS Sodhi). It’s essentially a review of the status of the boreal forest from a biodiversity perspective, and includes a detailed assessment of the degree of its fragmentation, species threat, climate- and human-influenced disturbance regime, and its carbon sequestration/emission status. I’ll summarise some of the main findings below:
© NASA
Warmer temperatures have predisposed coniferous forest in western Canada to a severe outbreak of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) extending over > 13 M ha. © BC Ministry For Range/L. Maclaughlan
Those include the main take-home messages. I invite you to read the paper in full and contact us (the authors) if you have any questions.
Full reference: Bradshaw, CJA, IG Warkentin, NS Sodhi. 2009. Urgent preservation of boreal carbon stocks and biodiversity. Trends in Ecology and Evolution DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2009.03.019
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
Invasive species
Climate change
Overexploitation
Pollution
Disease
Implementation
A very good set of recommendations that I hope we can continue to develop within our governments.
© Wiley-Blackwell
A paper recently posted online in Conservation Letters caught my eye as a Potential on ConservationBytes.com.
Gary Luck and colleagues’ paper Protecting ecosystem services and biodiversity in the world’s watersheds is a novel approach to an admittedly problematic aspect of conservation biology – global prioritisation schemes. While certainly coming in as a Conservation Classic, the first real global conservation prioritisation scheme (Myers and colleagues’ global biodiversity hotspots) was rather subjective in its approach, and many subsequent schemes have failed to reproduce the same kinds of priorities (the congruency problem). I’m certainly not knocking biodiversity hotspots because I believe it was one of the true paradigm shifts in conservation biology, but I am cognisant of its limitations.
Another big problem with conservation prioritisation schemes is that they are a hard sell to governments – how do you convince nations (especially poor ones) to forgo the immediate gains of resource exploitation to protect what many (incorrectly and short-sightedly) deem as irrelevant centres of biotic endemism?
Well, Luck and colleagues have taken us one step closer to global acceptance of conservation prioritisation schemes by basing this latest addition on ecosystem services. In their paper they divided the world by catchments (watersheds) and then estimated the services of water provision, flood prevention and carbon storage that each provides to humanity. Water provision was a estimated as a complex combination of variables that together can be interpreted as the capacity of ecosystems to regulate water flows and quality that benefit humans (e.g., influencing seasonal water availability or nutrient levels). Flood mitigation was estimated as the system’s capacity to reduce the impact of floods on communities, and carbon storage was estimated as the system’s capacity to uptake carbon in soils and vegetation.
In general, the catchments in need of the highest priority protection were found in the poorest areas (namely, South East Asia and Africa) because their protection would be the least costly and benefit the most people. Luck and colleagues are therefore the first to incorporate cost–benefit trade-offs explicitly in developing global priorities for protecting ecosystem services and biodiversity. I take my hat off to them for a modern and highly relevant twist on an old idea. Great paper and I hope people take notice.
CJA Bradshaw
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:
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:
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.
Sharks worldwide are in trouble (well, so are many taxa, for that matter), with ignorance, fear, and direct and indirect exploitation (both legal and illegal) accounting for most of the observed population declines.
Despite this worrisome state (sharks have extremely important ‘regulatory’ roles in marine ecosystems), many people have been slowly taking notice of the problem, largely due to the efforts of shark biologists. An almost religious-like pillar of shark conservation that has emerged in the last decade or so is that if we save nursery habitats, all shark conservation concerns will be addressed.
Why? Many shark species appear to have fairly discrete coastal areas where they either give birth or lay eggs, and in which the young sharks develop presumably in relative safety from predators (including their parents). Meanwhile, breeding parents will often skip off as soon as possible and spend a good proportion of their non-breeding lives well away from coasts. Sexual segregation appears to be another common feature of many sharks species (the boys and girls don’t really play together that well).
The upshot is that if you conserve these more vulnerable ‘nursery’ areas in coastal regions, then you’ve protected the next generation of sharks and all will be fine. The underlying reason for this assumption is that it’s next-to-impossible to conserve entire ocean basins where the larger adults may be frolicking, but you can focus your efforts on restricted coastal zones that may be undergoing a lot of human-generated modification (e.g., pollutant run-off, development, etc.).
However, a new paper published recently in Conservation Letters entitled Reassessing the value of nursery areas to shark conservation and management disputes this assumption. Michael Kinney and Colin Simpfendorfer explain that even if coastal nurseries can be properly identified and adequately conserved, there is mounting evidence that failing to safeguard the adult stages could ultimately sustain declines or arrest recovery efforts. The authors support continuing efforts to identify and conserve nurseries, but they say this isn’t enough by itself to solve any real problems. If we want sharks around (and believe me, even though the odd swimmer may get a nip or two, it’s better than the alternative of no sharks), then we’re going to have to restrict fishing effort on the high seas as well.
