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Funding for conservation is limited, and its investment for maximum conservation gain can likely be enhanced through the application of relevant science. Many donor institutions support and use science to pursue conservation goals...
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Funding for conservation is limited, and its investment for maximum conservation gain can likely be enhanced through the application of relevant science. Many donor institutions support and use science to pursue conservation goals, but their activities remain relatively unfamiliar to the conservation-science community. We examined the priorities and practices of U.S.-based private foundations that support biodiversity conservation. We surveyed 50 donor members of the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity (CGBD) to address three questions: (1) What support do CGBD members provide for conservation science ? (2) How do CGBD members use conservation science in their grant making and strategic thinking ? (3) How do CGBD members obtain information about conservation science ? The 38 donor institutions that responded to the survey made
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The search for generalities in ecology has often been thwarted by contingency and ecological complexity that limit the development of predictive rules. We present a set of concepts that we believe succinctly expresses some of the ...
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The search for generalities in ecology has often been thwarted by contingency and ecological complexity that limit the development of predictive rules. We present a set of concepts that we believe succinctly expresses some of the fundamental ideas in conservation biology. (1) Successful conservation management requires explicit goals and objectives. (2) The overall goal of biodiversity management will usually be to maintain or restore biodiversity, not to maximize species richness. (3) A holistic approach is needed to solve conservation problems. (4) Diverse approaches to management can provide diverse environmental conditions and mitigate risk. (5) Using nature's template is important for guiding conservation management, but it is not a panacea. (6) Focusing on causes not symptoms enhances efficacy and efficiency of conservation actions. (7) Every species and ecosystem is unique, to some degree. (8) Threshold responses are important but not ubiquitous. (9) Multiple stressors often exert critical effects on species and ecosystems. (10) Human values are variable and dynamic and significantly shape conservation efforts. We believe most conservation biologists will broadly agree these concepts are important. That said, an important part of the maturation of conservation biology as a discipline is constructive debate about additional or alternative concepts to those we have proposed here. Therefore, we have established a web-based, online process for further discussion of the concepts outlined in this paper and developing additional ones.
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Quantitative studies of biotic homogenization can provide useful insights into conservation problems when used appropriately, but can be dangerously misleading when they are not. By separating the concept of biotic homogenization ...
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Quantitative studies of biotic homogenization can provide useful insights into conservation problems when used appropriately, but can be dangerously misleading when they are not. By separating the concept of biotic homogenization at the global scale from the study of biotic homogenization at spatially- and temporally-explicit scales, researchers can avoid many of the subtle pitfalls inherent in homogenization studies.
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As stewards promote conservation on a landscape, challenges often arise stemming from limited time, budgets, or personnel to implement the stewardship ideals envisioned. Coinciding with these challenges, our societal values and th...
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As stewards promote conservation on a landscape, challenges often arise stemming from limited time, budgets, or personnel to implement the stewardship ideals envisioned. Coinciding with these challenges, our societal values and thoughts toward conservation have grown more complex and demanding. An emerging strategy to implement more effectively conservation goals on the land is known as strategic conservation planning. Strategic conservation planning is a tool that may be utilized to promote conservation initiatives effectively through comprehensively combining space, time, natural and anthropogenic processes, along with processes to develop consensus among stakeholders (Pressey et al. 2007). This research project studies the landscape and landowners of the Central Wisconsin Grassland Conservation Area (CWGCA). ArcGIS was utilized to complete a geospatial analysis of the CWGCA landscape focusing on land use, core grassland habitat, and the location of landowners who had previously indicated their interest in promoting grassland conservation initiatives on their land. By understanding the location of the interested landowners in conjunction with their relative location to core grassland habitat, a telephone survey was conducted to understand the perspectives landowners (n=14) hold toward government agencies working in the area. Results provide several landscape specific priorities to promote the expansion of core grassland habitat, along with insights into the experiences and attitudes of landowners. None of the telephone survey respondents indicated that they have been involved in a decisionmaking process for the future of the CWGCA, along with a majority of respondents never having visited wildlife areas in the CWGCA. Moreover, survey respondents generally believe that government agents working in the CWGCA do not understand their priorities as landowners and state that there are frequent negative interactions with government agents.
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I review the shocking current status of terrestrial mammals and then describe an approach to solving it, embracing a continuum of spatial and intellectual scales, from groundedness to geopolitics. Starting with an illustrative are...
