Patterns of Aquatic Species Imperilment in the Southern Appalachians: An Evaluation of Regional Databases

/ For regional analyses of species imperilment patterns, data on species distributions are available from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and from the state heritage programs. We compared these two different databases as sources of best available information for regional analyses of patterns of aquatic species imperilment for 132 counties in the southern Appalachians and examined patterns produced from the databases. The heritage program database contained information about a greater number of imperiled species because species need not be federally listed as threatened or endangered to be included in this database. In the southern Appalachians, about half of imperiled molluscs and about one-fourth of imperiled fish were listed as threatened or endangered; much smaller proportions of other taxonomic groups were federally listed. Most threatened and endangered species appeared on both lists, but for about 40% of the species inconsistencies exist, notably a lack of recent records in the heritage program dataset. Numbers of species in each county were significantly different between the two datasets for Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia, where the largest number of threatened and endangered species reside. Nevertheless, some counties always appeared as centers of imperilment, and the general spatial patterns of imperilment were similar.     

Company engagement with supply chains to protect biodiversity and rare,threatened, and endangered species

Future global megatrends project a population increase of 2 billion people between 2019 and 2050 and at least 1–2 billion people added to the global middle class between 2016 and 2030. In addition, 68% of the world's population is projected to be living in urban areas by 2050. With these projected large population increases and shifts, demand for food, water, and energy is projected to grow by approximately 35, 40, and 50%, respectively, between 2010 and 2030. In addition, between 1970 and 2014 there was an estimated 60% reduction in the number of wildlife in the world and an estimated net loss of 2.9 billion birds, or 29%, in North America between 1970 and 2018. Loss of species populations and number of species is interconnected with reduced health of biodiversity and ecosystems. Human activity has been the main catalyst for these substantial declines primarily through impacts on habitats. These losses are accelerating. Since a company's supply chain environmental impacts are often as great or greater than its own direct environmental impacts, it may be prudent for companies to engage with their supply chains to protect and enhance habitats and biodiversity and protect rare, threatened, and endangered species. As one example, companies may have opportunities and strategic reasons to include requirements in their supplier codes of conduct and supplier standards for suppliers to protect biodiversity and rare, threatened, and endangered species, as well as additional requirements to expand or enhance habitats and ecosystems to increase biodiversity. This article follows one pathway that companies could pursue further and with greater speed—to engage with their supply chains to strengthen supplier codes of conduct to protect biodiversity and rare, threatened, and endangered species. The importance of forests, private land, and landscape partnerships is discussed as means to protect much more of the planet's biodiversity and rare, threatened, and endangered species. Lastly, the article identifies examples of opportunities for companies to more formally incorporate biodiversity into their business, supply chain, and sustainability strategies.     

九岭幕阜山濒危植物资源的分布及其保护

本文论述了九岭幕阜山珍稀濒危植物种质资源的地理分布、区系结构及其保护现状．经多年调查研究已知本区分布有第一批国家重点保护植物３２种，它们具有物种多样性、分布局限性、生态脆弱性、区系复杂性、成分待有性和起源古老性等特点．并在分析珍稀物种濒危原因的基础上，提出了珍稀濒危植物种质资源的保护对策．     

Sea-level rise: Destruction of threatened and endangered species habitat in South Carolina

Concern for the environment has increased over the past century, and the US Congress has responded to this concern by passing legislation designed to protect the nation’s ecological biodiversity. This legislation, culminating with the Endangered Species Act of 1973, has been instrumental in defining methods for identifying and protecting endangered or threatened species and their habitats. Current legislation, however, assumes that the range of a protected species will stay constant over time. This assumption may no longer be valid, as the unprecedented increase in the number and concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has the potential to cause a global warming of 1.0–4.5°C and a sea-level rise (SLR) of 31–150 cm by the year 2100. Changes in climate of this magnitude are capable of causing shifts in the population structure and range of most animal species. This article examines the effects that SLR may have on the habitats of endangered and threatened species at three scales. At the regional scale 52 endangered or threatened plant and animal species were found to reside within 3 m of mean sea level in the coastal stages of the US Southeast. At the state level, the habitats of nine endangered or threatened animals that may be at risk from future SLR were identified. At the local level, a microscale analysis was conducted in the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, South Carolina, USA, on the adverse effects that SLR may have on the habitats of the American alligator, brown pelican, loggerhead sea turtle, and wood stork. Prepared by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA; managed by Martin Marietta Energy Systems. Inc. for the US Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-84OR21400.     