I think this one qualifies for the ‘Potential‘ list.
In August last year I covered a paper my colleagues (Navjot Sodhi and Barry Brook) and I had in press in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment entitled Tropical turmoil – a biodiversity tragedy in progress. The paper is now available in the March 2009 issue of the journal (click here to access). We were also fortunate enough to grab the front cover (shown here) and have a dedicated podcast that you can listen to by clicking here about the paper and its findings. I encourage ConservationBytes.com readers to have a listen if they’re interested in learning more about the woeful state of tropical biotas worldwide, and maybe some ways to rectify the problems. The intro to the podcast can be viewed by clicking here.
As an addendum to my last post (Marine Conservation in South Australia), I thought it worth mentioning that the South Australian government has released its plans for coastal marine parks. I have yet to look through these in detail, but public comment is welcomed until 27/03/2009. We’ll see what the fallout is.
Release approved by Allan Holmes, Chief Executive of the Department of Environment and Heritage (SA):
The outer boundaries of South Australia’s network of 19 new marine parks were proclaimed today. This exciting development will help protect our unique and diverse marine environment for future generations to use and enjoy, and will also position South Australia as a national leader in marine conservation.
The boundaries will be available for public comment until 27 March 2009. To support the public consultation, 57 public information sessions will be held across South Australia. To find out more about South Australia’s new marine parks network, visit here or ring 1800 006 120.
© U.R. Zimmer
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.
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’.
© CJA Bradshaw
I was recently invited to sit on a panel organised by the Conservation Council of South Australia (CCSA) to discuss issues of marine and coastal conservation under a rapidly changing climate. The results of that will be released soon (I’ll blog about that later), but in the interim, I want to highlight to readers of ConservationBytes.com how the CCSA is setting up the challenge to local governments to implement positive steps forward for the conservation of biodiversity in South Australia. I’m reproducing the executive summary of their Summit Report on Biodiversity in a Changing Climate (download full report here). It’s a good example of how we can all (industry, government, academia) work together to promote our own well-being.
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…South Australia’s biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate. It has been suggested by scientists that it will take many millions of years for biodiversity to recover from the impacts of humans over the last 200 years. In South Australia the key threat to biodiversity is land clearance; clearance of remnant native vegetation and subsequent fragmentation of habitat for native fauna species. Other key threats to biodiversity in South Australia include:
- Habitat fragmentation from development
- Competition from introduced flora
- Predation by introduced animals
- Direct competition for food, shelter and resources from introduced fauna
- Introduced diseases
- Collection of firewood from remnant vegetation
- Altered fire regimes
- Inappropriate grazing/overgrazing
- Inappropriate management activities
- Water extraction/pollution
- Climate change – including increasing oceanic temperatures and acidification
Much of South Australia’s economy is based on the use of biological resources and the need to maintain ecosystem services. This includes activities such as tourism and recreation, nature conservation, pastoralism, agriculture, horticulture, and forestry which all benefit from healthy ecosystems.
Our primary production systems require biodiversity for pest control/management, soil conservation, enhanced productivity and stabilisation, pollination, salinity amelioration, and water purification.
To address and reverse current biodiversity trends our society must recognise, understand and value biodiversity. Land managers, indigenous communities, local industries, government and the broader community may value biodiversity in different ways, however conservation and effective management of biodiversity is essential to ensure the continuation of these values for future generations. Biodiversity values may include:
- Production value for the provision of food, medicines, clothing and building materials consumed by society
- Ecosystem services for the maintenance of ecosystem services (natural storing and cycling of nutrients, stabilising soil formation, protection of water resources and breakdown of pollution), and maintenance of biodiversity
- Socio-economic value for recreation, research, education and monitoring, and cultural values
- Future value to maintain the capacity to identify future direct or indirect utilitarian value
The South Australian government has recognised the significance of biodiversity through integrated approaches such as the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia’s Biological Diversity, a joint initiative of the Commonwealth and State and Territory governments. This strategy supports other intergovernmental agreements, such as the National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development, the National Greenhouse Strategy, the National Forest Policy Statement, the Decade of Landcare Plan, the Wetlands Policy of the Commonwealth Government of Australia, the Inter-Governmental Agreement on the Environment, the Natural Heritage Trust Partnership Agreements and the National Framework for the Management and Monitoring of Australia’s Native Vegetation.
The South Australian government has also implemented its own biodiversity focused strategies including No Species Loss, NatureLinks, Tackling Climate Change, and the State Strategic Plan. Regional biodiversity plans are being facilitated to assist in the management and rehabilitation of natural habitats throughout regions of the state.
