Motivating landowners to recruit neighbors for private land conservation

Encouraging motivated landowners to not only engage in conservation action on their own property but also to recruit others may enhance effectiveness of conservation on private lands. Landowners may only engage in such recruitment if they believe their neighbors care about the conservation issue, will positively respond to their conservation efforts, and are likely to take action for the conservation cause. We designed a series of microinterventions that can be added to community meetings to change these beliefs to encourage landowner engagement in recruitment of others. The microinterventions included neighbor discussion, public commitment making, collective goal setting, and increased observability of contributions to the conservation cause. In a field experiment, we tested whether adding microinterventions to traditional knowledge-transfer outreach meetings changed those beliefs so as to encourage landowners in Hawaii to recruit their neighbors for private lands conservation. We delivered a traditional outreach meeting about managing the invasive little fire ant (Wasmannia auropunctata) to 5 communities and a traditional outreach approach with added microinterventions to 5 other communities. Analysis of pre- and post-surveys of residents showed that compared with the traditional conservation outreach approach, the microinterventions altered a subset of beliefs that landowners had about others. These microinterventions motivated reputationally minded landowners to recruit and coordinate with other residents to control the invasive fire ant across property boundaries. Our results suggest integration of these microinterventions into existing outreach approaches will encourage some landowners to facilitate collective conservation action across property boundaries.     

The challenge of managing threatened invasive species at a continental scale

The European Union's (EU) environmental legislation establishes common measures to prevent the entry and spread of invasive non-native species and to minimize their impacts. However, species that are native to at least one member state but non-native and potentially invasive in others (NPIS) are in limbo because they are neither legally regulated at the EU level nor in most member states. We used the Communication and Information Resource Centre for Administrations, Businesses and Citizens (CIRCABC) raw data on NPIS (317 taxa) to analyze their distribution across the EU and identify which biogeographical regions are the main sources of invasions. We additionally evaluated the conservation challenge posed by NPIS that are threatened within their native ranges. We performed a pairwise analysis summarizing the number of species that are native to a given member state but non-native to another and vice versa. Although distribution patterns of NPIS varied across taxa groups, overall, southern and central EU countries were both donors and recipients of NPIS. Eastern countries were mainly a source, and western and northern countries mostly received NPIS. Around 27% of NPIS were threatened in some of their EU native ranges, which is a challenge for conservation and management because some of them have serious negative effects on European biodiversity, but hitherto remain outside the scope of the EU regulation of invasive non-native species. This highlights an unresolved paradox because efforts to manage species as invasive conflict with efforts to protect them as threatened within the same territory.     

A critical review of the precautionary approach of the IUCN impact classification for non-native taxa

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) proposes the use of the Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa to standardize the classification of introduced species (IS) based on their environmental impact. The IUCN invoked the precautionary principle (PP) via 2 rules: the impact assigned to a taxon must be the maximum recorded impact across different impact assessments, and when the main driver of environmental damage is unclear, it must be assumed to be caused by the IS. The validity of PP is conditioned on the degree of emergency that warrants urgent decisions and on the scientific evidence demonstrating the advantages of applying a preventive measure. The application of an impact classification system does not arise in the context of an emergency that requires management; it occurs before the decision-making phase. Thus, PP should not be used in early steps of the risk analysis process. The IUCN also did not provide enough scientific basis to justify the use of PP. Instead, the PP rules appear to be rooted primarily in the ethical value system underlying conservation science. Conservationists assign intrinsic value to native species by virtue of their roles and relationships within ecological and evolutionary systems and processes; thus, individuals introduced in new environments not only cease to have value because they are no longer part of that natural diversity and lack those links with the rest of the ecosystem, but they become a threat to what conservationists value most. The consequence of this belief is that all introduced taxa will have an impact at some level, suggesting that values justify the PP rules.     

