Downgrading,Downsizing, Degazettement,and Reclassification of Protected Areas in Brazil

Protected areas (PAs) are key elements for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. Brazil has the largest PA system in the world, covering approximately 220 million ha. This system expanded rapidly in the mid‐1990s to the mid‐2000s. Recent events in Brazil, however, have led to an increase in PA downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD). Does this reflect a shift in the country's PA policy? We analyzed the occurrence, frequency, magnitude, type, spatial distribution, and causes of changes in PA boundaries and categories in Brazil. We identified 93 PADDD events from 1981 to 2012. Such events increased in frequency since 2008 and were ascribed primarily to generation and transmission of electricity in Amazonia. In Brazilian parks and reserves, 7.3 million ha were affected by PADDD events, and of these, 5.2 million ha were affected by downsizing or degazetting. Moreover, projects being considered by the Federal Congress may degazette 2.1 million ha of PA in Amazonia alone. Relaxing the protection status of existing PAs is proving to be politically easy in Brazil, and the recent increase in frequency and extension of PADDD reflects a change in governmental policy. By taking advantage of chronic deficiencies in financial and personnel resources and surveillance, disputes over land tenure, and the slowness of the Brazilian justice, government agencies have been implementing PADDD without consultation of civil society. If parks and reserves are to maintain their integrity, there will need to be investments in Brazilian PAs and a better understanding of the benefits PAs provide. Degradación, Reajuste, Eliminacióm de las Listas y Reclasificación de Áreas Protegidas en Brasil     

Generation of Priority Research Questions to Inform Conservation Policy and Management at a National Level

Abstract: Integrating knowledge from across the natural and social sciences is necessary to effectively address societal tradeoffs between human use of biological diversity and its preservation. Collaborative processes can change the ways decision makers think about scientific evidence, enhance levels of mutual trust and credibility, and advance the conservation policy discourse. Canada has responsibility for a large fraction of some major ecosystems, such as boreal forests, Arctic tundra, wetlands, and temperate and Arctic oceans. Stressors to biological diversity within these ecosystems arise from activities of the country's resource‐based economy, as well as external drivers of environmental change. Effective management is complicated by incongruence between ecological and political boundaries and conflicting perspectives on social and economic goals. Many knowledge gaps about stressors and their management might be reduced through targeted, timely research. We identify 40 questions that, if addressed or answered, would advance research that has a high probability of supporting development of effective policies and management strategies for species, ecosystems, and ecological processes in Canada. A total of 396 candidate questions drawn from natural and social science disciplines were contributed by individuals with diverse organizational affiliations. These were collaboratively winnowed to 40 by our team of collaborators. The questions emphasize understanding ecosystems, the effects and mitigation of climate change, coordinating governance and management efforts across multiple jurisdictions, and examining relations between conservation policy and the social and economic well‐being of Aboriginal peoples. The questions we identified provide potential links between evidence from the conservation sciences and formulation of policies for conservation and resource management. Our collaborative process of communication and engagement between scientists and decision makers for generating and prioritizing research questions at a national level could be a model for similar efforts beyond Canada.     

A Technicoeconomic Approach for the Selection of a Site Remediation Strategy—Part A: Theory

A technicoeconomic model is developed to select an optimal strategy for the remediation of a contaminated site and to determine the value of this remediation strategy. The model is an extension of actual cost–benefit analysis, with consideration of “irreversible” remediation technology choices, technology effectiveness, and uncertainty on the site's level of contamination. The model considers the possibility of reducing uncertainty by both acquiring more and better information on the level of contamination and by offering the decision-maker the opportunity to reevaluate his decision and switch to a more appropriate technology. It is believed that this model will help decision-makers in the selection of a remediation strategy by presenting all potentially feasible strategies, and how uncertainty on the site's level of contamination affects these strategies.     

Science, Policy, Stakeholders, and Fish Consumption Advisories: Developing a Fish Fact Sheet for the Savannah River

In recent years there has been a startling rise in the issuance of fish consumption advisories. Unfortunately, compliance by the public is often low. Low compliance can be due to a number of factors, including confusion over the meaning of advisories, conflicting advisories issued by different agencies, controversies involving health benefits versus the risks from consuming fish, and an unwillingness to act on the advisories because of personal beliefs. In some places, such as along the Savannah River, one state (South Carolina) had issued a consumption advisory while the other (Georgia) had not, although at present, both states now issue consumption advisories for the Savannah River. Herein we report on the development of a fish fact sheet to address the confusing and conflicting information available to the public about consuming fish from the Savannah River. The process involved interviewing fishers to ascertain fishing and consumption patterns, evaluating contaminant levels and exposure pathways, discussing common grounds for the provision of information, and consensus-building among different regulatory agencies (US Environmental Protection Agency, South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, Georgia Department of Natural Resources) and the Department of Energy. Consensus, a key ingredient in solving many different types of “commons” problems, was aided by an outside organization, the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP). The initial role for CRESP was to offer scientific data as a basis for groups with different assumptions about risks to reach agreement on a regulatory response action. The process was an example of how credible science can be used to implement management and policies and provide a basis for consensus-building on difficult risk communication issues. The paper provides several lessons for improving the risk process from stakeholder conflicts, through risk assessment, to risk management. It also suggests that consensus-building and risk communication are continuing processes that involve assimilation of new information on contaminants and food-chain processes, state and federal law, public policy, and public response.     

