Maximizing the phylogenetic diversity of seed banks

Ex situ conservation efforts such as those of zoos, botanical gardens, and seed banks will form a vital complement to in situ conservation actions over the coming decades. It is therefore necessary to pay the same attention to the biological diversity represented in ex situ conservation facilities as is often paid to protected‐area networks. Building the phylogenetic diversity of ex situ collections will strengthen our capacity to respond to biodiversity loss. Since 2000, the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership has banked seed from 14% of the world's plant species. We assessed the taxonomic, geographic, and phylogenetic diversity of the Millennium Seed Bank collection of legumes (Leguminosae). We compared the collection with all known legume genera, their known geographic range (at country and regional levels), and a genus‐level phylogeny of the legume family constructed for this study. Over half the phylogenetic diversity of legumes at the genus level was represented in the Millennium Seed Bank. However, pragmatic prioritization of species of economic importance and endangerment has led to the banking of a less‐than‐optimal phylogenetic diversity and prioritization of range‐restricted species risks an underdispersed collection. The current state of the phylogenetic diversity of legumes in the Millennium Seed Bank could be substantially improved through the strategic banking of relatively few additional taxa. Our method draws on tools that are widely applied to in situ conservation planning, and it can be used to evaluate and improve the phylogenetic diversity of ex situ collections. Maximizar la Riqueza Filogenética de los Bancos de Semillas     

Correlation and persistence of hunting and logging impacts on tropical rainforest mammals

Humans influence tropical rainforest animals directly via exploitation and indirectly via habitat disturbance. Bushmeat hunting and logging occur extensively in tropical forests and have large effects on particular species. But how they alter animal diversity across landscape scales and whether their impacts are correlated across species remain less known. We used spatially widespread measurements of mammal occurrence across Malaysian Borneo and recently developed multispecies hierarchical models to assess the species richness of medium‐ to large‐bodied terrestrial mammals while accounting for imperfect detection of all species. Hunting was associated with 31% lower species richness. Moreover, hunting remained high even where richness was very low, highlighting that hunting pressure persisted even in chronically overhunted areas. Newly logged sites had 11% lower species richness than unlogged sites, but sites logged >10 years previously had richness levels similar to those in old‐growth forest. Hunting was a more serious long‐term threat than logging for 91% of primate and ungulate species. Hunting and logging impacts across species were not correlated across taxa. Negative impacts of hunting were the greatest for common mammalian species, but commonness versus rarity was not related to species‐specific impacts of logging. Direct human impacts appeared highly persistent and lead to defaunation of certain areas. These impacts were particularly severe for species of ecological importance as seed dispersers and herbivores. Indirect impacts were also strong but appeared to attenuate more rapidly than previously thought. The lack of correlation between direct and indirect impacts across species highlights that multifaceted conservation strategies may be needed for mammal conservation in tropical rainforests, Earth's most biodiverse ecosystems. Correlación y Persistencia de los Impactos de la Caza y la Tala sobre los Mamíferos de los Bosques Tropicales     

Evaluating Private Land Conservation in the Cape Lowlands,South Africa

Abstract: Evaluation is important for judiciously allocating limited conservation resources and for improving conservation success through learning and strategy adjustment. We evaluated the application of systematic conservation planning goals and conservation gains from incentive‐based stewardship interventions on private land in the Cape Lowlands and Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. We collected spatial and nonspatial data (2003–2007) to determine the number of hectares of vegetation protected through voluntary contractual and legally nonbinding (informal) agreements with landowners; resources spent on these interventions; contribution of the agreements to 5‐ and 20‐year conservation goals for representation and persistence in the Cape Lowlands of species and ecosystems; and time and staff required to meet these goals. Conservation gains on private lands across the Cape Floristic Region were relatively high. In 5 years, 22,078 ha (27,800 ha of land) and 46,526 ha (90,000 ha of land) of native vegetation were protected through contracts and informal agreements, respectively. Informal agreements often were opportunity driven and cheaper and faster to execute than contracts. All contractual agreements in the Cape Lowlands were within areas of high conservation priority (identified through systematic conservation planning), which demonstrated the conservation plan's practical application and a high level of overlap between resource investment (approximately R1.14 million/year in the lowlands) and priority conservation areas. Nevertheless, conservation agreements met only 11% of 5‐year and 9% of 20‐year conservation goals for Cape Lowlands and have made only a moderate contribution to regional persistence of flora to date. Meeting the plan's conservation goals will take three to five times longer and many more staff members to maintain agreements than initially envisaged.     