A framework for allocating conservation resources among multiple threats and actions

Land managers decide how to allocate resources among multiple threats that can be addressed through multiple possible actions. Additionally, these actions vary in feasibility, effectiveness, and cost. We sought to provide a way to optimize resource allocation to address multiple threats when multiple management options are available, including mutually exclusive options. Formulating the decision as a combinatorial optimization problem, our framework takes as inputs the expected impact and cost of each threat for each action (including do nothing) and for each overall budget identifies the optimal action to take for each threat. We compared the optimal solution to an easy to calculate greedy algorithm approximation and a variety of plausible ranking schemes. We applied the framework to management of multiple introduced plant species in Australian alpine areas. We developed a model of invasion to predict the expected impact in 50 years for each species-action combination that accounted for each species’ current invasion state (absent, localized, widespread); arrival probability; spread rate; impact, if present, of each species; and management effectiveness of each species-action combination. We found that the recommended action for a threat changed with budget; there was no single optimal management action for each species; and considering more than one candidate action can substantially increase the management plan's overall efficiency. The approximate solution (solution ranked by marginal cost-effectiveness) performed well when the budget matched the cost of the prioritized actions, indicating that this approach would be effective if the budget was set as part of the prioritization process. The ranking schemes varied in performance, and achieving a close to optimal solution was not guaranteed. Global sensitivity analysis revealed a threat's expected impact and, to a lesser extent, management effectiveness were the most influential parameters, emphasizing the need to focus research and monitoring efforts on their quantification.     

Catalyzing success in community-based conservation

Efforts to devolve rights and engage Indigenous Peoples and local communities in conservation have increased the demand for evidence of the efficacy of community-based conservation (CBC) and insights into what enables its success. We examined the human well-being and environmental outcomes of a diverse set of 128 CBC projects. Over 80% of CBC projects had some positive human well-being or environmental outcomes, although just 32% achieved positive outcomes for both (i.e., combined success). We coded 57 total national-, community-, and project-level variables and controls from this set, performed random forest classification to identify the variables most important to combined success, and calculated accumulated local effects to describe their individual influence on the probability of achieving it. The best predictors of combined success were 17 variables suggestive of various recommendations and opportunities for conservation practitioners related to national contexts, community characteristics, and the implementation of various strategies and interventions informed by existing CBC frameworks. Specifically, CBC projects had higher probabilities of combined success when they occurred in national contexts supportive of local governance, confronted challenges to collective action, promoted economic diversification, and invested in various capacity-building efforts. Our results provide important insights into how to encourage greater success in CBC.     

Factors associated with preemptive conservation under the U.S. Endangered Species Act

In recent decades, there has been an increasing emphasis on proactive efforts to conserve species being considered for listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) before they are listed (i.e., preemptive conservation). These efforts, which depend on voluntary actions by public and private land managers across the species’ range, aim to conserve species while avoiding regulatory costs associated with ESA listing. We collected data for a set of social, economic, environmental, and institutional factors that we hypothesized would influence voluntary decisions to promote or inhibit preemptive conservation of species under consideration for ESA listing. We used logistic regression to estimate the association of these factors with preemptive conservation outcomes based on data for a set of species that entered the ESA listing process and were either officially listed (n = 314) or preemptively conserved (n = 73) from 1996 to 2018. Factors significantly associated with precluded listing due to preemptive conservation included high baseline conservation status, low proportion of private land across the species’ range, small total range size, exposure to specific types of threats, and species’ range extending over several states. These results highlight strategies that can help improve conservation outcomes, such as allocating resources for imperiled species earlier in the listing process, addressing specific threats, and expanding incentives and coordination mechanisms for conservation on private lands.     

Climate suitability as a predictor of conservation translocation failure

The continuing decline and loss of biodiversity has caused an increase in the use of interventionist conservation tools, such as translocation. However, many translocation attempts fail to establish viable populations, with poor release site selection often flagged as an inhibitor of success. We used species distribution models (SDMs) to predict the climate suitability of 102 release sites for amphibians, reptiles, and terrestrial insects and compared suitability predictions between successful and failed attempts. We then quantified the importance of climate suitability relative to 5 other variables frequently considered in the literature as important determinants of translocation success: number of release years, number of individuals released, life stage released, origin of the source population, and position of the release site relative to the species’ range. Probability of translocation success increased as predicted climate suitability increased and this effect was the strongest among the variables we considered, accounting for 48.3% of the variation in translocation outcome. These findings should encourage greater consideration of climate suitability when selecting release sites for conservation translocations and we advocate the use of SDMs as an effective way to do this.     

The Quagga Mussel Crisis at Lake Mead National Recreation Area,Nevada (U.S.A.)

