Climate readiness of recovery plans for threatened Australian species

The rapidly changing climate is posing growing threats for all species, but particularly for those already considered threatened. We reviewed 100 recovery plans for Australian terrestrial threatened species (50 fauna and 50 flora plans) written from 1997 to 2017. We recorded the number of plans that acknowledged climate change as a threat and of these how many proposed specific actions to ameliorate the threat. We classified these actions along a continuum from passive or incremental to active or interventionist. Overall, just under 60% of the sampled recovery plans listed climate change as a current or potential threat to the threatened taxa, and the likelihood of this acknowledgment increased over time. A far smaller proportion of the plans, however, identified specific actions associated with ameliorating climate risk (22%) and even fewer (9%) recommended any interventionist action in response to a climate-change-associated threat. Our results point to a disconnect between the knowledge generated on climate-change-related risk and potential adaptation strategies and the extent to which this knowledge has been incorporated into an important instrument of conservation action.     

The place of nature in conservation conflicts

Conservation conflicts are gaining importance in contemporary conservation scholarship such that conservation may have entered a conflict hype. We attempted to uncover and deconstruct the normative assumptions behind such studies by raising several questions: what are conservation conflicts, what justifies the attention they receive, do conservation-conflict studies limit wildlife conservation, is scientific knowledge stacked against wildlife in conservation conflicts, do conservation-conflict studies adopt a specific view of democracy, can laws be used to force conservation outcomes, why is flexibility needed in managing conservation conflicts, can conservation conflicts be managed by promoting tolerance, and who needs to compromise in conservation conflicts? We suggest that many of the intellectual premises in the field may defang conservation and prevent it from truly addressing the current conservation crisis as it accelerates. By framing conservation conflicts as conflicts between people about wildlife or nature, the field insidiously transfers guilt, whereby human activities are no longer blamed for causing species decline and extinctions but conservation is instead blamed for causing social conflicts. When the focus is on mitigating social conflicts without limiting in any powerful way human activities damaging to nature, conservation-conflict studies risk keeping conservation within the limits of human activities, instead of keeping human activities within the limits of nature. For conservation to successfully stop the biodiversity crisis, we suggest the alternative goal of recognizing nature's right to existence to maintenance of ecological functions and evolutionary processes. Nature being a rights bearer or legal person would imply its needs must be explicitly taken into account in conflict adjudication. If, even in conservation, nature's interests come second to human interests, it may be no surprise that conservation cannot succeed.     

Quantifying the impact of vegetation-based metrics on species persistence when choosing offsets for habitat destruction

Developers are often required by law to offset environmental impacts through targeted conservation actions. Most offset policies specify metrics for calculating offset requirements, usually by assessing vegetation condition. Despite widespread use, there is little evidence to support the effectiveness of vegetation-based metrics for ensuring biodiversity persistence. We compared long-term impacts of biodiversity offsetting based on area only; vegetation condition only; area × habitat suitability; and condition × habitat suitability in development and restoration simulations for the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia. We simulated development and subsequent offsetting through restoration within a virtual landscape, linking simulations to population viability models for 3 species. Habitat gains did not ensure species persistence. No net loss was achieved when performance of offsetting was assessed in terms of amount of habitat restored, but not when outcomes were assessed in terms of persistence. Maintenance of persistence occurred more often when impacts were avoided, giving further support to better enforce the avoidance stage of the mitigation hierarchy. When development affected areas of high habitat quality for species, persistence could not be guaranteed. Therefore, species must be more explicitly accounted for in offsets, rather than just vegetation or habitat alone. Declines due to a failure to account directly for species population dynamics and connectivity overshadowed the benefits delivered by producing large areas of high-quality habitat. Our modeling framework showed that the benefits delivered by offsets are species specific and that simple vegetation-based metrics can give misguided impressions on how well biodiversity offsets achieve no net loss.     

