Conservation Biology最新文献

Ecological transformations are occurring as a result of climate change, challenging traditional approaches to land management decision-making. The resist-accept-direct (RAD) framework helps managers consider how to respond to this challenge. We examined how the feasibility of the choices to resist, accept, and direct shifts in complex and dynamic ways through time. We considered 4 distinct types of social feasibility: regulatory, financial, public, and organizational. Our commentary is grounded in literature review and the examples that exist but necessarily has speculative elements because empirical evidence on this newly emerging management strategy is scarce. We expect that resist strategies will become less feasible over time as managers encounter situations where resisting is ecologically, by regulation, financially, or publicly not feasible. Similarly, we expect that as regulatory frameworks increasingly permit their use, if costs decrease, and if the public accepts them, managers will increasingly view accept and direct strategies as more viable options than they do at present. Exploring multiple types of feasibility over time allows consideration of both social and ecological trajectories of change in tandem. Our theorizing suggested that deepening the time horizon of decision-making allows one to think carefully about when one should adopt different approaches and how to combine them over time.

Growing human use of the marine environment increases the proximity of humans to marine wildlife and thus likely increases human-wildlife interactions. Such interactions influence perceptions of nature and promote or undermine conservation. Despite their importance, human-wildlife interactions are rarely considered in ecosystem-based marine spatial planning (MSP). Ideally, these interactions should be identified and considered in ecosystem-based management (EBM), which is often purported to be the basis for MSP. We used Marxan software and data from a citizen science project documenting location, species, age, sex, and activity type to identify regions along Israel's coast with a high probability of encounters between people and 2 species of guitarfish. We considered the geographic distribution of these encounters and the various activities undertaken by the reporting observers. We ran 4 scenarios in Marxan. Two had conservation goals of 30% and 50% guitarfish habitat protection. In the third and fourth scenarios, we added a 50% conservation goal of human leisure activities to each guitarfish conservation goal. We also conducted a gap analysis between our guitarfish conservation goals and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority's master plan for marine protected areas. We found the park authority was close to meeting the 30% goal but was far from meeting the conservation goal of 50% of guitarfish habitat conservation. Different human uses were more likely to interact with different life stages of guitarfish, and different recreational activities occurred in different areas. Identifying areas of specific human use showed which activities should be addressed in conservation management decisions. Our addition of certain recreational uses to the model of habitat conservation showed how enhancing human dimensions in conservation planning can lead to more holistic ecosystem-based conservation necessary for effective marine planning.

Purse-seine tropical tuna fishing in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (EPO) results in the bycatch of several sensitive species groups, including elasmobranchs. Effective ecosystem management balances conservation and resource use and requires considering trade-offs and synergies. Seasonal and adaptive spatial measures can reduce fisheries impacts on nontarget species while maintaining or increasing target catches. Identifying persistently high-risk areas in the open ocean, where dynamic environmental conditions drive changes in species’ distributions, is essential for exploring the impact of fisheries closures. We used fisheries observer data collected from 1995 to 2021 to explore the spatiotemporal persistence of areas of high bycatch risk for 2 species of oceanic sharks, silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis) and oceanic whitetip shark (Carcharhinus longimanus), and of low tuna catch rates. We analyzed data collected by fisheries scientific observers onboard approximately 200 large purse-seine vessels operating in the EPO under 10 different flags. Fishing effort, catch, and bycatch data were aggregated spatially and temporally at 1° × 1° cells and monthly, respectively. When areas of high fishing inefficiency were closed the entire study period and effort was reallocated proportionally to reflect historical effort patterns, yearly tuna catch appeared to increase by 1–11%, whereas bycatch of silky and oceanic whitetip sharks decreased by 10–19% and 9%, respectively. Prior to fishing effort redistribution, bycatch reductions accrued to 21–41% and 14% for silky and oceanic whitetip sharks, respectively. Our results are consistent with previous findings and demonstrate the high potential for reducing elasmobranch bycatch in the EPO without compromising catch rates of target tuna species. They also highlight the need to consider new dynamic and adaptive management measures to more efficiently fulfill conservation and sustainability objectives for exploited resources in the EPO.