Abstract: Parks are cornerstones of conservation; and non‐native invasive species drive extensive changes to biological diversity in parks. Knowing this, national park staff at Lake Mead National Recreation Area in the southwestern United States had a program in place for early detection of the non‐native, invasive quagga mussel (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis). Upon finding the mussel in January 2007, managers moved quickly to access funding and the best available science to implement a response. Managers considered four options—doing nothing, closing the park, restricting movement on the lakes, and educating and enforcing park visitors—and decided to focus on education and enforcing existing laws. Nonetheless, quagga spread throughout the park and soon began to appear throughout the western United States. I examined why efforts to control the expansion failed and determined the general lessons to be learned from this case. Concentrating human visitation on the lakes through land‐use zoning opened a pathway for invasion, reduced management options, and led to the rapid spread of quagga. To reconcile competing mandates to protect nature and provide recreation, zoning in parks has become a common practice worldwide. It reduces stress on some areas of a park by restricting and thus concentrating human activity in particular areas. Concentrating the human activity in one area does three things: cements pathways that repeatedly import and export vectors of non‐native invasive species; creates the disturbed area necessary to enable non‐native invasive species to gain a foothold; and, establishes a source of invasions that, without appropriate controls, can quickly spread to a park's wilderness areas.     

Effects of amusing memes on concern for unappealing species

There is limited knowledge of the mechanisms that can inspire people's concern and engagement in the protection of unpopular and unappealing species. We analyzed Polish people's interest in themed internet memes featuring the proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus) and the consequences of this interest for conservation marketing. We examined Google Trends data, used Google Search, and searched popular media materials to estimate interest in the proboscis monkey in Poland. Photos of the proboscis monkey when presented with humor in internet memes attracted as much interest as usually more popular species (e.g., koala, panda, and orangutan) used in marketing by nongovernmental organizations. Amusing internet memes spread by social media positively correlated with increasing interest in the unappealing species, such as proboscis monkey. Interest in amusing internet memes positively correlated with individuals’ decisions to donate to 6 crowdfunding actions. Thus, conservation marketing that includes amusing memes and social media may provide a worthwhile complement to traditional campaigns and are likely to influence individuals who are unaffected by the usual means.     

Addressing identity-related barriers to collaboration for conservation through self-affirmation theory and moral foundations theory

The natural resource management literature documents many reasons for pursuing collaborative processes, offering useful insights on how to manage conflict and facilitate productive deliberation in complex multistakeholder collaborative efforts. Moral foundations theory and self-affirmation theory can further help collaborative efforts mitigate conflicts caused by identity threats and the identity-protective reasoning these threats provoke. Moral foundations theory suggests an approach to increase collaboration by minimizing triggering language and helping people appreciate opposing viewpoints. Self-affirmation theory suggests a practical intervention that could be used to increase collaboration by desensitizing people to identity threats and reducing defensiveness. Taken together, these theories can contribute substantially to the understanding and practice of collaboration and conflict management for conservation.     

Metrics of progress in the understanding and management of threats to Australian birds

Although evidence-based approaches have become commonplace for determining the success of conservation measures for the management of threatened taxa, there are no standard metrics for assessing progress in research or management. We developed 5 metrics to meet this need for threatened taxa and to quantify the need for further action and effective alleviation of threats. These metrics (research need, research achievement, management need, management achievement, and percent threat reduction) can be aggregated to examine trends for an individual taxon or for threats across multiple taxa. We tested the utility of these metrics by applying them to Australian threatened birds, which appears to be the first time that progress in research and management of threats has been assessed for all threatened taxa in a faunal group at a continental scale. Some research has been conducted on nearly three-quarters of known threats to taxa, and there is a clear understanding of how to alleviate nearly half of the threats with the highest impact. Some management has been attempted on nearly half the threats. Management outcomes ranged from successful trials to complete mitigation of the threat, including for one-third of high-impact threats. Progress in both research and management tended to be greater for taxa that were monitored or occurred on oceanic islands. Predation by cats had the highest potential threat score. However, there has been some success reducing the impact of cat predation, so climate change (particularly drought), now poses the greatest threat to Australian threatened birds. Our results demonstrate the potential for the proposed metrics to encapsulate the major trends in research and management of both threats and threatened taxa and provide a basis for international comparisons of evidence-based conservation science.     

