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Society for Conservation Biology: 2002 Annual Meeting

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Society for Conservation Biology: 2002 Annual Meeting

Society for Conservation Biology 16th Annual Meeting July 14-July 19 2002
co-hosted by DICE and the British Ecological Society


Abstracts for Scientists and Managers

Tuesday 16th July, 15.30 - 17.30, Rutherford Lecture Theatre 1

Chair: Nick Salafsky




(BLOCK CAPITALS indicate the presenting author)


15.30 - 15.45
SALAFSKY, NICK, Richard Margoluis, Kent H. Redford, and John G. Robinson. Foundations of Success, 4109 Maryland Av., Bethesda, MD, 20816, USA, <Nick@FOSonline.org> (NS, RM), Wildlife Conservation Society, 2300 Southern Blvd, Bronx NY 10460, USA (KHR, JGR).

IMPROVING THE PRACTICE OF CONSERVATION: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR CONSERVATION SCIENCE

Effective conservation requires answering three fundamental questions whose answers can only be sought in conservation practice: 1) what should our goals be and how do we measure progress in reaching them? 2) how can we most effectively take action to achieve conservation? and, 3) how can we learn how to do conservation better? We have developed a conceptual framework for a conservation science that uses the principles of adaptive management to answer these questions. The framework is based on a general model of a conservation project that includes the conservation target, direct and indirect threats, conservation actions, and actors. Our framework presents taxonomies of each of these components. We then use this framework to outline a research agenda for conservation science that involves defining clear and practical measures of conservation success, determining sound guiding principles for using conservation strategies and tools, and developing the knowledge and skills in individuals and organizations to do good adaptive management and thus learn how to make conservation more effective. We propose that a conservation science that works with practitioners to achieve this agenda will ultimately improve the practice of conservation.

15.45 - 16.00
Robinson, Doreen, MIRANDA MOCKRIN, and Dominick Dellasala. WWF-United States, 1250 24th St. NW, Washington, DC 20037, USA, <doreen.robinson@wwfus.org> (DR, MM) and World Wildlife Fund, Klamath-Siskiyou Region, 116 Lithia Way, Suite 7, Ashland, OR 97520, USA (DD).

LARGE-SCALE CONSERVATION PLANNING TO ACTION — WHAT IS THE CONSERVATION IMPACT?

In the past decade, international conservation organisations have begun working at unprecedented large geographic and temporal scales to conserve biodiversity (e.g. World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, BirdLife International, etc.). Conservation planning efforts and priorities within these large regions are scientifically driven, utilising and comparing diverse biological data over significant scales. The biodiversity vision is used by WWF to lay out ambitious targets and form the foundation for large-scale conservation efforts in areas with globally outstanding biodiversity. This study analyses how several WWF programmes are using biodiversity visions to achieve large-scale conservation goals. Focused interviews with WWF staff and partners in the conservation communities reveal the usefulness and effectiveness of biodiversity visions in achieving conservation efforts. Key factors necessary for successful implementation of large-scale conservation are laid out and common challenges facing such endeavours are discussed.



16.00 - 16.15
SANJAYAN, Muttulingam. A., Jeff Baumgartner, Rafa Calderon, Alex Mas, Richard Margolius, Peter Mous, Seth Neiman, Nick Salafsky, Jeff Parrish, Dan Salzer, Michael Sweeney, Ramona Swenson, and Laura Valutis. The Nature Conservancy, 4245 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, Virginia 22203-1606, USA, <msanjayan@tnc.org> (MAS, JB, RC, AM, PM, JP, DS, MS, RS, LV), Foundations of Success, 4109 Maryland Ave, Brookmont, MD20816, USA (NS, RM).

ARE WE CONSERVING WHAT WE SAY WE ARE?

William Hewlett, legendary co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, once remarked that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. The recent implosion of the internet economy confirms the wisdom of his words. Private foundations spend millions on protecting biodiversity and their generosity seems bounded only by their confidence in the ability of conservation organisations to deliver results. Unfortunately, we found that rarely do organisations deploy an objective system for assessing conservation results. First, conservation is difficult to measure because biological systems respond slowly to management. Second, organisations are risk averse and in their courtship of donors would rather sell a new idea than measure an old one. To address this issue, we have developed and tested a framework and a set of tools at two Nature Conservancy projects in Indonesia and California. We employ both process measures that gauge organisational adherence to standards and impact measures that determine biodiversity health and threats. Tools include ecological models, situation diagrams, and a comprehensive excel workbook that tracks target viability and threats. Employing our methods will allow projects to conduct and credibly verify or audit progress assessments. This will lead to greater efficiencies and increased donor trust thus securing sustained investments in conservation.



16.15 - 16.30
MUTH, ROBERT M., John F. Organ, Rodney R. Zwick, and Martha E. Mather. Department of Natural Resources Conservation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA, <rmm@forwild.umass.edu> (RMM), Region 5, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Hadley, MA 01035, USA, (JFO), Department of Resource Recreation Management, Lyndon State College, Lyndonville, VT 05851, USA, (RRZ), Massachusetts Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, BRD, USGS, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA (MEM).