Experience in quantitative analysis of floristic structure and diversity in Samarskaya Luka

Quantitative methods have been applied to the study of floristic structure and diversity in Samarskaya Luka. The results show that Samarskaya Luka is a floristically heterogeneous area in which six elementary floras can be distinguished. This area has been assessed as a floristically autonomous formation, and its floristic representativeness was estimated.     

燃煤电厂海水烟气脱硫工艺原理初探

海水烟气脱硫工艺是利用天然的纯海水（燃煤电厂可直接利用电厂的冷却循环水）作为烟气中ＳＯ２的吸收剂，无需其它任何添加剂，也不产生任何废弃物，具有技术成熟、工艺简单、系统运行可靠、脱硫效率高（理论脱硫效率可达９８％）和投资运行费用低等特点，目前在一些国家和地区已得到日益广泛的应用。本文是在部分模拟试验的基础上，对海水烟气脱硫工艺进行了简单的阐述。     

Male-biassed response of garden chafer, Phyllopertha horticola L., to leaf alcohol and attraction of both sexes to floral plant volatiles

Summary. Field tests were performed to evaluate the response of the garden chafer, Phyllopertha horticola (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) to known scarab attractants and to investigate the influence of trap colour and height on the number of captured beetles. Both sexes were attracted by a lure mixture composed of geraniol, eugenol, and 2-phenylethyl propionate (PEP) (ratio 3:7:3). When testing floral volatiles individually, only geraniol, eugenol and methyl anthranilate but not PEP was attractive. Response of garden chafer to (Z)- 3-hexen-1-ol was strongly male-biassed. Both the response to floral volatiles and (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol was increased by using funnel traps with yellow instead of grey vanes. Traps positioned at 50 and 125 cm above ground captured significantly more garden chafers than those at 200 cm. The strongly male-biassed response to (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol suggests that in P. horticola (subfamily Rutelinae) orientation towards plant volatiles emitted upon mechanical damage of plants is part of the male mate finding strategy as recently demonstrated for cockchafers of the genus Melolontha (subfamily Melolonthinae). Possible application of plant volatiles for control of P. horticola is discussed.     

神农架主峰南坡猕猴桃种质资源调查及保护策略

巴东县北部神农架主峰南坡的送子园原始森林保护区内具有种类繁多的猕猴桃种质资源，经调查发现共分布有中华猕猴桃（A.chiensis)、美味猕猴桃（A.deliciosa)、革叶猕猴桃(A．rubricalis var.coriacea)、葛枣猴桃(A．ploygama)、京梨猕猴桃(A．callosa var．henryi)、软枣猕猴桃(A．arguta)、巴东猕猴桃(A．tetramera var.badongenisis)、紫果猕猴桃(A．arguta var.purpurea)及紫果新变型、绵毛藤山柳(Clematoclthra lanosa)10种(包括变种、变型)。简述了各种类的植物学性状和果实经济性状，种质资源分布的主要特点以及生态环境，指出由于砍伐森林和环境条件的恶化使猕猴桃资源已受到威胁和破坏，提出保护策略的重点是提高全民的生态保护意识；可持续开发利用资源；加大科技对猕猴桃资源保护支撑的力度。其主要保育措施：一是在保护区内就地进一步加强物种全面保护；二是省级以上科研单位分区建立猕猴桃后种质资源圃，对濒危物种或持有物种进行迁地保护；三是开展超低温保存技术的研究，建立种子和花粉基因库。并建立完善与国际接轨的信息数据库平台，便于国际合作与交流。     

Plant communities in the zone of gas field development and heavy metal accumulation by them

Heavy metal accumulation by plant communities has been studied in different zones of impact of gas field development. The contents of heavy metals in different blocks of plant communities has proved to depend not only on the location of phytocenosis but also on its species composition. Communities dominated by species of the family Poaceae contain smaller amounts of heavy metals than those dominated by species of the family Asteraceae, especially of the genus Artemisia. The order of precedence in the accumulation of heavy metals in different blocks of plant communities has been revealed.