However, despite the government’s recognition of biodiversity as a serious issue, South Australia’s biodiversity continues to decline at an alarming rate. Actions for conservation, management and awareness raising must be backed by political will and be targeted and supported financially.
Investing in biodiversity is essential to maintaining ecosystems services and in turn to provide dividends to human health and wellbeing. Policies and regulations must ensure all stakeholders are accountable for their environmental footprint and role in implementing change for the future protection of our state’s biodiversity. The aim of this report is to provide policy recommendations to increase the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation in South Australia’s changing climate…
to view the Report’s recommendations, read on… Read the rest of this entry »
A new paper from Conservation Letters by Mark Spalding and colleagues entitled Toward representative protection of the world’s coasts and oceans-progress, gaps, and opportunities reminds us just how crap we are at protecting ocean habitats. I sincerely hope this one is a Potential given that the only direction one can move from absolute bottom is up. Richard Black at the BBC reports on the paper’s main findings:
Less than 1% of the world’s oceans have been given protected status, according to a major survey.
Governments have committed to a target of protecting 10% by 2012, which the authors of the new report say there is no chance of meeting.
Protecting ecologically important areas can help fish stocks to regenerate, and benefit the tourism industry.
The survey was led by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and is published in the journal Conservation Letters.
“For those of us working in the issue full-time it’s not a surprise, we’ve known all along that marine protection is lagging behind what’s happening on land, but it’s nice to have it pinned down,” said TNC’s Mark Spalding.
“It’s depressing that we’ve still got so far to go, but there are points of hope,” he told BBC News.
Coastal concentration
Four years ago, signatories to the UN’s biodiversity convention – which includes almost every country – pledged to protect at least 10% of the oceans in a way that makes sense ecologically.
Protecting them does not mean banning activities such as fishing or shipping completely, but making sure they are carried out sustainably.
All of the areas currently protected fall into countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones, and the majority are along coasts, the study finds.
Even so, only about 4% of coastal waters are protected.
Countries diverge widely in how much protection they have mandated.
Whereas New Zealand has almost 70% of its coastline under some form of protection, countries around the Mediterranean have set aside less than 2%.
In the developing world, Dr Spalding cites Guinea-Bissau as a country that has had invested in protection, particularly in the Bijagos Archipelago, which is home to a community of hippos dwelling along its mangrove coast, as well as more conventional marine species.
Palau, Indonesia, Micronesia and several Caribbean states are also making significant progress, he said.
About 12% of the Earth’s land surface has been put under protection.
Download the Spalding paper free of charge here.
Figure 2 from Brook et al. (2008): Synergies among threatening processes relative to habitat loss and fragmentation. a) A large population within unmodified, contiguous habitat occupies all available niches so that long-term abundance fluctuates near full carrying capacity (K). b) When habitat is reduced (e.g., 50 % area loss), total abundance declines accordingly. c) However, this simple habitat-abundance relationship is complicated by the spatial configuration of habitat loss. In this example, all remaining fragmented subpopulations might fall below their minimum viable population (MVP) sizes even though total abundance is the same proportion of K as in panel B. As such, limited connectivity between subpopulations implies much greater extinction risk than that predicted for the same habitat loss in less fragmented landscapes. Further synergies (positive feedbacks among threatening processes; black arrows) might accompany high fragmentation, such as enhanced penetration of predators, invasive species or wildfire, micro-habitat edge effects, and reduced resistance to drought with climate change.
This is, perhaps, one of the most important concepts that the field of conservation biology has identified as a major driver of extinction. It may appear on the surface a rather simple notion that the more ‘habitat’ you remove, the fewer species (and individuals) there will be (see MacArthur & Wilson’s Classic contribution: The Theory of Island Biogeography), but it took us decades (yes, embarrassingly – decades) to work out that fragmentation is bad (very, very bad).
Habitat fragmentation occurs when a large expanse of a particular, broadly defined habitat ‘type’ is reduced to smaller patches that are isolated by surrounding, but different habitats. The surrounding habitat is typically defined a ‘matrix’, and in the case of forest fragmentation, generally means ‘degraded’ habitat (fewer native species, urban/rural/agricultural development, etc.).
Fragmentation is bad for many reasons: it (1) reduces patch area, (2) increases isolation among populations associated with fragments, and (3) creates ‘edges’ where unmodified habitat abuts matrix habitat. Each of these has dire implications for species, for we now know that (1) the smaller an area, the fewer individuals and species in can contain, (2) the more isolated a population, the less chance immigrants will ‘rescue’ it from catastrophes, and (3) edges allow the invasion of alien species, make the microclimate intolerable, increase access to bad humans and lead to cascading ecological events (e.g., fire penetration). Make no mistake, the more fragmented an environment, the worse will be the extinction rates of species therein.
