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.     

Change in avian functional fingerprints of a Neotropical montane forest over 100 years as an indicator of ecosystem integrity

Ecologically relevant traits of organisms in an assemblage determine an ecosystem's functional fingerprint (i.e., the shape, size, and position of multidimensional trait space). Quantifying changes in functional fingerprints can therefore provide information about the effects of diversity loss or gain through time on ecosystem condition and is a promising approach to monitoring ecological integrity. This, however, is seldom possible owing to limitations in historical surveys and a lack of data on organismal traits, particularly in diverse tropical regions. Using data from detailed bird surveys from 4 periods across more than a century, and morphological and ecological traits of 233 species, we quantified changes in the avian functional fingerprint of a tropical montane forest in the Andes of Colombia. We found that 78% of the variation in functional space, regardless of period, was described by 3 major axes summarizing body size, dispersal ability (indexed by wing shape), and habitat breadth. Changes in species composition significantly altered the functional fingerprint of the assemblage and functional richness and dispersion decreased 35–60%. Owing to species extirpations and to novel additions to the assemblage, functional space decreased over time, but at least 11% of its volume in the 2010s extended to areas of functional space that were unoccupied in the 1910s. The assemblage now includes fewer large-sized species, more species with greater dispersal ability, and fewer habitat specialists. Extirpated species had high functional uniqueness and distinctiveness, resulting in large reductions in functional richness and dispersion after their loss, which implies important consequences for ecosystem integrity. Conservation efforts aimed at maintaining ecosystem function must move beyond seeking to sustain species numbers to designing complementary strategies for the maintenance of ecological function by identifying and conserving species with traits conferring high vulnerability such as large body size, poor dispersal ability, and greater habitat specialization. Article impact statement: Changes in functional fingerprints provide a means to quantify the integrity of ecological assemblages affected by diversity loss or gain.     

Special issue on contamination,remediation and health for pollutants in natural aquatic,soil, sediments and atmospheric environments

Environmental Geochemistry and Health -     

Effects of Coastal Lighting on Foraging Behaviorof Beach Mice

Abstract:  Introduction of artificial light into wildlife habitat represents a rapidly expanding form of human encroachment, particularly in coastal systems. Light pollution alters the behavior of sea turtles during nesting; therefore, long-wavelength lights—low-pressure sodium vapor and bug lights—that minimize impacts on turtles are required for beach lighting in Florida (U.S.A.). We investigated the effects of these two kinds of lights on the foraging behavior of Santa Rosa beach mice (  Peromyscus polionotus leucocephalus ). We compared patch use and giving-up densities of mice for experimental food patches established along a gradient of artificial light in the field. Mice exploited fewer food patches near both types of artificial light than in areas with little light and harvested fewer seeds within patches near bug lights. Our results show that artificial light affects the behavior of terrestrial species in coastal areas and that light pollution deserves greater consideration in conservation planning.     

Introduced and cryptogenic species in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, Australia

Port Phillip Bay (PPB) is a large (1,930 km²), temperate embayment in southern Victoria, Australia. Extensive bay-wide surveys of PPB have occurred since 1840. In 1995/1996 the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) Centre for Research on Introduced Marine Pests (CRIMP) undertook an intensive evaluation of the region with the aims of developing a comprehensive species list of native and introduced biota and contrasting previous bay-wide assessments with a current field survey in order to detect new incursions and discern alterations to native communities. Two methods were used to meet these aims: a re-evaluation of regional museum collections and published research in PPB to identify and determine the timing of introductions; and field surveys for benthic (infauna, epifauna and encrusting) organisms between September 1995 to March 1996. One hundred and sixty introduced (99) and cryptogenic (61) species were identified representing over 13% of the recorded species of PPB. As expected, the majority of these are concentrated around the shipping ports of Geelong and Melbourne. Invasions within PPB appear to be increasing, possibly due to an increase in modern shipping traffic and an increase in aquaculture (historically associated with incidental introductions); however the records of extensive biological surveys suggest that this may, in part, be an artefact of sampling effort. In contrast to Northern Hemisphere studies, PPB (and Southern Hemisphere introductions in general) have significantly different suites of successfully invading taxa. PPB is presented as one of the most invaded marine ecosystems in the Southern Hemisphere.Communicated by M.S. Johnson, Crawley