In the United States, policy conflicts have prevented successful population-level management of outdoor cats for decades. Wildlife conservation professionals have sought widespread use of humane dispatch (i.e., lethal culling applied humanely), whereas cat welfare professionals have promoted trap-neuter-return (TNR) (cats are trapped, neutered, and returned to the outdoors). These conflicts represent a policy panacea trap, which we argue drives many conservation conflicts. In these situations, the focus on defending a one-size-fits-all policy fails to account for the value differences that shape the different understandings of the problem and desired outcomes associated with each policy, as well as complexities in the social-ecological system. Over the past 5 years, a group of wildlife conservation and cat welfare professionals codeveloped a set of products that have started to be used to help organizations break out of the policy panacea trap. We used a case study to illustrate how efforts grounded in applied social science disciplines, such as science communication, social-ecological systems, and conservation marketing, can help identify a more robust set of policy options tailored to local management and cultural contexts for successful implementation. Shifting the focus to embrace a shared understanding of the broader system helped us identify areas for collaboration, broaden the policy toolbox, and allow space for policy tools originally framed as opposing panaceas. This work helped prepare all parties to have difficult but productive discussions and address shared policy needs. We suggest that many value-based conservation conflicts would benefit from similar efforts that use applied social science to transform how conflict is addressed, moving beyond policy panaceas that end in stalemate to develop shared understandings of context-specific policies, and to identify opportunities for creative cooperation that yield real conservation progress.

Current rates of climate change and gloomy climate projections confront managers and conservation planners with the need to integrate climate change into already complex decision-making processes. Predicting and prioritizing climatically stable areas and the areas likely to facilitate adaptive species' range adjustments are important stages in maximizing conservation outcomes and rationalizing future land management. I determined, for the most threatened European terrestrial mammal species, the spatial adaptive trajectories (SATs) of highest expected persistence up to 2080. I devised simple spatial network indices for evaluation of species in those SATs: total persistence; proportion of SATs that offer in situ adaptation (i.e., stable refugia); number of SATs converging in a site; and relationship between SAT convergence and persistence and protected areas, the Natura 2000 and Emerald networks, and areas of low human disturbance. I compared the performance of high-persistence SATs with a scenario in which each species remained in the areas with the best climatic conditions in the baseline period. The 1000 most persistence SATs for each of the 39 species covered one fifth of Europe. The areas with the largest adaptive potential (i.e., high persistence, stability, and SAT convergence) did not always overlap for all the species. Predominantly, these regions were located in southwestern Europe, Central Europe, and Scandinavia, with some occurrences in Eastern Europe. For most species, persistence in the most climatically suitable areas during the baseline period was lower than within SATs, underscoring their reliance on adaptive movements. Importantly, conservation areas (particularly protected areas) covered only minor fractions of species persistence among SATs, and hubs of spatial climate adaptation (i.e., areas of high SAT convergence) were seriously underrepresented in most conservation areas. These results highlight the need to perform analyses on spatial species' dynamics under climate change.

Assessing the extinction risk of species based on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List (RL) is key to guiding conservation policies and reducing biodiversity loss. This process is resource demanding, however, and requires continuous updating, which becomes increasingly difficult as new species are added to the RL. Automatic methods, such as comparative analyses used to predict species RL category, can be an efficient alternative to keep assessments up to date. Using amphibians as a study group, we predicted which species are more likely to change their RL category and thus should be prioritized for reassessment. We used species biological traits, environmental variables, and proxies of climate and land-use change as predictors of RL category. We produced an ensemble prediction of IUCN RL category for each species by combining 4 different model algorithms: cumulative link models, phylogenetic generalized least squares, random forests, and neural networks. By comparing RL categories with the ensemble prediction and accounting for uncertainty among model algorithms, we identified species that should be prioritized for future reassessment based on the mismatch between predicted and observed values. The most important predicting variables across models were species' range size and spatial configuration of the range, biological traits, climate change, and land-use change. We compared our proposed prioritization index and the predicted RL changes with independent IUCN RL reassessments and found high performance of both the prioritization and the predicted directionality of changes in RL categories. Ensemble modeling of RL category is a promising tool for prioritizing species for reassessment while accounting for models' uncertainty. This approach is broadly applicable to all taxa on the IUCN RL and to regional and national assessments and may improve allocation of the limited human and economic resources available to maintain an up-to-date IUCN RL.