Applying a values-based decision process to facilitate comanagement of threatened species in Aotearoa New Zealand

Ko koe ki tēnā, ko ahau ki tēnai kīwai o te kete (you at that, and I at this handle of the basket). This Māori (New Zealanders of indigenous descent) saying conveys the principle of cooperation—we achieve more through working together, rather than separately. Despite decades of calls to rectify cultural imbalance in conservation, threatened species management still relies overwhelmingly on ideas from Western science and on top-down implementation. Values-based approaches to decision making can be used to integrate indigenous peoples’ values into species conservation in a more meaningful way. We used such a values-based method, structured decision making, to develop comanagement of pekapeka (Mystacina tuberculata) (short-tailed bat) and tara iti (Sternula nereis davisae) (Fairy Tern) between Māori and Pākehā (New Zealanders of European descent). We implemented this framework in a series of workshops in which facilitated discussions were used to gather expert knowledge to predict outcomes and make management recommendations. For both species, stakeholders clearly stated their values as fundamental objectives from the start, which allowed alternative strategies to be devised that naturally addressed their diverse values, including mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge and perspectives). On this shared basis, all partners willingly engaged in the process, and decisions were largely agreed to by all. Most expectations of conflicts between values of Western science and Māori culture were unfounded. Where required, positive compromises were made by jointly developing alternative strategies. The values-based process successfully taha wairua taha tangata (brought both worlds together to achieve the objective) through codeveloped recovery strategies. This approach challenges the traditional model of scientists first preparing management plans focused on biological objectives, then consulting indigenous groups for approval. We recommend values-based approaches, such as structured decision making, as powerful methods for development of comanagement conservation plans between different peoples.     

Effectiveness of management zoning designed for flagship species in protecting sympatric species

Flagship species have been used widely as umbrella species (i.e., species with large home range whose protection often provides protection for sympatric species) in the management of China's nature reserves. This conflation of flagship and umbrella species is best represented by the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) and other large, endangered mammals designated as conservation targets in site selection and planning of reserves. Few empirical studies have tested the effectiveness of flagship species as surrogates for a broader range of sympatric species. Using extensive camera-trap data, we examined the effectiveness of management zones designated to protect flagship (target) species in conserving sympatric species in 4 wildlife reserves (Gutianshan, Changqing, Laohegou, and Wolong). We tested whether the progression from peripheral to core zones was associated with an increasing habitat association for both target and sympatric species. The distribution patterns of the study species across the zones in each reserve indicated a disparity between management zones and the species’ habitat requirements. Management zone was included in the final model for all target species, and most of them had higher occurrence in core zones relative to less-protected zones, but zone was not a predictor for most of the sympatric species. When management zone was associated with the occurrence of sympatric species, threatened species generally had higher detections in core zones, whereas common species had higher detections outside of the core zone. Our results suggested that reserve planning based on flagship species does not adequately protect sympatric species due to their specialized habitat requirements. We recommend re-examining the effectiveness of management zoning and urge a multispecies and reserve-wide monitoring plan to improve protection of China's wildlife.     

Use of surrogate species to cost-effectively prioritize conservation actions

Conservation efforts often focus on umbrella species whose distributions overlap with many other flora and fauna. However, because biodiversity is affected by different threats that are spatially variable, focusing only on the geographic range overlap of species may not be sufficient in allocating the necessary actions needed to efficiently abate threats. We developed a problem-based method for prioritizing conservation actions for umbrella species that maximizes the total number of flora and fauna benefiting from management while considering threats, actions, and costs. We tested our new method by assessing the performance of the Australian federal government's umbrella prioritization list, which identifies 73 umbrella species as priorities for conservation attention. Our results show that the federal government priority list benefits only 6% of all Australia's threatened terrestrial species. This could be increased to benefit nearly half (or 46%) of all threatened terrestrial species for the same budget of AU$550 million/year if more suitable umbrella species were chosen. This results in a 7-fold increase in management efficiency. We believe nations around the world can markedly improve the selection of prioritized umbrella species for conservation action with this transparent, quantitative, and objective prioritization approach.     