US army land condition-trend analysis (LCTA) program

The US Army Land Condition-Trend Analysis (LCTA) program is a standardized method of data collection, analysis, and reporting designed to meet multiple goals and objectives. The method utilizes vascular plant inventories, permanent field plot data, and wildlife inventories. Vascular plant inventories are used for environmental documentation, training of personnel, species identification during LCTA implementation, and as a survey for state and federal endangered or threatened species. The permanent field plot data documents the vegetational, edaphic, topographic, and disturbance characteristics of the installation. Inventory plots are allocated in a stratified random fashion across the installation utilizing a geographic information system that integrates satellite imagery and soil survey information. Ground cover, canopy cover, woody plant density, slope length, slope gradient, soil information, and disturbance data are collected at each plot. Plot data are used to: (1) describe plant communities, (2) characterize wildlife and threatened and endangered species habitat, (3) document amount and kind of military and nonmilitary disturbance, (4) determine the impact of military training on vegetation and soil resources, (5) estimate soil erosion potential, (6) classify land as to the kind and amount of use it can support, (7) determine allowable use estimates for tracked vehicle training, (8) document concealment resources, (9) identify lands that require restoration and evaluate the effectiveness of restorative techniques, and (10) evaluate potential acquisition property. Wildlife inventories survey small and midsize mammals, birds, bats, amphibians, and reptiles. Data from these surveys can be used for environmental documentation, to identify state and federal endangered and threatened species, and to evaluate the impact of military activities on wildlife populations. Short- and long-term monitoring of permanent field plots is used to evaluate and adjust land management decisions.     

Protecting the piping plover under section 7 of the endangered species act

Section 7(a)(2) of the Endangered Species Act directs federal agencies to ensure that their actions do not jeopardize the continued existence of endangered and threatened species. The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) issues jeopardy or nonjeopardy biological opinions on proposed federal actions that affect endangered and threatened species. We summarize several biological opinions issued by the USFWS to protect the threatened piping plover (Charadrius melodus). These opinions address federal actions involving hundreds of piping plovers on the Missouri River system and a few piping plover pairs on short stretches of Atlantic coast beach. Some of these opinions are decisive, but most allow the proposed action to proceed conditional upon a lengthy set of reasonable and prudent alternatives to protect the piping plover. These conditions may prove difficult to track and will add to the workload of the USFWS.     

The Effectiveness of Plant Conservation: A Case Study of Opole Province,Southwest Poland

This work presents a method of assessing plant conservation effectiveness in a given region, which takes into account the legal, species-centered protection, ecosystem conservation, ex situ conservation, restorations and translocations, reintroductions, and monitoring. In order to illustrate the conservation effectiveness, both legally protected species of plants and threatened species were examined. The conservation effectiveness of legally protected species was estimated to have a low value of 23.328 points (pts) according to the methods of calculation. Habitat conservation is insufficient for these species. Almost 40% of all localities are deprived of any ecosystem protection. The conservation effectiveness of the threatened group of species scored a very low value of 13.46 pts. The major reason for this result is a very low level of species protection. Less than 30% of the threatened taxa are under legal preservation and some species from the Orobanche and Cuscuta genera are treated as harmful organisms, which it is obligatory to control within the province territory. Almost 30% of all localities of threatened species are deprived of any ecosystem protection and only 10% lie inside nature reserves. It is suggested that the conclusion of this investigation be used in the preparation and realization of the regional floristic diversity preservation strategy.Published online     

Threatened and Endangered Species: At What Cost? The Corps of Engineers Looks at Expenditures and Priorities

Current political conditions, primarily budgetary uncertainty, and the related reluctance to make funding commitments for future generations, have raised questions about the costs of conservation and environmental protection that have not previously been asked. As Federal investments are scrutinized and budgets become ever more constrained, the costs associated with environmental requirements could begin to be of greater importance and to influence decisions on Federal projects. In response to concerns about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) spending under the Endangered Species Act (P.L. 93-205) (ESA), a limited investigation was performed to determine the accuracy of reported Corps expenditures. The investigation showed that, for particular groups of species, actual conservation costs for threatened and endangered species may be twice the amounts previously reported in the annual ESA expenditure reporting to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In light of this finding, the Corps has sought a means to provide more accurate and consistent reporting of expenditures for addressing threatened and endangered species. A Species Costs Template (template) has been developed to identify the types and magnitude of costs related to the ESA and to counteract the impediments (legal, institutional, and practical) to underreporting costs. The template will be used by the Corps for reporting ESA costs beginning with Fiscal Year 2005 (FY05) (reported in January 2006). Five broad categories of expenditures (effects determination costs, ESA protection and conservation costs, equipment costs, opportunity costs, and other species costs) are identified by the template.     

