Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment最新文献

Conservation priorities and legal protections are often based on confirmed species occurrences. However, imperfect detection is likely the norm in biological surveys, resulting in negative consequences for conservation. Focusing on threatened species in the US and Canada, we show that detectability information appears to be lacking for most species that are conservation priorities. Although more research on species detection is needed, detectability estimates are important for many immediate decisions. Thus, we recommend: (1) estimating and accounting for detectability and designing rigorous surveys when confirming presence or absence is crucial. Otherwise, absence in surveys should be considered suggestive only and critical habitat should be managed even if species presences are unconfirmed. (2) When directly estimating detectability is prohibitively difficult, indirect estimates should be explored, for example through expert elicitation or trait-based predictors. (3) Detectability should be explicitly incorporated into decisions to ensure that surveys and management actions are directed where they have the greatest potential benefit.

Multiple rulemaking iterations have led to variable definitions of the “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS), a rule that determines which waterbodies receive federal protection under the Clean Water Act. The rulemaking process has incorporated American Indian Tribes as “stakeholders” rather than as sovereign peoples, compounding a colonial legacy that limits the ability of Indigenous peoples to choose appropriate strategies for water protection on Tribal lands. For example, protecting waters for Tribal beneficial uses requires applying both Western science and Indigenous knowledge to document patterns of waterbody connectivity and permanence, which underpin WOTUS policy. To honor the federal trust responsibility (a legal obligation) of the US Government to Tribes, policy should incorporate a parallel set of scientific standards for determining WOTUS on Tribal lands. These standards must recognize culturally distinct uses of waters and account for place-based Indigenous knowledge. Examination of the intersection of the science supporting water protection, Indigenous sovereignty, and US policy has relevance to similar issues around the globe.

Urban forests provide ecosystem services important for regulating climate, conserving biodiversity, and maintaining human well-being. However, these forests vary in composition and physiological traits due to their unique biophysical and social contexts. This variation complicates assessing the functions and services of different urban forests. To compare the characteristics of the urban forest, we sampled the species composition and two externally sourced traits (drought tolerance and water-use capacity) of tree and shrub species in residential yards, unmanaged areas, and natural reference ecosystems within six cities across the contiguous US. As compared to natural and unmanaged forests, residential yards had markedly higher tree and shrub species richness, were composed primarily of introduced species, and had more species with low drought tolerance. The divergence between natural and human-managed areas was most dramatic in arid climates. Our findings suggest that the answer to the question of “what is an urban forest” strongly depends on where you look within and between cities.

There is a resurgent enthusiasm for Indigenous Knowledges (IK) across settler–colonial institutions of research, education, and conservation. But like fitting a square peg in a round hole, IK are being forced into colonial systems, and then only as marginal alternatives. To address this mismatch, the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Section of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) hosted a 2-day workshop—entitled Elevating Indigenous Knowledges in Ecology—at the 2022 ESA Annual Meeting, which was held on Kanien'keháka (Mohawk) and Ho-de-no-sau-nee-ga (Haudenosaunee) territories in Montreal, Canada. This gathering of 21 interdisciplinary Indigenous ecologists included scholars from across the career and professional spectrum. By consensus, workshop participants (including the authors of this article) identified four emergent themes and respective guiding questions as a pathway toward the transformation of settler–colonial institutions into IK-led spaces. We highlight this pathway to support actions toward systemic change, inspire future directions for Indigenous and non-Indigenous ecologists, and nurture stronger relationships between Indigenous communities and the Western sciences, toward actualized decoloniality.

Black and female landowners, two of the largest groups of underserved landowners in the southeastern US, have considerably less land enrolled in the US Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) than White and male landowners. The reasons for this discrepancy are complex and interrelated. Previous studies approached different facets of this problem using a variety of methods and analyses. Here, we conducted a synthetic literature review that demonstrates how the intertwined ecological, economic, and cultural concerns of underserved landowners influence their decisions about potential land conversion in the context of CRP requirements. Other studies have rarely considered such relevant factors as the sociocultural importance of land to underserved populations or the links between the limited participation of these groups in the CRP and historical racism and sexism in land management industries and agencies. Explicitly addressing these issues will help promote conservation equity in the CRP and other conservation programs.

Biodiversity knowledge gaps, which limit scientific research and conservation planning, are especially acute for the most poorly known organisms. Citizen science offers a powerful and effective means to fill these gaps. The recent growth of citizen-science platforms has resulted in near-complete coverage of global avian diversity (~11,849 species). Because shrinking knowledge gaps increasingly reveal meaningful absences, we evaluated the potential of citizen-science data to establish “lost” bird taxa: those without documentation for more than 10 years. Collating more than 42 million photographic, audio, and video records returned 144 bird species (1.2%) as lost, the majority of which (62%) are in danger of extinction. The higher the coverage by citizen scientists and the longer the interval since their last documented record, the more likely that lost birds are to be imperiled. Our approach provides a data-driven and reproducible method to identify lost species and elucidates high-priority knowledge gaps to inform future conservation action.

The bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) is the most threatened vulture species in Europe. On 14 May 2009, during our long-term study on its conservation in the Pyrenees (Spain, France, Andorra) (Ecol Monog 2020; doi.org/10.1002/ecm.1414), we captured a four-year-old subadult male (Adrian) using a net remotely activated from a distance. He was tagged with a 70-g solar-powered (GPS/PTT) satellite transmitter (Microwave Telemetry Inc, Columbia, Maryland, US), attached using a Teflon backpack harness (see photograph). In May 2023, 14 years after his initial capture, Adrian was still alive at the age of 18 years and, more surprisingly, the transmitter still worked.

Long-term monitoring of Adrian provided >15,000 location records (see map: minimum convex polygon home range in yellow; 95% and 50% of the kernel density estimate [K₉₅ and K₅₀] in orange and red, respectively) and showed how he first established a territory at eight years of age. Adrian bred successfully for the first time in 2013 (red large area) and reared two chicks between 2013 and 2016. In 2016, he abandoned the territory and remained at large until 2019, when he again took up a new territory 70 km away (red small area). He bred successfully on one occasion between 2020 and 2023. Although Egyptian vultures (Neophron percnopterus) can live for over 30 years (Front Ecol Environ 2021; doi.org/10.1002/fee.2328), Adrian's lifetime reproductive success after 18 years has only been three fledglings.

Long-term movement research is fundamental to developing conservation and management plans for long-lived species. However, the operational lifetimes of GPS devices are limited, and most avian transmitters have an average working duration of 2–3 years (https://www.microwavetelemetry.com/faq). Unfortunately, Adrian's transmitter is currently no longer functional. But thanks to its unusually long life, empirical data on the demographic parameters, spatial behavior, and breeding dispersal of this bearded vulture were accurately gathered over an extended period.

Imagery from Google Earth Pro (data: SIO, NOAA, US Navy, NGA, GEBCO; image: Landsat, Copernicus) obtained through Movebank.org.

Most of us have made the claim, “Authors declare no competing interests”. But how often have we substantiated it? I propose a moratorium on making this claim without evidence; more provocatively, I suggest that—even with evidence—the claim is rarely accurate.

For those of us who have affiliations in universities or government agencies, they are no longer a guarantee of our impartiality, if they ever were. Every one of us has affiliations and other commitments that could potentially influence our assumptions, methods, and interpretations and that deserve airing.

Our title page affiliations are not transparent enough because many universities have become entangled with powerful, moneyed interests, derived from industry or government. None of us should try to claim value-neutral science. Over time, universities have seen academic freedoms erode (Annals Iowa 2008). Likewise, federal government scientists increasingly face restrictions and interference (Union of Concerned Scientists 2023). Those at state agencies are similarly at risk. During a Washington State wildlife commission meeting in October 2023, disagreement over scientific bias was exposed when Department of Fish & Wildlife Deputy Director Windrope stated, “…striving for an unbiased nature, which makes the science that comes from a state agency or a federal agency…so important, right? It's really different than a nonprofit or a university that doesn't have a regulatory component…”, prompting Commissioner Smith to respond, “…we're a state agency, and we are always subject to pressures…And so I just think that we need to be careful to try to claim that, you know, our role is more unbiased in producing science than universities”. This dialogue reveals how easily bias can be (mis)interpreted—no one can monopolize impartiality. Because US wildlife agencies benefit from fees (paid for killing huntable species) or excise taxes (on firearms), agency researchers may be subject to financial competing interests similar to those ascribed to industry. We may hope that government science is more trustworthy or has greater oversight than academic or NGO science, but that is an empirical claim. Whatever the organization's mission, it has a competing interest, at a minimum in its own persistence. Although we—individual scientists—cannot fully escape our worldviews, we can almost always disclose them.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that every donor to an organization imposes a competing interest on that organization's researchers. Nor am I suggesting that we cannot do impartial science because we are unable to escape our interests. Such extreme claims demand strong corroborating evidence. By the same token, however, more evidence is needed to declare no competing interests.

Many already recognize that authors’ interests are part of their methods of doing science. Peer reviewers and subject-matter editors might be fair judges of competing interests—if chos

Large carnivores are being globally reintroduced with the goal of restoring ecological interactions. However, the extent that competitive interactions are restored within communities is often unclear. In a before–after study within Isle Royale National Park (in the US state of Michigan), we quantified the spatial, behavioral, trophic, and demographic effects of the reintroduction of a large carnivore (gray wolf; Canis lupus) on meso-carnivores (red fox; Vulpes vulpes) and small carnivores (American marten; Martes americana). The wolf reintroduction produced a phase-dependent pulse perturbation: wolves constrained the distribution of foxes, thereby benefiting martens, yet foxes altered their behavior, notably using human-provided resource subsidies (campsites and food) more frequently, which buffered demographic consequences. Once wolf packs coalesced, all observed changes subsided, and competitive interactions returned to their pre-wolf values. Our results show that some predicted—and often desired—consequences of large carnivore reintroductions may not be permanent due to the transitory dynamics of social carnivores and the presence of humans, even within a “pristine wilderness”.