Evaluating the Success of Conservation Actions in Safeguarding Tropical Forest Biodiversity

Abstract: We reviewed the evidence on the extent and efficacy of conservation of tropical forest biodiversity for each of the classes of conservation action defined by the new International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classification. Protected areas are the most tested conservation approach, and a number of studies show they are generally effective in slowing deforestation. There is some documentation of the extent of sustainable timber management in tropical forest, but little information on other landscape‐conservation tactics. The extent and effectiveness of ex situ species conservation is quite well known. Forty‐one tropical‐forest species now survive only in captivity. Other single‐species conservation actions are not as well documented. The potential of policy mechanisms, such as international conventions and provision of funds, to slow extinctions in tropical forests is considerable, but the effects of policy are difficult to measure. Finally, interventions to promote tropical conservation by supporting education and livelihoods, providing incentives, and furthering capacity building are all thought to be important, but their extent and effectiveness remain poorly known. For birds, the best studied taxon, the sum of such conservation actions has averted one‐fifth of the extinctions that would otherwise have occurred over the last century. Clearly, tropical forest conservation works, but more is needed, as is critical assessment of what works in what circumstances, if mass extinction is to be averted.     

Ecological‐Niche Modeling and Prioritization of Conservation‐Area Networks for Mexican Herpetofauna

Abstract: One of the most important tools in conservation biology is information on the geographic distribution of species and the variables determining those patterns. We used maximum‐entropy niche modeling to run distribution models for 222 amphibian and 371 reptile species (49% endemics and 27% threatened) for which we had 34,619 single geographic records. The planning region is in southeastern Mexico, is 20% of the country's area, includes 80% of the country's herpetofauna, and lacks an adequate protected‐area system. We used probabilistic data to build distribution models of herpetofauna for use in prioritizing conservation areas for three target groups (all species and threatened and endemic species). The accuracy of species‐distribution models was better for endemic and threatened species than it was for all species. Forty‐seven percent of the region has been deforested and additional conservation areas with 13.7% to 88.6% more native vegetation (76% to 96% of the areas are outside the current protected‐area system) are needed. There was overlap in 26 of the main selected areas in the conservation‐area network prioritized to preserve the target groups, and for all three target groups the proportion of vegetation types needed for their conservation was constant: 30% pine and oak forests, 22% tropical evergreen forest, 17% low deciduous forest, and 8% montane cloud forests. The fact that different groups of species require the same proportion of habitat types suggests that the pine and oak forests support the highest proportion of endemic and threatened species and should therefore be given priority over other types of vegetation for inclusion in the protected areas of southeastern Mexico.     

Some Guiding Concepts for Conservation Biology

Abstract: 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.     

Using abiotic variables to predict importance of sites for species representation

In systematic conservation planning, species distribution data for all sites in a planning area are used to prioritize each site in terms of the site's importance toward meeting the goal of species representation. But comprehensive species data are not available in most planning areas and would be expensive to acquire. As a shortcut, ecologists use surrogates, such as occurrences of birds or another well‐surveyed taxon, or land types defined from remotely sensed data, in the hope that sites that represent the surrogates also represent biodiversity. Unfortunately, surrogates have not performed reliably. We propose a new type of surrogate, predicted importance, that can be developed from species data for a q% subset of sites. With species data from this subset of sites, importance can be modeled as a function of abiotic variables available at no charge for all terrestrial areas on Earth. Predicted importance can then be used as a surrogate to prioritize all sites. We tested this surrogate with 8 sets of species data. For each data set, we used a q% subset of sites to model importance as a function of abiotic variables, used the resulting function to predict importance for all sites, and evaluated the number of species in the sites with highest predicted importance. Sites with the highest predicted importance represented species efficiently for all data sets when q = 25% and for 7 of 8 data sets when q = 20%. Predicted importance requires less survey effort than direct selection for species representation and meets representation goals well compared with other surrogates currently in use. This less expensive surrogate may be useful in those areas of the world that need it most, namely tropical regions with the highest biodiversity, greatest biodiversity loss, most severe lack of inventory data, and poorly developed protected area networks.     