Rewilding, although controversial, is increasingly presented as humanity's best hope of addressing the global biodiversity crisis, but it remains unclear how restoring nonhuman autonomy affects people's relationships with nature. We conceptualized 3 human-nature relationships (HNRs) that could occur when restoring nonhuman autonomy: human-nature dichotomy, human-nature compromise, and human-nature mutualism. Through 51 interviews, we then empirically tested the occurrence of these HNRs across diverse actors living and working in 2 longstanding British rewilding initiatives to better understand the place for people in rewilding. Actors' HNRs aligned with the 3 conceptual framings, but these relationships were complex. Individuals often demonstrated multiple perspectives that transcended conventional actor categorization. The tripartite framing also revealed conflicting values across and within individuals, resulting in pluralistic HNRs. Our work adds to the theory and practice surrounding the place for people in rewilding by cautioning against a single preferred HNR when restoring nonhuman autonomy and advocating that a diversity of human interactions with nature should be integrated into the global rewilding movement.

Effects of anthropogenic activities, including climate change, are modifying fire regimes, and the dynamic nature of these modifications requires identification of general patterns of organisms' responses to fire. This is a challenging task because of the high complexity of factors involved (including climate, geography, land use, and species-specific ecology). We aimed to describe the responses of the reptile community to fire across a range of environmental and fire-history conditions in the western Mediterranean Basin. We sampled 8 sites that spanned 4 Mediterranean countries. We recorded 6064 reptile sightings of 36 species in 1620 transects and modeled 3 community metrics (total number of individuals, species richness, and Shannon diversity) as responses to environmental and fire-history variables. Reptile community composition was also analyzed. Habitat type (natural vs. afforestation), fire age class (time since the last fire), rainfall, and temperature were important factors in explaining these metrics. The total number of individuals varied according to fire age class, reaching a peak at 15-40 years after the last fire. Species richness and Shannon diversity were more stable during postfire years. The 3 community metrics were higher under postfire conditions than in unburned forest plots. This pattern was particularly prevalent in afforested plots, indicating that the negative effect of fire on reptiles was lower than the negative effect of afforestation. Community composition varied by fire age class, indicating the existence of early- and late-successional species (xeric and saxicolous vs. mesic reptiles, respectively). Species richness was 46% higher in areas with a single fire age class relative to those with a mixture of fire age classes, which indicates pyrodiverse landscapes promoted reptile diversity. An expected shift to more frequent fires will bias fire age distribution toward a predominance of early stages, and this will be harmful to reptile communities.

To increase pollinator populations, international policy targets minimum levels of seminatural habitat cover, but it is unknown whether improving the quality of existing habitats could bring similar benefits without the need of reducing cropland area. Using data we collected in 26 Italian agricultural landscapes during the entire flying season, we explored the relative importance of habitat quantity (seminatural habitat cover) and quality (flower availability) on pollinator densities in seminatural habitats. We obtained transect-based counts and estimated the effect of habitat quantity (proportion of seminatural habitat) and quality (flower cover and richness) on wild bee and hoverfly densities. We used the relationships revealed in the data to simulate pollinator population sizes in landscapes with varying habitat quantity and quality. Wild bee densities were only related to flower availability, whereas hoverfly densities were additionally related to seminatural habitat cover. We found that in complex agricultural landscapes (above 15% seminatural habitat cover), improving habitat quality increased pollinator populations more effectively than increasing habitat quantity. However, increasing habitat quantity was by far the most effective approach for boosting pollinator populations in simple landscapes.