A Technicoeconomic Approach for theSelection of a Site Remediation Strategy—Part B: Model Application

Different tools, such as a screening matrix or decision framework, are available to select a remediation technology to treat a contaminated site. However, unless these methods can point out the appropriate technology in regards to the decision-maker's knowledge about the contaminated site, they are less useful to evaluate both the technical effectiveness and the cost of the remediation, and to assess different remediation strategies from either future data acquisition or the use of an irreversible remediation technology. A model developed to allow such evaluations has been used to simulate the remediation of a virtual contaminated site. From this, four remediation recommendations have been made. These recommendations are guidelines for the build up of a remediation strategy that would both maximize the effectiveness of the decontamination and minimize its total cost.     

A Case Study in Applying the IUCN Regional Guidelines for National Red Lists and Justifications for their Modification

Abstract:  The World Conservation Union (IUCN) published guidelines to apply the criteria developed for global red lists at subglobal levels. So far only a few national red lists have been prepared according to these regional guidelines. We present a procedure based on the regional guidelines that was developed for the most recent red list of breeding birds in Switzerland. Special attention was given to step 2 of the IUCN regional guidelines, which consists of adapting categories according to an assessment of the extent to which extinction risk of the national population is affected by populations in neighboring countries. To avoid subjective assessments we formalized this "up- and downgrading" procedure by defining rules to answer the questions asked in the regional guidelines. Some modifications to the assessment procedure were introduced to account for the specific situation of applying it to birds as a very mobile group and Switzerland as a small country. The up- and downgrading procedure resulted in a change in category for 49 of the 195 bird species assessed. Overall, 9 species were upgraded, 21 species were downgraded by one category, and 19 species were downgraded by two categories. Formalizing step 2 allowed consistent application of the regional guidelines for all species and will make future revisions of the national red list and comparisons between different lists easier.     

Site‐Occupancy Distribution Modeling to Correct Population‐Trend Estimates Derived from Opportunistic Observations

Abstract: Species’ assessments must frequently be derived from opportunistic observations made by volunteers (i.e., citizen scientists). Interpretation of the resulting data to estimate population trends is plagued with problems, including teasing apart genuine population trends from variations in observation effort. We devised a way to correct for annual variation in effort when estimating trends in occupancy (species distribution) from faunal or floral databases of opportunistic observations. First, for all surveyed sites, detection histories (i.e., strings of detection–nondetection records) are generated. Within‐season replicate surveys provide information on the detectability of an occupied site. Detectability directly represents observation effort; hence, estimating detectablity means correcting for observation effort. Second, site‐occupancy models are applied directly to the detection‐history data set (i.e., without aggregation by site and year) to estimate detectability and species distribution (occupancy, i.e., the true proportion of sites where a species occurs). Site‐occupancy models also provide unbiased estimators of components of distributional change (i.e., colonization and extinction rates). We illustrate our method with data from a large citizen‐science project in Switzerland in which field ornithologists record opportunistic observations. We analyzed data collected on four species: the widespread Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) and Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) and the scarce Rock Thrush (Monticola saxatilis) and Wallcreeper (Tichodroma muraria). Our method requires that all observed species are recorded. Detectability was <1 and varied over the years. Simulations suggested some robustness, but we advocate recording complete species lists (checklists), rather than recording individual records of single species. The representation of observation effort with its effect on detectability provides a solution to the problem of differences in effort encountered when extracting trend information from haphazard observations. We expect our method is widely applicable for global biodiversity monitoring and modeling of species distributions.     

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.     

Deforestation and Avian Extinction on Tropical Landbridge Islands

Abstract: There are few empirical data, particularly collected simultaneously from multiple sites, on extinctions resulting from human‐driven land‐use change. Southeast Asia has the highest deforestation rate in the world, but the resulting losses of biological diversity remain poorly documented. Between November 2006 and March 2008, we conducted bird surveys on six landbridge islands in Malaysia and Indonesia. These islands were surveyed previously for birds in the early 1900s, when they were extensively forested. Our bird inventories of the islands were nearly complete, as indicated by sampling saturation curves and nonparametric true richness estimators. From zero (Pulau Malawali and Pulau Mantanani) to 15 (Pulau Bintan) diurnal resident landbird species were apparently extirpated since the early 1900s. Adding comparable but published extinction data from Singapore to our regression analyses, we found there were proportionally fewer forest bird extinctions in areas with greater remaining forest cover. Nevertheless, the statistical evidence to support this relationship was weak, owing to our unavoidably small sample size. Bird species that are restricted to the Indomalayan region, lay few eggs, are heavier, and occupy a narrower habitat breadth, were most vulnerable to extinction on Pulau Bintan. This was the only island where sufficient data existed to analyze the correlates of extinction. Forest preservation and restoration are needed on these islands to conserve the remaining forest avifauna. Our study of landbridge islands indicates that deforestation may increasingly threaten Southeast Asian biodiversity.