A comparative approach to assess drivers of success in mammalian conservation recovery programs

The outcomes of species recovery programs have been mixed; high‐profile population recoveries contrast with species‐level extinctions. Each conservation intervention has its own challenges, but to inform more effective management it is imperative to assess whether correlates of wider recovery program success or failure can be identified. To contribute to evidence‐based improvement of future conservation strategies, we conducted a global quantitative analysis of 48 mammalian recovery programs. We reviewed available scientific literature and conducted semistructured interviews with conservation professionals involved in different recovery programs to investigate ecological, management, and political factors associated with population recoveries or declines. Identifying and removing threats was significantly associated with increasing population trend and decreasing conservation dependence, emphasizing that populations are likely to continue to be compromised in the absence of effective threat mitigation and supporting the need for threat monitoring and adaptive management in response to new and potential threats. Lack of habitat and small population size were cited as limiting factors in 56% and 42% of recovery programs, respectively, and both were statistically associated with increased longer term dependence on conservation intervention, demonstrating the importance of increasing population numbers quickly and restoring and protecting habitat. Poor stakeholder coordination and management were also regularly cited by respondents as key weaknesses in recovery programs, indicating the importance of effective leadership and shared goals and management plans. Project outcomes were not influenced by biological or ecological variables such as body mass or habitat, which suggests that these insights into correlates of conservation success and failure are likely to be generalizable across mammals.     

Conservation Development Practices,Extent, and Land‐Use Effects in the United States

Abstract: Conservation development projects combine real‐estate development with conservation of land and other natural resources. Thousands of such projects have been conducted in the United States and other countries through the involvement of private developers, landowners, land trusts, and government agencies. Previous research has demonstrated the potential value of conservation development for conserving species, ecological functions, and other resource values on private lands, especially when traditional sources of conservation funding are not available. Nevertheless, the aggregate extent and effects of conservation development were previously unknown. To address this gap, we estimated the extent and trends of conservation development in the United States and characterized its key attributes to understand its aggregate contribution to land‐conservation and growth‐management objectives. We interviewed representatives from land trusts, planning agencies, and development companies, searched the Internet for conservation development projects and programs, and compiled existing databases of conservation development projects. We collected data on 3884 projects encompassing 1.38 million ha. About 43% of the projects targeted the conservation of specific plant or animal species or ecological communities of conservation concern; 84% targeted the protection of native ecosystems representative of the project area; and 42% provided buffers to existing protected areas. The percentage of protected land in conservation development projects ranged from <40% to >99%, and the effects of these projects on natural resources differed widely. We estimate that conservation development projects have protected roughly 4 million ha of land in the United States and account for about 25% of private‐land conservation activity nationwide.     

Developments in amphibian captive breeding and reintroduction programs

Captive breeding and reintroduction remain high profile but controversial conservation interventions. It is important to understand how such programs develop and respond to strategic conservation initiatives. We analyzed the contribution to conservation made by amphibian captive breeding and reintroduction since the launch of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Amphibian Conservation Action Plan (ACAP) in 2007. We assembled data on amphibian captive breeding and reintroduction from a variety of sources including the Amphibian Ark database and the IUCN Red List. We also carried out systematic searches of Web of Science, JSTOR, and Google Scholar for relevant literature. Relative to data collected from 1966 to 2006, the number of species involved in captive breeding and reintroduction projects increased by 57% in the 7 years since release of the ACAP. However, there have been relatively few new reintroductions over this period; most programs have focused on securing captive‐assurance populations (i.e., species taken into captivity as a precaution against extinctions in the wild) and conservation‐related research. There has been a shift to a broader representation of frogs, salamanders, and caecilians within programs and an increasing emphasis on threatened species. There has been a relative increase of species in programs from Central and South America and the Caribbean, where amphibian biodiversity is high. About half of the programs involve zoos and aquaria with a similar proportion represented in specialist facilities run by governmental or nongovernmental agencies. Despite successful reintroduction often being regarded as the ultimate milestone for such programs, the irreversibility of many current threats to amphibians may make this an impractical goal. Instead, research on captive assurance populations may be needed to develop imaginative solutions to enable amphibians to survive alongside current, emerging, and future threats.     

Intact Faunal Assemblages in the Modern Era

Abstract: In light of limited conservation funding, global conservation initiatives are increasingly focused on regions of the planet that have been identified as valuable on the basis of their species diversity, the vulnerability of resident species to extinction, or the perceived pristine nature of their ecosystems. Regions that have been resilient to high rates of extinction have not yet been systematically considered in conservation efforts. We used published range maps for 392 vertebrate species to compare historical and current species ranges. We used the results of the comparison to identify regions of the globe in which no known vertebrate species has been extirpated in the past 200 years. In 17 regions, no detectable vertebrate extinctions occurred in the past 200 years. In 6 other regions, reintroductions of species restored the full historic complement of vertebrate species. The effects of humans on a landscape, as measured by the human‐footprint index, although useful, was not a singularly good predictor of faunal intactness because more than 20% of intact land area was in heavily affected areas (50% of Earth's land area), and several regions where humans have had very little effect did not have intact faunas. Only 22% of intact land area was within protected‐area networks. High‐latitude areas were particularly underrepresented; they made up 3 of the 4 least‐protected areas in our analyses. Our results indicate that although protected areas are in some cases associated with the prevention of extinctions, there are many regions in which human activity coexists with intact vertebrate assemblages. In addition, our new approach for assessing the value of global regions for conservation identifies several regions that are not represented in other prioritization metrics.     