CONSERVATION POLICY AND MANAGEMENT FOR THE FUTURE: ASSESSING THE ATTITUDES AND VALUES OF CONSERVATION BIOLOGISTS

In this era of increasing conflict over natural resource allocation, management, and use, professional societies have an especially important role to play in providing leadership on conservation issues to policy-makers and the public at large. In 1998, to assess the attitudes and values of professionals concerning a variety of fish and wildlife conservation issues, we administered a mailback questionnaire to 4,000 members (81% response rate) of the American Fisheries Society, the Society for Conservation Biology, The Wildlife Society, and the North American Wildlife Enforcement Officers' Association. Data analysis indicates that members of the Society for Conservation Biology often exhibited considerable agreement on selected questions related to wildlife/fisheries policy, management practices, ethical considerations, and harvest activities. However, statistically significant differences were observed among responses of Society for Conservation Biology members when compared with their counterparts in other resource-related professional societies. This raises questions concerning the ability (and desirability?) of the conservation-related professional societies to speak with one voice in advocating for fish and wildlife conservation.



16.30 - 16.45
MARGOLUIS, RICHARD, Nick Salafsky, and Caroline Stem. Foundations of Success, 4109 Maryland Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20816, USA, <Richard@FOSonline.org> (RM, NS, CS).

MEASURING CONSERVATION IMPACT: RESULTS OF A REVIEW OF METRICS AND PROCESSES

Conservation is an action-oriented discipline. That is, organisations, agencies, donors, and project managers all implement various interventions in order to protect and conserve what remains of the world’s biodiversity. We are hampered, however, by the difficulty of clearly defining conservation success in measurable, operational, and lasting terms. To date, although there has been much discussion in the conservation community about measures of success, there is little concrete guidance on how to determine and measure progress towards conservation targets in practical and operational terms. Measuring conservation impact requires two inextricably related processes. In addition to clearly defining specific measures of success, we must also define viable systems for realistically measuring the impacts of our conservation interventions. The first part of this equation involves specifying indicators and indices while the second part involves defining appropriate approaches to impact assessment, monitoring, and evaluation. This paper presents the results of an extensive review of monitoring and evaluation experiences in conservation and other related fields. It presents a synthesis of "best practices" related to the process of measuring conservation impact and a framework for determining appropriate indicators for measuring success under varying conditions.



16.45 - 17.00
RODRIGUES, ANA S.L. and Kevin J. Gaston. Biodiversity and Macroecology Group, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK, <ana.rodrigues@sheffield.ac.uk>.

HOW LARGE DO RESERVE NETWORKS NEED TO BE?

Reserve networks are essential for biodiversity’s long-term persistence. To do so, they need not only to represent all species to be conserved but also to ensure species’ persistence over time. An extensive literature exists on the required size of individual reserves, but there has been little investigation regarding the appropriate size of entire networks. IUCN’s proposal that 10% of each nation be reserved is often presented as a desirable target, but concerns have been raised that this is insufficient and dictated primarily by feasibility and politics. We found that the minimum percentage of area needed to represent all species within a region increases with the number of targeted species, the size of selection units, and the level of species’ endemism. This has important implications for conservation planning. First, no single universal target is appropriate, as ecosystems/nations with higher diversity and/or higher levels of endemism require substantially larger fractions of their areas to be protected. Second, minimum conservation networks sufficient to capture the diversity of vertebrates are unlikely to be effective for biodiversity in general. Third, IUCN’s proposed 10% target is likely to be wholly insufficient, and much larger fractions of area are estimated to be needed, especially in tropical regions.



17.00 - 17.15
HANNAH, LEE, Paul Williams, Sandy Andelman and Guy Midgley. Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, Conservation International, 1919 M Street NW Washington, DC 20036, USA, <l.hannah@conservation.org> (LH), The Natural History Museum, London, UK (PW), National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA (SA), Climate Change Group, Kirstenbosch Research Center, National Botanical Institute, Cape Town, South Africa (GM).

PLANNING PROTECTED AREAS IN A CHANGING CLIMATE

Protected area planning which integrates the effects of climate change is an essential element in a Climate Change-Integrated Conservation Strategy (CCS). Historically, most protected area selection has been ad hoc, and only relatively recently have site selection algorithms emerged which allow for the efficient design of fully representative protected areas systems. However, all of these algorithms are based on the assumptions of a stable climate and fixed distributions of species in space, both of which are almost certainly false. Recent IPCC results suggest that human-induced climate change is already underway, and in any case, evidence from paleoclimatology and paleobiology clearly indicate that change, not stability, is the natural norm. Here we use models of range shifts during climate change and reserve selection algorithms to design reserve systems capable of withstanding climate change. The results show that by targeting species projected to have some overlap between present and future distributions, a substantial portion of species (about two thirds in our South Africa case study) can be represented in a climate change-integrated reserve design using unmodified reserve selection algorithms. Modified algorithms can identify reserve configurations which minimise species range shifts for those species whose present and future projected ranges do not overlap.



17.15 - 17.30
WINSTON, KEITH. Conservation Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA, <keith@freedomsong.com>.

THE INCLUSION OF HIGH-RISK LOW-PROBABILITY EVENTS IN THE CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE

Two high-risk low-probability events, the disruption of the ocean thermohaline circulation and the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, are examined as possible outcomes of climate change. The scientific understanding of these systems, far from complete, has advanced considerably in recent years. The state of the science, the state of economic analysis of the costs of such events, and the manners in which such events have been considered in the international climate change policy debate, are reviewed. Approaches to incorporating highly uncertain but high-risk scenarios in economic, public and policy debates are discussed, and developed.