wetlands | ConservationBytes.com

Amphibian conservation in a managed world

1 04 2020

Crinia parinsignifera (top) and Limnodynastes tasmaniensis (bottom). Photo: Kate Mason

The amphibian class is diverse, and ranges from worm-like caecilians to tiny frogs that live their entire lives within bromeliads high in the rainforest canopy. Regardless of form or habit, all share the dubious honour of being cited as the world’s most endangered vertebrate taxon, and 41% of the species assessed are threatened with extinction. Rapidly changing climates will further exacerbate this situation as amphibians are expected to be more strongly affected than other vertebrates like birds or mammals.

This peril stems from a physiological dependence on freshwater.

Amphibians breathe (in part) through their skin, so they maintain moist skin surfaces. This sliminess means that most amphibians quickly dry out in dry conditions. Additionally, most amphibian eggs and larvae are fully aquatic. One of the greatest risks to populations are pools that dry too quickly for larval development, which leads to complete reproductive failure.

This need for freshwater all too often places them in direct competition with humans.

To keep pace with population growth, humans have engineered a landscape where the location, and persistence of water is tightly controlled. In seeking water availability for farming and amenity, we all too often remove essential habitats for amphibians and other freshwater fauna.

To protect amphibians from decline and extinction, land managers may need to apply innovative techniques to support vulnerable species. With amphibians’ strong dependence on freshwater, this support can be delivered by intelligently manipulating where and when freshwater appears in the landscape, with an eye to maintaining habitats for breeding, movement and refuge. A range of innovative approaches have been attempted to date, but they are typically developed in isolation and their existence is known only to a cloistered few. A collation of the approaches and their successes (and failures) has not occurred.

In our latest paper, we used a systematic review to classify water-manipulation techniques and to evaluate the support for these approaches. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: amphibian, conservation, conservation evidence, environmental flow, flow, frog, pump, restoration, salamander, spray, spraying, Toad, water, wetlands
Categories : amphibian, climate change, conservation, conservation biology, disease, drought, environmental policy, extinction, fish, frog, habitat loss, management, pollution, predation, predator, recovery, restoration, water

We need a Revegetation Council

14 01 2019

As I have discussed before, the greatest threatening process to biodiversity in South Australia today is past and ongoing clearing of native vegetation. So, arresting further vegetation clearing, and restoring previously cleared land to functional native-vegetation communities are easily the highest priorities across the entire State.

Despite some valiant attempts across South Australia to revegetate previously cleared areas¹, the haphazard approach to reforestation in South Australia means that we are unlikely to be maximising ecological function and providing the best habitats for native biodiversity. Several improvements in this regard can be made:

(i) Establish a State Register of past, ongoing, and planned revegetation projects, including data on the proponents, area revegetated, species planted, number of individuals planted for each species, monitoring in place (e.g., plant survival, other species using the restored habitat, etc.), and costs (actual or projected). Such a State Register would allow for a more regional coordination of future revegetation projects to suggest potentially more ecologically useful approaches. This could include identifying the most locally suitable species to plant, maximising the area of existing native habitat or restored fragments by planting adjacent to these, joining isolated islands of habitat to increase connectivity, or even to create more efficient projects by combining otherwise independent proponents (e.g., adjacent landholders).

(ii) Establish a State Revegetation Council that uses data from the Register to prioritise projects, enhance collaboration, and suggest improvements in design and placement according to the principles mentioned above. The Council could also help to coordinate monitoring of progress and ecological outcomes at the landscape scale. A similar State Register for Wetland Restoration and a relevant Council could be established in a similar manner, emphasising the conservation and restoration of smaller wetlands with more unique, endemic plant species. Likewise, both Councils could ideally assist in coordinating non-profit and private organisations in terms of their revegetation priorities, as well as coordinate with conservation covenants(see below) for private landholders.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Bounceback, carbon trading, ecological restoration, Gondwana Link, NatureLinks, reforestation, restoration, Revegetation Council, South Australia, wetlands
Categories : Australia, biodiversity, biosequestration, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, connectivity, conservation, deforestation, ecosystem function, environmental policy, fragmentation, habitat loss, recovery, reforestation, research, restoration, South Australia

Not all wetlands are created equal

13 02 2017

little-guy Last year I wrote what has become a highly viewed post here at ConservationBytes.com about the plight of the world’s freshwater biodiversity. In a word, it’s ‘buggered’.

But there are steps we can take to avoid losing even more of that precious freshwater biodiversity. The first, of course, is to stop sucking all the water out of our streams and wetlands. With a global population of 7.5 billion people and climbing, the competition for freshwater will usually mean that non-human life forms lose that race. However, the more people (and those making the decisions, in particular) realise that intact wetlands do us more good as wetlands rather than carparks, housing developments, or farmland (via freshwater filtering, species protection, carbon storage, etc.), the more we have a chance to save them.

My former MSc student, the very clever David Deane¹, has been working tirelessly to examine different scenarios of wetland plant biodiversity change in South Australia, and is now the proud lead author of a corker of a new paper in Biological Conservation. Having already published one paper about how wetland plant biodiversity patterns are driven by rare terrestrial plants, his latest is a very important contribution about how to manage our precious wetlands. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: South Australia, wetland, wetlands
Categories : agriculture, Australia, biodiversity, biowealth, carbon, climate change, climate shift, connectivity, conservation, conservation biology, development, ecology, ecosystem, ecosystem services, endemism, environmental policy, flood, habitat loss, human overpopulation, management, prioritisation, protected area, reserve, South Australia, species-area curve, water

World’s greatest conservation tragedy you’ve probably never heard of

13 10 2016

I admit that I might be stepping out on a bit of a dodgy limb by claiming ‘greatest’ in the title. That’s a big call, and possibly a rather subjective one at that. Regardless, I think it is one of the great conservation tragedies of the Anthropocene, and few people outside of a very specific discipline of conservation ecology seem to be talking about it.

I’m referring to freshwater biodiversity.

I’m no freshwater biodiversity specialist, but I have dabbled from time to time, and my recent readings all suggest that a major crisis is unfolding just beneath our noses. Unfortunately, most people don’t seem to give a rat’s shit about it.

Sure, we can get people riled by rhino and elephant poaching, trophy hunting, coral reefs dying and tropical deforestation, but few really seem to appreciate that the stakes are arguably higher in most freshwater systems. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: amphibians, biodiversity, conservation, extinction, Fish, fishes, fresh water, freshwater biodiversity, frogs, invertebrates, lakes, rivers, streams, threat, threatened species, water, wetlands
Categories : agriculture, alien species, amphibian, anthropocene, biodiversity, climate change, conservation, water

Cartoon guide to biodiversity loss XXXII

8 09 2015

Six more biodiversity cartoons — this time, from France. They’re in French to pay hommage to my hosts (and acknowledge their fanaticism for les bandes dessinées), but don’t worry, I’ve provided full translation (see full stock of previous ‘Cartoon guide to biodiversity loss’ compendia here).

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