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To promote more effective recovery planning for species listed under the U. S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Society for Conservation Biology sponsored a systematic review of a large sample of ESA recovery plans. The review wa...
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To promote more effective recovery planning for species listed under the U. S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Society for Conservation Biology sponsored a systematic review of a large sample of ESA recovery plans. The review was conducted in collaboration with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, and 19 universities. We describe the genesis of the project and the development of the resulting database of information on ESA recovery plans. The project's primary goals were to characterize the content and attributes of recovery plans; to identify important differences, patterns, and trends among plans; and to use these results to develop recommendations for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service for improving recovery plans. We review key findings from published analyses of the project database and offer prioritized recommendations for improving recovery-plan development and implementation. First, the use of science in recovery-plan development and implementation could be improved by making threats a primary focus of plans, specifying adequate monitoring tasks for species status and recovery tasks, and ensuring that species trend data are current, quantitative, and documented. Second, recovery-plan structure and development could be enhanced by keeping authorship teams small yet diverse, making existing administrative designations more biologically relevant, improving and standardizing the revision process, and reevaluating the use of multispecies plans. Third, agency resources and personnel could be better utilized by developing new recovery plan guidelines, assigning personnel explicit responsibility for overseeing plan implementation, expanding personnel training, and tracking expenditures in recovery programs. And fourth, several generic failings in the field of conservation biology could be addressed by reducing taxonomic bias and by collecting and fully integrating key biological information into recovery plans. The recovery-plan project offers a model of how professional societies, universities, and government agencies can work together beneficially to address key issues in conservation biology. [References: 39]
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Context. Tropical ecosystems are widely recognised for their high species richness and outstanding concentrations of rare and endemic species. Previous studies either focussed on the effects of deforestation or climate change, whe...
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Context. Tropical ecosystems are widely recognised for their high species richness and outstanding concentrations of rare and endemic species. Previous studies either focussed on the effects of deforestation or climate change, whereas studies on the combined effects of these two major threats are limited.
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In North America and Europe, land-use decisions that affect wildlife habitat often are made at the local government level. Natural resource conservation agencies have little regulatory authority to influence these decisions, but f...
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In North America and Europe, land-use decisions that affect wildlife habitat often are made at the local government level. Natural resource conservation agencies have little regulatory authority to influence these decisions, but frequently are asked to provide scientific support because local jurisdictions do not have staff with the necessary background in wildlife ecology. Some of this scientific support comes through technical publications and guidelines that are developed by agencies to address city and county planning issues. Little information is known about the usefulness of these materials to the planning community. We surveyed planners in Washington State, U.S.A. to determine their use and perception of a series of technical publications developed for local planners by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). We found that planners often use these publications as technical guidance for environmental planning activities required by the state. However, they found the guidelines to be less useful for site-scale projects and for urban planning projects. Our results indicate that conservation agencies and those working with local governments should consider developing guidelines for the variety of settings in which planners work and that these guidelines should consider a wider range of habitats and species.
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The use of surrogate species (i.e. keystones, indicators, umbrellas) has been advocated for the conservation of target taxa and communities. A recent Habitat Conservation Plan, which provided conservation measures intended to prot...
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The use of surrogate species (i.e. keystones, indicators, umbrellas) has been advocated for the conservation of target taxa and communities. A recent Habitat Conservation Plan, which provided conservation measures intended to protect multiple aquatic species of concern over a large area, established an important precedent for surrogate species in aquatic conservation pursuant to the US Endangered Species Act. The Habitat Conservation Plan's application of federally threatened bull trout was evaluated as an umbrella species for westslope cutthroat trout, which is in decline but not listed under the Act. Approximately 75% of known westslope cutthroat trout strongholds are not captured within bull trout strongholds west of the continental divide. The Habitat Conservation Plan failed to evaluate the suitability of this umbrella species and consequently failed to cover important priority areas for westslope cutthroat trout conservation. This case study highlights the feasibility and importance of formally validating assumptions of surrogate species utility in multi-species conservation planning.
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Orthopteran species are increasingly threatened with extinction in the wild. I review the state of orthopteran conservation in the wild, focusing on unique challenges facing these efforts. To provide a basis for discussion, I firs...
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Orthopteran species are increasingly threatened with extinction in the wild. I review the state of orthopteran conservation in the wild, focusing on unique challenges facing these efforts. To provide a basis for discussion, I first review conservation efforts for Trimerotropis infantilis, the Zayante bandwinged grasshopper, which was the first orthopteran given official protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. I then address the principal challenges for orthopteran conservation. Successful conservation of Orthoptera in the wild will require motivation for conservation action, availability of basic biological information, and development of applied management programmes.
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Abstract Natural habitats on private lands are potentially important components of national biodiversity conservation strategies, yet they are being rapidly lost to development. Conservation easements and other means of protecting...
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Abstract Natural habitats on private lands are potentially important components of national biodiversity conservation strategies, yet they are being rapidly lost to development. Conservation easements and other means of protecting these habitats have expanded in use and will be most effective if they target private lands of highest biodiversity value and risk of loss. We developed a Biodiversity Conservation Priority Index (BCPI) based on ecological value and risk of habitat loss for remaining areas of natural vegetation cover (NVC) in the northwestern United States and addressed two questions: (1) Which remaining NVC on private lands is the highest priority for biodiversity conservation based on ecological value and risk of development? And (2) are conservation easements in NVC placed preferentially in locations of high biodiversity conservation priority? Drawing on the concept of ecological integrity, we integrated five metrics of ecological structure, function, and composition to quantify ecological value of NVC. These included net primary productivity, species richness, ecosystem type representation, imperiled species range rarity, and connectivity among “Greater Wildland Ecosystems.” Risk of habitat loss was derived from analysis of biophysical and sociodemographic predictors of NVC loss. Ecological value and risk of loss were combined into the BCPI. We then analyzed spatial patterns of BCPI to identify the NVC highest in biodiversity conservation priority and examined the relationship between BCPI and conservation easement status. We found that BCPI varied spatially across the study area and was highest in western and southern portions of the study area. High BCPI was associated with suburban and rural development, roads, urban proximity, valley bottom landforms, and low intensity of current development. Existing conservation easements were distributed more towards lower BCPI values than unprotected NVC at both the study area and region scales. The BCPI can be used to better inform land use decision making at local, regional, and potentially national scales in order to better achieve biodiversity goals.