Assessing Multiregion Avian Benefits from Strategically Targeted Agricultural Buffers

Mounting evidence of wildlife population gains from targeted conservation practices has prompted the need to develop and evaluate practices that are integrated into production agriculture systems and targeted toward specific habitat objectives. However, effectiveness of targeted conservation actions across broader landscapes is poorly understood. We evaluated multiregion, multispecies avian densities on row‐crop fields with native grass field margins (i.e., buffers) as part of the first U.S. agricultural conservation practice designed to support habitat and population recovery objectives of a national wildlife conservation initiative. We coordinated breeding season point transect surveys for 6 grassland bird species on 1151 row‐crop fields with and without native grass buffers (9–37 m) in 14 U.S. states (10 ecoregions) from 2006 to 2011. In most regions, breeding season densities of 5 of 6 targeted bird species were greater in the 500‐m surrounding survey points centered on fields with native grass buffers than in landscapes without buffers. Relative effect sizes were greatest for Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus), Dickcissel (Spiza americana), and Field Sparrow (Spizella pusilla) in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley and Eastern Tallgrass Prairie regions. Other species (e.g., Eastern Meadowlark [Sturnella magna], Grasshopper Sparrow [Ammodramus savannarum]) exhibited inconsistent relative effect sizes. Bird densities on fields with and without buffers were greatest in the Central Mixed‐grass Prairie region. Our results suggest that strategic use of conservation buffers in regions with the greatest potential for relative density increases in target species will elicit greater range‐wide population response than diffuse, uninformed, and broadly distributed implementation of buffers. We recommend integrating multiple conservation practices in broader agricultural landscapes to maximize conservation effectiveness for a larger suite of species. Evaluación de los Beneficios de la Mutliregionalidad de Aves a Partir de Amortiguadores Agriculturales Estratégicamente Señalados     

Offsets and Conservation of the Species of the EU Habitats and Birds Directives

Biodiversity offsets are intended to achieve no net loss of biodiversity due to economic and human development. A variety of biodiversity components are addressed by offset policies. It is required that loss of protected species due to development be offset under the EU Habitats and Birds Directives in Europe. We call this type of offset a species‐equality offset because the offset pertains to the same species affected by the development project. Whether species equality can be achieved by offset design is unknown. We addressed this gap by reviewing derogation files (i.e., specific files that describe mitigation measures to ensure no net loss under the EU Habitats and Birds Directives) from 85 development projects in France (2009–2010). We collected information on type of effect (reversible vs. irreversible) and characteristics of affected and offset sites (i.e., types of species, total area). We analyzed how the type of effect and the affected‐site characteristics influenced the occurrence of offset measures. The proportion of species targeted by offset measures (i.e., offset species) increased with the irreversibility of the effect of development and the conservation status of the species affected by development (i.e., affected species). Not all effects on endangered species (International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List) were offset; on average, 82% of affected species would be offset. Twenty‐six percent of species of least concern were offset species. Thirty‐five percent of development projects considered all affected species in their offset measures. Species richness was much lower in offset sites than in developed sites even after offset proposals. For developed areas where species richness was relatively high before development, species richness at offset sites was 5–10 times lower. The species‐equality principle appears to have been applied only partially in offset policies, as in the EU directives. We suggest the application of this principle through offsets is highly important for the long‐term conservation of biodiversity in Europe. Compensaciones y Conservación de las Especies de las Directivas de Hábitats y Aves de la UE     

