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NEWS TIPS FROM THE August 2003 ISSUE OF CONSERVATION BIOLOGY the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology
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HOW TO MAKE BOATERS SLOW DOWN FOR MANATEESMany boaters exceed the speed limits set to protect manatees, and boat collisions cause about a quarter of the deaths of these endangered marine mammals in Florida. New research suggests that increased social pressure, especially law enforcement, would encourage more boaters to comply with speed limits. "An understanding of boaters' beliefs and attitudes towards manatees can shed light on their boating behaviors and can help identify potential interventions for encouraging behaviors that contribute to manatee conservation," say Richard Flamm of the Florida Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg, Sampreethi Aipanjiguly, who did this work while at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and Susan Jacobson of the University of Florida in Gainesville in the August issue of Conservation Biology. While managers and outreach organizations provide factual information about manatees, this has not been enough to encourage most boaters to comply with speed zones. In many parts of the Florida, only about half of boaters follow speed limits mandated to protect manatees from boat collisions. To figure out how to encourage more boaters to follow speed limits, Flamm and his colleagues surveyed more than 500 boaters in Tampa Bay, Florida, where manatees live year-round. The researchers determined the relative strength of a variety of factors that might shape boaters' intentions towards following speed limits, such as the desire to reach their destination sooner, the fear of being fined, and pressure from groups such as family, friends and law enforcers. The researchers also assessed the boaters' knowledge of manatee conservation. The results showed that the most important component of boaters' intentions to follow speed limits is their perception of social pressure to do it. Moreover, boaters were more motivated to comply with law enforcers than with family and friends who were on their boats. In addition, while boaters who knew more about manatees were more likely to support conserving them, only half of boaters knew that any activity that changes a manatee's behavior is harassment, including touching, feeding and swimming with manatees. Finally, more than a third of boaters said that manatee speed zones were not marked adequately. Based on these findings, the researchers recommend three ways to increase compliance with regulations to protect manatees from boats. First, managers can strengthen boaters' intentions to follow speed and no-entry zone regulations by developing media campaigns that feature law enforcers' opinions on obeying speed limits, and by reporting recent incidents of enforcement to local newspapers and radio stations. News conferences and press releases should highlight the negative consequences of violating speed limits and no-entry zones, such as the risks of penalty, arrest, boat damage and hitting manatees. Second, managers should use the media to inform boaters about boat-related manatee deaths and inappropriate boating behavior. Finally, regulated areas should be clearly marked on navigational guides, which are carried by more than two-thirds of boaters. CONTACT: Richard Flamm (727-896-8626 x1922, richard.flamm@fwc.state.fl.us)
MORE RACCOONS MAY MEAN FEWER SONGBIRDS
Songbirds are in trouble throughout the eastern U.S. and new research suggests that raccoons are a major part of the problem. Raccoons love eggs, and the study shows that populations of birds with accessible nests have been dropping since raccoon populations began rising in the early 1980s in Illinois. "Declines in vulnerable, low-nesting songbird species in Illinois have paralleled increases in raccoon populations," says Kenneth Schmidt of Texas Tech University in Lubbock in the August issue of Conservation Biology. Previous studies have shown that Illinois may be losing more songbirds than it produces. Low-nesting birds are doing particularly poorly, and artificial nest experiments suggest that raccoons are among the main predators of eggs and chicks of the state's ground-nesting birds. Raccoons have increased greatly in Illinois in the last 20 years, with surveys spotting three times as many of the nocturnal carnivores in recent years as in the early 1980s. To see if the state-wide decline in low-nesting songbirds is linked to the state-wide increase in raccoons, Schmidt used existing data to track the population trends of 40 bird species along 41 roadside routes in Illinois from 1966 to 2001. There were 18 low-nesting species (with nests less than 8 feet above the ground) and 22 high-nesting species (with nests more than 8 feet above the ground). The data Schmidt used came from the Breeding Bird Survey, which samples birds along more than 3,000 25-mile roadside routes in the U.S. and Canada. Schmidt found that the decline in low-nesting birds did coincide with the early 1980s rise in raccoons. Before 1980, the population trends were about the same for low- and high-nesting birds. But after 1980, more low-nesting species declined: more than 70% of the low-nesting species declined while only half of the high-nesting species declined along the routes studied between 1980 and 2001. The other half of the high-nesting species increased. Moreover, Schmidt found that after the raccoon population began rising, the diversity of low-nesting birds decreased while the diversity of high-nesting birds increased: the number of low-nesting species dropped about 10% while the number of high-nesting species rose about 15% between 1980 and 2001 (from about 10 to 9 species, and from about 9 to 10.5 species per route, respectively). These findings may apply throughout the eastern U.S. The raccoon increase is driven by the eradication of top carnivores, and by habitat fragmentation and conversion to agriculture. In Illinois, more than 70% of forest gone, and row-crops cover about half of the land. "Habitat conversion and the loss of top carnivores have allowed...raccoons to flourish, in turn creating a hostile landscape for songbirds," says Schmidt. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that the Illinois raccoon harvest decreased from nearly 400,000 in 1979 to about 70,000 in 1990. What's bad for the raccoons is likely to be good for the birds, and Schmidt predicts that low-nesting songbirds in the eastern U.S. could rebound as raccoon rabies spreads from its origin along the Virginia/West Virginia border. CONTACT: Kenneth Schmidt (806-742-2723, kenneth.schmidt@ttu.edu) WEBSITE: USGS North American Breeding Bird Survey
HELPING CORAL REEFS SURVIVE CLIMATE CHANGE
While the high ocean surface temperatures during the 1997-98 El Nino bleached coral reefs in more than 50 tropical countries worldwide, patches of coral did survive in or near the damaged reefs. A new study of these patches identifies factors likely to protect these threatened marine ecosystems during climate change. "As baseline sea surface temperatures continue to rise, climate change may represent the single greatest threat to coral reefs worldwide," say Jordan West of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC, and Rodney Salm of The Nature Conservancy in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the August issue of Conservation Biology. Coral reefs have among the greatest biodiversity of any ecosystem worldwide and provide key services to people, from food to coastal protection to tourism. Reef-building corals depend on symbiotic algae to photosynthesize much of their food, and surface waters that are warmer than normal can "bleach" corals by depleting their photosynthetic pigments or even make them expel their algae.