Conservation and management of the American crocodile

The American crocodile is a rare and endangered species, the range of which has contracted to disjunct locations such as Hispaniola, Jamaica, Cuba, Panama, and southern Florida. In an attempt to determine what factors might be limiting population growth, an extensive collaborative research program was conducted in 1978–82 in southern Florida. Limiting factors explicitly studied included climate, hurricanes, population dispersion, nesting habitat, fertility, predation, nest chamber environment, juvenile survivorship, artificial mortality, disturbance, and environmental contamination. No single natural factor limits the population, although in concert various factors result in low adult recruitment rates. Such natural limitations explain the natural rarity of this tropical species at the temperate limits of its range. Two artificial sources of mortality are death of adults on roads and the flooding of nests by high groundwater tables. These sources of mortality are potentially controllable by the appropriate management agencies. Active management, by such means as protection of individuals, habitat preservation and enhancement, nest site protection, and captive breeding, is also appropriate for assuring the survival of a rare species. The American crocodile has survived in southern Florida in face of extensive human occupancy of parts of its former nesting habitat, demonstrating the resilience of a threatened species. This case history illustrates the efficacy of conducting research aimed at testing specific management hypotheses, the importance of considering biographical constraints limiting population status in peripheral populations, the need for active management of rare species, and the role of multiple reserves in a conservation and management strategy.     

CHARACTERIZATION OF HYDROLOGIC CONDITIONS TO SUPPORT PLATTE RIVER SPECIES RECOVERY EFFORTS1

ABSTRACT: Efforts are under way to recover habitat for several threatened and endangered species in and along the Platte River in central Nebraska. A proposed recovery program for these species requires a means of characterizing “wet” versus “normal” versus “dry” hydrologic conditions in order to set corresponding Platte River instream flow targets. Methods of characterizing hydrologic conditions in real time were investigated for this purpose. Initially, 10 watershed variables were identified as potentially valuable indicators of hydrologic conditions. Ultimately, six multiple linear regression equations were developed for six periods of the year using a subset of these variables expressed as frequencies of nonexceedence. The adequacy of these equations for characterizing conditions was assessed by evaluating their historic correlation to subsequent flow in the central Platte River (1947–1994). These equations explained 54 to 82 percent of variability in the observed flow exceedences in the validation datasets, depending upon the period of year evaluated. These equations will provide initial criteria for setting applicable flow targets to determine, in real time, whether water regulation projects associated with the species recovery effort can divert or store flows without conflicting with recovery objectives.     

By-Catch Impacts in Fisheries: Utilizing the IUCN Red List Categories for Enhanced Product Level Assessment in Seafood LCAs

Overexploitation of fish stocks causes concern not only to fisheries managers and conservation biologists, but also engages seafood consumers; more integrated product perspectives would be useful. This could be provided by life cycle assessment (LCA); however, further complements of present LCA methodology are needed to assess seafood production, one being by-catch impacts. We studied the scientific rationale behind using the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species? for assessment of impacts relating to fish species’ vulnerability. For this purpose, the current Red List status of marine fish in Sweden was compared to the advice given in fisheries as well as key life history traits known to indicate sensitivity to high fishing pressure. Further, we quantified the amount of threatened fish (vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered) that was discarded in demersal trawl fisheries on the Swedish west coast. The results showed that not only did the national Red List of marine fish have a high consistency with advice given in fisheries and indices of vulnerability, the different fishing practices studied were also found to have vastly different amounts of threatened fish discarded per kilo landing. The suggested approach is therefore promising as a carrier of aggregated information on the extent to which seafood production interferes with conservation priorities, in particular for species lacking adequate stock assessment. To enable extensive product comparisons, it is important to increase coverage of fish species by the global IUCN Red List, and to reconsider the appropriate assessment unit (species or stocks) in order to avoid false alarms.     

Arthropods and Multispecies Habitat Conservation Plans: Are We Missing Something?

Arthropods constitute well over one-half of the species of higher life on the planet and are the dominant terrestrial life form on the planet. Unfortunately, very little is known about most arthropod species. There are an estimated 163,487 species of insects in North America, of which only 66% are taxonomically known. Similarly, there are an estimated 35,514 species of North American arachnids, of which only 9316 are described; over 73% have yet to be discovered and described. Without the basic taxonomic and life history knowledge for most of the terrestrial species (i.e., arthropods) of North American ecosystems, land managers are faced with the challenge of developing, selecting, and managing biotic reserves and habitat conservation plans for which they know very little about the majority of organisms found within such reserves or covered by such plans. With respect to arthropods, this challenge includes taking into account poorly described species being used as political tools to stop development (as opposed to actually protecting a truly endangered species), thus confounding the habitat conservation planning process and ensuring that "surprises" in the form of new listings will occur within any multispecies habitat plan. Finally, using various scenarios and assumptions, estimates of the true number of endangered insects and arachnids are provided to illustrate the fact that the suspected number of threatened, endangered, and extinct species is probably low by at least an order of magnitude.     