Improving effectiveness of systematic conservation planning with density data

Systematic conservation planning aims to design networks of protected areas that meet conservation goals across large landscapes. The optimal design of these conservation networks is most frequently based on the modeled habitat suitability or probability of occurrence of species, despite evidence that model predictions may not be highly correlated with species density. We hypothesized that conservation networks designed using species density distributions more efficiently conserve populations of all species considered than networks designed using probability of occurrence models. To test this hypothesis, we used the Zonation conservation prioritization algorithm to evaluate conservation network designs based on probability of occurrence versus density models for 26 land bird species in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. We assessed the efficacy of each conservation network based on predicted species densities and predicted species diversity. High‐density model Zonation rankings protected more individuals per species when networks protected the highest priority 10‐40% of the landscape. Compared with density‐based models, the occurrence‐based models protected more individuals in the lowest 50% priority areas of the landscape. The 2 approaches conserved species diversity in similar ways: predicted diversity was higher in higher priority locations in both conservation networks. We conclude that both density and probability of occurrence models can be useful for setting conservation priorities but that density‐based models are best suited for identifying the highest priority areas. Developing methods to aggregate species count data from unrelated monitoring efforts and making these data widely available through ecoinformatics portals such as the Avian Knowledge Network will enable species count data to be more widely incorporated into systematic conservation planning efforts.     

Terrestrial Reserve Networks Do Not Adequately Represent Aquatic Ecosystems

Abstract: Protected areas are a cornerstone of conservation and have been designed largely around terrestrial features. Freshwater species and ecosystems are highly imperiled, but the effectiveness of existing protected areas in representing freshwater features is poorly known. Using the inland waters of Michigan as a test case, we quantified the coverage of four key freshwater features (wetlands, riparian zones, groundwater recharge, rare species) within conservation lands and compared these with representation of terrestrial features. Wetlands were included within protected areas more often than expected by chance, but riparian zones were underrepresented across all (GAP 1–3) protected lands, particularly for headwater streams and large rivers. Nevertheless, within strictly protected lands (GAP 1–2), riparian zones were highly represented because of the contribution of the national Wild and Scenic Rivers Program. Representation of areas of groundwater recharge was generally proportional to area of the reserve network within watersheds, although a recharge hotspot associated with some of Michigan's most valued rivers is almost entirely unprotected. Species representation in protected areas differed significantly among obligate aquatic, wetland, and terrestrial species, with representation generally highest for terrestrial species and lowest for aquatic species. Our results illustrate the need to further evaluate and address the representation of freshwater features within protected areas and the value of broadening gap analysis and other protected‐areas assessments to include key ecosystem processes that are requisite to long‐term conservation of species and ecosystems. We conclude that terrestrially oriented protected‐area networks provide a weak safety net for aquatic features, which means complementary planning and management for both freshwater and terrestrial conservation targets is needed.     

Mapping Human and Social Dimensions of Conservation Opportunity for the Scheduling of Conservation Action on Private Land

Abstract Spatial prioritization techniques are applied in conservation‐planning initiatives to allocate conservation resources. Although typically they are based on ecological data (e.g., species, habitats, ecological processes), increasingly they also include nonecological data, mostly on the vulnerability of valued features and economic costs of implementation. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of conservation actions implemented through conservation‐planning initiatives is a function of the human and social dimensions of social‐ecological systems, such as stakeholders’ willingness and capacity to participate. We assessed human and social factors hypothesized to define opportunities for implementing effective conservation action by individual land managers (those responsible for making day‐to‐day decisions on land use) and mapped these to schedule implementation of a private land conservation program. We surveyed 48 land managers who owned 301 land parcels in the Makana Municipality of the Eastern Cape province in South Africa. Psychometric statistical and cluster analyses were applied to the interview data so as to map human and social factors of conservation opportunity across a landscape of regional conservation importance. Four groups of landowners were identified, in rank order, for a phased implementation process. Furthermore, using psychometric statistical techniques, we reduced the number of interview questions from 165 to 45, which is a preliminary step toward developing surrogates for human and social factors that can be developed rapidly and complemented with measures of conservation value, vulnerability, and economic cost to more‐effectively schedule conservation actions. This work provides conservation and land management professionals direction on where and how implementation of local‐scale conservation should be undertaken to ensure it is feasible.     