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I review the shocking current status of terrestrial mammals and then describe an approach to solving it, embracing a continuum of spatial and intellectual scales, from groundedness to geopolitics. Starting with an illustrative arena, the interface between agriculture and wildlife, I then outline the litany of threats to mammals and some successful approaches to their conservation, and document some broad-scale patterns regarding ecosystems, the mammalian communities within, and some implications for conservation. Observing that the battle for mammalian conservation is being badly lost, I dedicate the third part of this article to a combination of top-down and bottom-up, interdisciplinary studies, aspiring to a holistic approach that sets conservation in the wider sphere of the human enterprise and that I term transdisciplinary conservation.
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We present a novel framework for the structured analysis of conservation strategies, concentrating on their conceptual, causal, logical and qualitative aspects. The analysis both increases our understanding of conservation strateg...
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We present a novel framework for the structured analysis of conservation strategies, concentrating on their conceptual, causal, logical and qualitative aspects. The analysis both increases our understanding of conservation strategies and provides a tool for supporting their use in decision making. It facilitates answering such questions as: What are the basic characteristics of the strategy? What are its biological targets? What are its aims, paths of influence and expected benefits? Where should the strategy best be applied and by whom? How should the strategy be applied over time? What are the data needs? What major assumptions underlie the strategy? Which are the major costs, constraints, and uncertainties that might influence its feasibility and application? How does the strategy relate to other conservation strategies? Are there viable alternatives? We also examine the emergent properties of the strategy, asking what the world would be like if the strategy was applied extensively. We examine the usefulness of structured analysis by applying it to the strategy of temporary conservation, which incorporates dynamic reserves and temporary conservation contracts, either to maintain a regional distribution of successional habitats or to facilitate climate-change induced range shifts of species. This application showed that these strategies have appeared under various names, that they require extensive data, that implementation involves significant uncertainties, and that associated uncertainties increase through time. Applying the proposed framework to a range of conservation strategies would improve our ability to identify most appropriate paths of conservation when many alternatives exist. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Genetic research is a well-recognized component of understanding biodiversity and is an invaluable approach for documenting and mitigating increasingly high rates of loss. Here we present a quantitative synthesis of conservation g...
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Genetic research is a well-recognized component of understanding biodiversity and is an invaluable approach for documenting and mitigating increasingly high rates of loss. Here we present a quantitative synthesis of conservation genetics science in Latin America and its progress, focusing on evolving trends on different taxonomic groups, environments and markers. We reviewed 528 conservation genetics research papers published in 57 journals from 1992 to 2013. Brazil and Mexico were the most represented countries in the literature and there was a marked disparity between terrestrial (similar to 64%) and aquatic-marine research (similar to 36%). More than a third or the articles focused on plants (similar to 35%) while the other (65%) were animal studies with a clear emphasis on mammals (35%) and bony fishes (24%). Most research (42%) addressed patterns of population structure, while 17% focused on genetic diversity issues and 14% focused on the description of novel genetic markers. Finally, although genetics has become an integral part of conservation biology, genetic analyses have often not been completely integrated into the development of conservation and management strategies and formal policies. We discuss the levels to which these types of studies can effectively contribute to biodiversity conservation in this region, and offer suggestions on how conservation genetic approaches may be used more broadly, enhancing the connectivity between scientists and policy makers.
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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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This paper provides an understanding of an under-explored aspect of the sharing of conservation decisions. In particular, it argues that conservation decisions are inherently shared in at least three senses. First, conservation is...
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This paper provides an understanding of an under-explored aspect of the sharing of conservation decisions. In particular, it argues that conservation decisions are inherently shared in at least three senses. First, conservation is conceived as a field of shared values, principles, and decision-making methodology, and aspires to a universally shared ethic. This view is supported by the logical and ethical consistency of existing Codes of Ethics, and is made manifest with the aid of a conceptual model of what science is. Second, conservation decisions are conditioned by the identity of heritage entities. The values comprising the heritage identity of an entity transcend space and time boundaries; they are interrelated and interdependent and, as such, shared. Third, the benefits but also the harms stemming from conservation decisions and actions are distributed and shared among all people for whom the object of a conservation decision is heritage. As dictated by the do-no-harm principle, conservators have a duty to consider risks of such harms when making decisions.
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The Jurassic Coast stretches more than 150 kilometres across the Devon and Dorset counties on the southern coastline of England. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This designation means that the site is considered to be of signi...
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The Jurassic Coast stretches more than 150 kilometres across the Devon and Dorset counties on the southern coastline of England. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This designation means that the site is considered to be of significant importance to the natural heritage of the world. The Jurassic Coast probably sounds like something to do with dinosaurs. It actually represents a lot more than that.
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