Endangered species: Deciding which species to save

Many species face extinction because preservation organizations do not have the resources to mount all of the interventions that are needed. Decision analysis provides techniques that can help managers of these organizations to make judgments about which species they will attempt to rescue. A formal analysis of the choices available to the US Fish and Wildlife Services' endangered species program with regard toIsotria medeoloides illustrates how the difficulties of making preservation decisions can be lessened.I. medeoloides is perhaps the rarest orchid in the United States. Little is known of the species' biology and less about effective management. Yet unless a preservation effort is mounted, the species will continue to be threatened by habitat destruction and botanical collecting. The analysis employs formal probabalistic techniques to weigh the utility of possible intervention strategies, that is, their likelihood of achieving different amounts of increase in the longevity of the species, and to balance these gains against their costs. If similar decision analyses are performed on other endangered species, the technique can be used to choose among them, as well as among strategies for individual species.     

A Procedure for Performing Population-Level Ecological Risk Assessments

/ In 1997, Oregon enacted amendments to its state hazardous waste site cleanup law which emphasize risk-based remedial action decisions. In a departure from US EPA practice, the amended statute and associated rules require that protection of ecological receptors occur at the population level for all plants and animals not listed as threatened or endangered. By rule, the acceptable risklevel for populations of ecological receptors is a 10% or less chance that 20% or more of the total local population would receive an exposure greater than the toxicity reference value for a hazardous substance. This paper describes a practical procedure for performing population-level ecological risk assessments using a combination of relatively simple techniques. The procedure involves: (1) establishing a distribution of exposures and a contaminant-specific toxicity reference value, either as a point value or a distribution, for an individual receptor, (2) estimating the abundance of these receptors within their local populations, (3) estimating the probability of an individual receptor experiencing an exposure in excess of the toxicity reference value, (4) estimating the number of individual receptors in the local population likely to experience an exposure above the toxicity reference value greater than 10% of the time, and (5) determining whether this number is greater than 20% of the total local population.     

Conservation and Management of the Endangered Fiji Sago Palm, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Metroxylon vitiense</Emphasis>, in Fiji

Recovery planning is a key component of many threatened species conservation initiatives and can be a powerful awareness raising tool. One of the largest impediments to conservation efforts in the Pacific region however, is the lack of ecological data and its subsequent effects on the development of feasible and useful recovery plans for threatened species. Without these plans, the understaffed, underfunded and often technically ill-equipped conservation agencies face huge difficulties in planning, prioritizing and conducting conservation activities to adequately protect biodiversity. The Fiji sago palm, Metroxylon vitiense, is an endemic endangered palm species whose survival is heavily dependent on a feasible species recovery plan. It is geographically restricted and threatened by habitat destruction and overexploitation for thatch for the tourism industry and palm heart consumption by local consumers. Despite its threatened status, M. vitiense is not currently protected by national or international legislation. Recent field surveys and extensive stakeholder consultation have resulted in the production of a species recovery plan highlighting the importance of the species and advocating sustainable harvesting rather than complete bans to promote conservation. This article summarizes the recovery plan and its current effects on the status of M. vitiense in Fiji. We also discuss the role of different stakeholders in the conservation of M. vitiense, including the absence of significant behavioral changes by the largest consumer - the tourism industry, and the importance of recovery plans for biodiversity conservation in the Pacific.     

Threatened Species Conservation in New South Wales,Australia: A Review of the Value of the Eight-part Test