Quantification of Extinction Risk: IUCN's System for Classifying Threatened Species

Abstract: The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species was increasingly used during the 1980s to assess the conservation status of species for policy and planning purposes. This use stimulated the development of a new set of quantitative criteria for listing species in the categories of threat: critically endangered, endangered, and vulnerable. These criteria, which were intended to be applicable to all species except microorganisms, were part of a broader system for classifying threatened species and were fully implemented by IUCN in 2000. The system and the criteria have been widely used by conservation practitioners and scientists and now underpin one indicator being used to assess the Convention on Biological Diversity 2010 biodiversity target. We describe the process and the technical background to the IUCN Red List system. The criteria refer to fundamental biological processes underlying population decline and extinction. But given major differences between species, the threatening processes affecting them, and the paucity of knowledge relating to most species, the IUCN system had to be both broad and flexible to be applicable to the majority of described species. The system was designed to measure the symptoms of extinction risk, and uses 5 independent criteria relating to aspects of population loss and decline of range size. A species is assigned to a threat category if it meets the quantitative threshold for at least one criterion. The criteria and the accompanying rules and guidelines used by IUCN are intended to increase the consistency, transparency, and validity of its categorization system, but it necessitates some compromises that affect the applicability of the system and the species lists that result. In particular, choices were made over the assessment of uncertainty, poorly known species, depleted species, population decline, restricted ranges, and rarity; all of these affect the way red lists should be viewed and used. Processes related to priority setting and the development of national red lists need to take account of some assumptions in the formulation of the criteria.     

Enhancing the Engagement of U.S. Private Foundations with Conservation Science

Abstract: 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 $340 million in grants for conservation in 2005, including $62 million for conservation science. Individual foundations varied substantially in the proportion of conservation funds allocated to science. Foundations also varied in the ways and degree to which they used conservation science to guide their grant making. Respondents found it “somewhat difficult” to stay informed about conservation science relevant to their work, reporting that they accessed conservation science information mainly through their grantees. Many funders reported concerns about the strategic utility of funding conservation science to achieve conservation gains. To increase investment by private foundations in conservation science, funders, researchers, and conservation practitioners need to jointly identify when and how new scientific knowledge will lower barriers to conservation gains. We envision an evolving relationship between funders and conservation scientists that emphasizes primary research and synthesis motivated by (1) applicability, (2) human‐ecosystem interactions, (3) active engagement among scientists and decision makers, and (4) broader communication of relevant scientific information.     

Wood Density as a Conservation Tool: Quantification of Disturbance and Identification of Conservation‐Priority Areas in Tropical Forests

Abstract: Inventories of tree species are often conducted to guide conservation efforts in tropical forests. Such surveys are time consuming, demanding of expertise, and expensive to perform and interpret. Approaches to make survey efforts simpler or more effective would be valuable. In particular, it would be good to be able to easily identify areas of old‐growth forest. The average density of the wood of a tree species is closely linked to its successional status. We used tree inventory data from eastern Borneo to determine whether wood density can be used to quantify forest disturbance and conservation importance. The average density of wood in a plot was significantly and negatively related to disturbance levels, with plots with higher wood densities occurring almost exclusively in old‐growth forests. Average wood density was unimodally related to the diversity of tree species, indicating that the average wood density in a plot might be a better indicator of old‐growth forest than species diversity. In addition, Borneo endemics had significantly heavier wood than species that are common throughout the Malesian region, and they were more common in plots with higher average wood density. We concluded that wood density at the plot level could be a powerful tool for identifying areas of conservation priority in the tropical rain forests of Southeast Asia.     

Use of a Business Excellence Model to Improve Conservation Programs

Abstract: The current shortfall in effectiveness within conservation biology is illustrated by increasing interest in “evidence‐based conservation,” whose proponents have identified the need to benchmark conservation initiatives against actions that lead to proven positive effects. The effectiveness of conservation policies, approaches, and evaluation is under increasing scrutiny, and in these areas models of excellence used in business could prove valuable. Typically, conservation programs require years of effort and involve rigorous long‐term implementation processes. Successful balance of long‐term efforts alongside the achievement of short‐term goals is often compromised by management or budgetary constraints, a situation also common in commercial businesses. “Business excellence” is an approach many companies have used over the past 20 years to ensure continued success. Various business excellence evaluations have been promoted that include concepts that could be adapted and applied in conservation programs. We describe a conservation excellence model that shows how scientific processes and results can be aligned with financial and organizational measures of success. We applied the model to two well‐documented species conservation programs. In the first, the Po’ouli program, several aspects of improvement were identified, such as more authority for decision making in the field and better integration of habitat management and population recovery processes. The second example, the black‐footed ferret program, could have benefited from leadership effort to reduce bureaucracy and to encourage use of best‐practice species recovery approaches. The conservation excellence model enables greater clarity in goal setting, more‐effective identification of job roles within programs, better links between technical approaches and measures of biological success, and more‐effective use of resources. The model could improve evaluation of a conservation program's effectiveness and may be used to compare different programs, for example during reviews of project performance by sponsoring organizations.