The researchers found that the factors that confer resistance to bleaching include local upwellings of cold water, and natural exposure to heat stress. For instance, in an area of Binh Thuan, Vietnam, upwelling of cold water brought surface temperatures down from 39 degrees C to 29 degrees C within days, and corals there recovered better than elsewhere in the country. In addition, corals that emerge at low tides may be more tolerant of heat stress. For instance, in Palau's Rock Islands, the reef flats that emerge during the low tide were bleached less than the parts of the reef that are in deeper waters. The factors that confer resilience to bleaching include having diverse populations of corals that produce lots of larvae, surface currents that spread the larvae, herbivorous fish that graze the algae that otherwise grow on top of damaged reefs and prevent the establishment of new corals, and management that decreases stresses such as pollution and fishing methods that destroy reefs. West and Salm recommend that coral reef managers use this work to identify and protect patches of coral reef that are most likely to persist during continuing climate change. Establishing reserves that protect networks of these patches will help ensure that the corals that survive a major bleaching event will be able to replenish those that do not. The Nature Conservancy is currently applying this work to help coral reefs recover from bleaching in the Republic of Palau, which is developing a national network of Marine Protected Areas. CONTACT: Jordan West (202-564-3384, west.jordan@epa.gov)
WEBSITES: The Nature Conservancy: Coral Reefs
EPA Global Change Research Program: Workshop on Mitigating the Impacts of Coral Bleaching Through Marine Protected Area Design
QUARRIES MAY BE LAST CHANCE FOR MANY RARE EUROPEAN BUTTERFLIES
While European environmentalists see quarries as scars in the Earth, these industrial operations may actually play a critical role in preserving rare species. New research shows that quarries provide the only suitable habitat for at-risk butterflies in some places, suggesting that current policies of filling in old quarries are misguided. "Increasing evidence is revealing the counterproductivity of such practices," say Jiri Benes, Pavel Kepka and Martin Konvicka, all of the University of South Bohemia in Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic, in the August issue of Conservation Biology. Throughout Europe, butterflies that depend on warm, dry areas have declined because many of the steppe-like grasslands that provide this habitat have been lost to intensified agriculture, conifer plantations and urbanization. Two of the researchers (Benes and Konvicka) have been butterfly enthusiasts since childhood and noticed as high school students that many steppe grassland species were essentially found only in quarries in the Czech Republic's Moravian Gate, one of Europe's most important north-south migration corridors. Thus, the researchers were concerned that these butterflies would be further threatened by the Czech Republic's policy of reclaiming old quarries, which usually means covering them with topsoil and planting trees. To see if quarries can help compensate for the loss of steppe habitat in Europe, Benes and his colleagues surveyed the diversity and abundance of butterflies in 21 limestone quarries in the Moravian lowlands. The researchers surveyed the butterflies in four habitat types: recently excavated rock, sparsely vegetated, herbaceous plants, and trees and shrubs. The researchers found that quarries serve as refuges for two groups of butterflies that depend on steppe-like habitats. The first group comprises 20 species, nine of which are threatened in the Czech Republic, that thrive in active quarries because they prefer habitats such as rocks and stony terraces. While managing reserves to maintain such habitats would be an ongoing and costly task, "the service is provided for free in the quarries as a side-effect of the excavation," say Benes and his colleagues. The second group comprises 19 species, 10 of which are threatened in the Czech Republic, that thrive in old quarries because they prefer habitats that grow on previously excavated surfaces, notably scrubby forest-steppes. These habitats are virtually gone elsewhere in Central Europe because managers of steppe reserves there typically remove scrub in favor of orchids and other charismatic plants. More than half of the quarries studied are in areas that no longer have any natural steppe grasslands. "The quarries are thus the only chance for preserving steppe butterflies there," note Benes and his colleagues. They recommend operating active quarries and managing old ones to maintain the bare rock and scrubby habitats that the two groups of steppe butterflies require. "Conservationists should pragmatically exploit these opportunities by cooperating with quarry operators," they say. CONTACT: Jiri Benes (+0042-38-7772251, Benes.J@post.cz)
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