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We studied the richness and composition of diurnal birds in relation to the percentage of built surfaces in an urban area of Mediterranean France and analyzed their seasonal variation. We recorded 61 species and identified three s...
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We studied the richness and composition of diurnal birds in relation to the percentage of built surfaces in an urban area of Mediterranean France and analyzed their seasonal variation. We recorded 61 species and identified three species groups: those characteristic of areas with the highest proportion of buildings, those associated with a mixture of buildings and gardens, and those typical from the green spaces embedded in the urban matrix. Although species richness was lowest in the downtown area, where building density was highest, in the suburbs there was no relation between building density and species richness and overall species richness did not differ from the values observed in the woodlands and croplands imbedded in the urban matrix. Overall spatial species distribution was narrower in spring and broader in winter, suggesting that many bird species have a broader use of the urban landscape in winter. We observed the highest species turnover between spring and winter in the croplands and woodlands found within the urban matrix. In winter, the amount of bird life increased in the suburbs and decreased in croplands and woodlands, which suggests that residential areas provide winter habitats for more species. Our results suggest that a complex urban landscape can host a diverse bird community, including species of conservation value.
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Conservation subdivision is a design concept used by landscape architects and other built environment professionals to conserve wildlife habitat within growing communities. The idea is by clustering homes together to maximize open...
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Conservation subdivision is a design concept used by landscape architects and other built environment professionals to conserve wildlife habitat within growing communities. The idea is by clustering homes together to maximize open space, one can conserve urban biodiversity. It is a popular concept used by many planners and landscape architects and is used in many municipalities as an alternative to conventional urban development. In this review paper, we systematically review Randall Arendt's book, Conservation Design for Subdivisions: A Practical Guide to Creating Open Space Networks, which has championed the conservation design concept. Through this review and our experiences with how the conservation design concept has been applied, we provide suggestions that will (1) maximize the potential of conservation subdivisions to conserve wildlife and their habitats, and (2) promote positive wildlife experiences for residents of conservation subdivisions. We found several recommended design elements that could negatively impact wildlife but of significance, we found that most guidelines and effort in conservation subdivisions are placed on the design phase: construction and post-construction phases are neglected. We discuss the social and ecological elements that warrant consideration during the construction and post-construction phases and how they are necessary in order to conserve functional wildlife habitat within a conservation subdivision.
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Large-scale planning for the conservation of species is often hindered by a poor understanding of factors limiting populations. In regions with declining wildlife populations, it is critical that objective metrics of conservation ...
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Large-scale planning for the conservation of species is often hindered by a poor understanding of factors limiting populations. In regions with declining wildlife populations, it is critical that objective metrics of conservation success are developed to ensure that conservation actions achieve desired results. Using spatially explicit estimates of bird abundance, we evaluated several management alternatives for conserving bird populations in the Prairie Hardwood Transition of the United States. We designed landscapes conserving species at 50% of their current predicted abundance as well as landscapes attempting to achieve species population targets (which often required the doubling of current abundance). Conserving species at reduced (half of current) abundance led to few conservation conflicts. However, because of extensive modification of the landscape to suit human use, strategies for achieving regional population targets for forest bird species would be difficult under even ideal circumstances, and even more so if maintenance of grassland bird populations is also desired. Our results indicated that large-scale restoration of agricultural lands to native grassland and forest habitats may be the most productive conservation action for increasing bird population sizes but the level of landscape transition required to approach target bird population sizes may be societally unacceptable
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Voluntary conservation agreements are commonly used to stem the impact of habitat destruction and degradation on terrestrial biodiversity. Past studies that aim to inform how resources for conservation should be allocated across l...
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Voluntary conservation agreements are commonly used to stem the impact of habitat destruction and degradation on terrestrial biodiversity. Past studies that aim to inform how resources for conservation should be allocated across land parcels have assumed the costs of securing conservation on sites can be estimated solely on the basis of the value of alternative land uses. However, in a voluntary negotiation, a landowner could hold-out for a higher payment based on a conservation group or agency's willingness-to-pay by leveraging the value of biodiversity on the property. We examine landowners' ability to leverage and the consequences for conservation planning. To explore this, we first use an analytical approximation that simplifies the situation to one where a conservation group prioritizes one site for acquisition. Landowners' ability to hold-out for higher payments in this situation ranges from approximately 17% to 55% of the value of alternative land uses on the site. We show that landowners' ability to hold-out for higher payments is more sensitive to variance in the value of alternative land uses than variance in the biodiversity value across properties and is highest when the two factors negatively covary. Next, we consider multi-site selection decisions accounting for community complementarity across parcels. We find that leverage potential can be significantly higher in this context, with a maximum increase of 237% of the value of alternative land uses, and that community irreplaceability is correlated with landowners' ability to leverage. If one landowner holds out for a higher payment, it has implications for what other parcels should be priorities for protection.Digital Object Identifier http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12080-010-0103-z
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