What’s particularly sad about all this is that fragmentation was actually seen as a potentially GOOD thing by conservation biologists for many long years. The so-called SLOSS (Single Large or Several Small) debate pervaded the early days of conservation literature. The debate was basically the argument that several small reserves would provide more types of habitat juxtapositions and more different species complexes, making overall diversity (species richness) higher, than one large reserve. It was an interesting, if not deluded, intellectual debate because both sides presented some rather clever theoretical and empirical arguments. Part of the attraction of the ‘Several Small’ idea was that it was generally easier to find series of small habitat fragments to preserve than one giant no-go area.
However, we now know that the ‘Several Small’ idea is completely inferior because of the myriad synergistic effects of fragmentation. It actually took Bruce Wilcox and Dennis Murphy until 1985 to bring this to everyone’s attention in their classic paper The effects of fragmentation on extinction to show how silly the SLOSS debate really was. It wasn’t, however, until the mid- to late 1990s that people finally started to accept the idea that fragmentation really was one of the biggest conservation evils. Subsequent work (that I’ll showcase soon on ConservationBytes.com) finally put the nail in the SLOSS debate coffin, and indeed, we haven’t heard a whisper of it for over a decade.
For more general information, I invite you to read the third chapter in our book Tropical Conservation Biology entitled Broken homes: tropical biotas in fragmented landscapes, and our recent paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution entitled Synergies among extinction drivers under global change.
An obvious personal plug – but I’m allowed to do that on my own blog ;-)
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I’d like to introduce a (relatively) new textbook that my colleagues, Navjot Sodhi and Barry Brook, and I wrote and published last year with Blackwell (now Wiley-Blackwell) Scientific Publishing – Tropical Conservation Biology.
We’re rather proud of this book because it was a timely summary and assessment of the scientific evidence for the degree of devastation facing tropical biodiversity today and in the future. I’ve summarised some of the main issues in a previous post covering a paper we have ‘in press’ that was born of the text book, but obviously the book is a far more detailed account of the problems facing the tropics.
This introductory textbook examines diminishing terrestrial and aquatic habitats in the tropics, covering a broad range of topics including the fate of the coral reefs; the impact of agriculture, urbanisation, and logging on habitat depletion; and the effects of fire on plants and animal survival.
One of the highlights of the book is that each chapter (see below) Includes case studies and interviews with prominent conservation scientists to help situate key concepts in a real world context: Norman Myers (Chapter 1), Gretchen Daily (Chapter 2), William Laurance (Chapter 3), Mark Cochrane (Chapter 4), Daniel Simberloff (Chapter 5), Bruce Campbell (Chapter 6), Daniel Pauly (Chapter 7), Stephen Schneider (Chapter 8), Stuart Pimm (Chapter 9) and Peter Raven (Chapter 10). These biographies are followed by a brief set of questions and answers that focus on some of the most pertinent and pressing issues in tropical conservation biology today. It is our intention that readers of Tropical Conservation Biology will benefit from the knowledge and be inspired by the passion of these renowned conservation experts.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
One for the Potential list:
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A great new paper has just come out in Global Change Biology by Sarah Jackson and Kevin Gaston: Land use change and the dependence of national priority species on protected areas. In what is simultaneously frightening and ecouraging is the observation that of nearly 400 Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) species considered either to be globally threatened or rapidly declining in the UK (i.e., > 50 % decline over 25 years), 55 % were largely restricted to statuatory protected areas in the UK. These areas cover about 11.5 % of Britain’s land surface.
What’s amazing about this is that without these reserves, these (hundreds) of species would already be extinct (or very close to it) – if this isn’t one of the strongest arguments for reserves, I don’t know what is. Not only are reserves essential for maintaining populations of threatened species, their spatial connectivity is also highly influential on persistence probability (future posts on fragmentation coming).
Much of the planet has now been modified to the point where any sort of species preservation will necessarily require large, expansive, contiguous networks of protected areas. Jackson & Gaston conclude:
Britain has undergone particularly extensive land transformation, reducing many originally much more widespread vegetation/habitat types to scattered fragments, few of which can be considered strictly natural (Rackham, 1986). A proportion of these fragments receive statutory protection and intensive management, increasing the likelihood that species of conservation concern are restricted to such areas. This circumstance is not unique to Britain, being found in many heavily developed regions including much of northwestern Europe, although it is not so extreme in many others. Britain may, thus, represent a possible future scenario for such regions. Under such circumstances, it is not unlikely that many species if they are not already restricted to protected areas will become so (e.g. species confined to tropical forest habitats following deforestation).
Keeping things off limits from the burgeoning human population is therefore one of the major ways we can stem the tide of extinctions.
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