The Threatened Species Conservation (TSC) Act, introduced in 1995, represents a significant attempt to conserve and restore biodiversity within the state of New South Wales, Australia. This Act aims to integrate land use planning and environmental impact assessment legislation by placing increased responsibility on applicants, proponents, consent and determining authorities, and the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service, in the fields of environmental planning, development control and biodiversity conservation. The TSC Act introduced a set of eight factors which have to be considered by decision makers in determining whether a development is likely to have a significant effect upon threatened species, populations, ecological communities or their habitats (the threatened biota) as listed in the Act. These eight factors are commonly referred to as the 'eight-part test'. Fifty environmental impact statements (EISs) containing eight-part tests for development proposals were obtained. The adequacy of scoping and survey exercises, the number of species identified and afforded the eight-part test, and the actual responses to each of the eight factors contained within the test, using a series of criteria, were ascertained. Sixty per cent provided an adequate scoping exercise; 6% of the surveys for flora species, and none for fauna species carried out, were adequate in terms of identifying all threatened species on the development site. Seven hundred and thirty-seven species listed in the Act were identified, 36% of which were omitted from the eight-part test procedure. The eight sections of the eight-part test were completed to a varying degree of adequacy, with none of the EISs completing all eight sections satisfactorily. Both section 4 (regarding the impacts of a development in terms of habitat isolation) and section 8 (regarding the distribution of species potentially affected by a development) were inadequately completed in all 50 EISs.     

A Framework for Developing Management Goals for Species at Risk with Examples from Military Installations in the United States

A decision framework for setting management goals for species at risk is presented. Species at risk are those whose potential future rarity is of concern. Listing these species as threatened or endangered could potentially result in significant restrictions to activities in resource management areas in order to maintain those species. The decision framework, designed to foster proactive management, has nine steps: identify species at risk on and near the management area, describe available information and potential information gaps for each species, determine the potential distribution of species and their habitat, select metrics for describing species status, assess the status of local population or metapopulation, conduct threat assessment, set and prioritize management goals, develop species management plans, and develop criteria for ending special species management where possible. This framework will aid resource managers in setting management goals that minimally impact human activities while reducing the likelihood that species at risk will become rare in the near future. The management areas in many of the examples are United States (US) military installations, which are concerned about potential restrictions to military training capacity if species at risk become regulated under the US Endangered Species Act. The benefits of the proactive management set forth in this formal decision framework are that it is impartial, provides a clear procedure, calls for identification of causal relationships that may not be obvious, provides a way to target the most urgent needs, reduces costs, enhances public confidence, and, most importantly, decreases the chance of species becoming more rare.     

“Bats,snakes and spiders,Oh my!” How aesthetic and negativistic attitudes,and other concepts predict support for species protection

This research investigates whether species are perceived differently based on aesthetic and negativistic attitudes, and whether these and other attitudes, naturalistic activities, and gender predict support for the protection of threatened species. 228 undergraduate students completed a survey in which they rated pictures of 10 endangered species on aesthetic and negativistic attitudes, and support for protection. Findings showed that the two-striped garter snake, Ozark big-eared bat, and dolloff cave spider were conceptualized differently than other species, which may be the result of “irrational” fears linked to animal phobias, culture, and emotional reactions to pictures. The regression results support the common belief that aesthetics is an important determinant in perceptions of endangered species and that the importance of negativistic attitudes may be waning. Moralistic worldviews and attitudes toward landowner rights and the Endangered Species Act were significantly related to support for governmental protection of species. Surprisingly, naturalistic activities and gender were not significantly associated with support for governmental protection of species. In general, the results were consistent across both models. However, the amount of variance explained by aesthetic and negativistic attitudes was 23 percent higher in the other species models than in the bat, snake, and spider models.     

Predicting the Impacts of Future Sea-Level Rise on an Endangered Lagomorph

Human-induced global climate change presents a unique and difficult challenge to the conservation of biodiversity. Despite increasing attention on global climate change, few studies have assessed the projected impacts of sea-level rise to threatened and endangered species. Therefore, we estimated the impacts of rising sea levels on the endangered Lower Keys marsh rabbit (Sylvilagus palustris hefneri) across its geographic distribution under scenarios of current conditions, low (0.3-m), medium (0.6-m), and high (0.9-m) sea-level rise. We also investigated the impacts of allowing vegetation to migrate upslope and not allowing migration and of two land-use planning decisions (protection and abandonment of human-dominated areas). Not surprisingly, under all simulations we found a general trend of decreasing total potential LKMR habitat with increasing sea-level rise. Not allowing migration and protecting human-dominated areas both tended to decrease potential LKMR habitat compared with allowing migration and abandoning human-dominated areas. In conclusion, conservation strategies at multiple scales need to be implemented in order to reduce the impact of global climate change on biodiversity and endangered species. At the regional level, managers must consider land-use planning needs that take into account the needs of both humans and biodiversity. Finally, at the local scale those agencies that are in charge of endangered species conservation and ecosystem management need to rethink static approaches to conservation or else stand by and watch ecosystems degrade and species go extinct. This can be accomplished by bioclimatic reserve systems where climatically underrepresented areas are included in conservation planning along with the standard concerns of threat, opportunity, connectivity, and viability.