Prioritizing species conservation programs based on IUCN Green Status and estimates of cost-sharing potential

Over 1 million species around the world are at risk of extinction, and conservation organizations have to decide where to invest their limited resources. Cost-effectiveness can be increased by leveraging funding opportunities and increasing collaborative partnerships to achieve shared conservation goals. We devised a structured decision-making framework to prioritize species’ conservation programs based on a cost–benefit analysis that takes collaborative opportunities into account in an examination of national and global conservation return on investment. Conservation benefit is determined by modifying the novel International Union for the Conservation of Nature Green Status for Species to provide an efficient, high-level measure that is comparable among species, even with limited information and time constraints. We applied this prioritization approach to the Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo, Canada, a nonprofit organization seeking to increase the number of species it assists with conservation translocations. We sought to identify and prioritize additional species’ programs for which conservation translocation expertise and actions could make the most impact. Estimating the likelihood of cost-sharing potential enabled total program cost to be distinguished from costs specific to the organization. Comparing a benefit-to-cost ratio on different geographic scales allowed decision makers to weigh alternative options for investing in new species’ programs in a transparent and effective manner. Our innovative analysis aligns with general conservation planning frameworks and can be adapted for any organization.     

Generation lengths of the world's birds and their implications for extinction risk

Birds have been comprehensively assessed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List more times than any other taxonomic group. However, to date, generation lengths have not been systematically estimated to scale population trends when undertaking assessments, as required by the criteria of the IUCN Red List. We compiled information from major databases of published life-history and trait data for all birds and imputed missing life-history data as a function of species traits with generalized linear mixed models. Generation lengths were derived for all species, based on our modeled values of age at first breeding, maximum longevity, and annual adult survival. The resulting generation lengths varied from 1.42 to 27.87 years (median 2.99). Most species (61%) had generation lengths <3.33 years, meaning that the period of 3 generations—over which population declines are assessed under criterion A—was <10 years, which is the value used for IUCN Red List assessments of species with short generation times. For these species, our trait-informed estimates of generation length suggested that 10 years is a robust precautionary value for threat assessment. In other cases, however, for whole families, genera, or individual species, generation length had a substantial impact on their estimated extinction risk, resulting in higher extinction risk in long-lived species than in short-lived species. Although our approach effectively addressed data gaps, generation lengths for some species may have been underestimated due to a paucity of life-history data. Overall, our results will strengthen future extinction-risk assessments and augment key databases of avian life-history and trait data.     

Using spatially explicit,time-dependent analysis to understand how social factors influence conservation outcomes

Conservation across human-dominated landscapes requires an understanding of the social and ecological factors driving outcomes. Studies that link conservation outcomes to social and ecological factors have examined temporally static patterns. However, there may be different social and ecological processes driving increases and decreases in conservation outcomes that can only be revealed through temporal analyses. Through a case study of the invasion of Falcataria moluccana in Hawaii, we examined the association of social factors with increases and decreases in invader distributions over time and space. Over 7 years, rates of invader decrease varied substantially (66–100%) relative to social factors, such as building value, whether land was privately or publically owned, and primary residence by a homeowner, whereas rates of increase varied only slightly (<0.1–3.6%) relative to such factors. These findings suggest that links between social factors and invasion in the study system may be driven more by landowners controlling existing invasive species, rather than by landowners preventing the spread of invasive species. We suggest that spatially explicit, time-dependent analyses provide a more nuanced understanding of the way social factors influence conservation outcomes. Such an understanding can help managers develop outreach programs and policies targeted at different types of landowners in human-dominated landscapes.     

Characterizing species co-occurrence patterns of imperfectly detected stream fishes to inform species reintroduction efforts

Species reintroduction efforts can improve the recovery of imperiled species, but successful implementation of this conservation strategy requires a thorough understanding of the abiotic and biotic factors influencing species viability. Species interactions are especially understudied, in particular by omitting the effect of imperfect detection on negative, neutral, or positive associations within a community. Using repeat surveys from 5 southern Ontario, Canada, Great Lakes tributaries, we quantified species co-occurrence patterns with the eastern sand darter (ESD) (Ammocrypta pellucida), listed as federally threatened, and characterized how imperfect detection during sampling can influence inference regarding these relationships. We used a probabilistic framework that included 3 approaches of increasing complexity: probabilistic co-occurrence analysis ignoring imperfect detection; single-species occupancy models with subsequent co-occurrence analysis; and 2-species occupancy models. We then used our occupancy models to predict suitable sites for potential future reintroduction efforts while considering the influence of negative species interactions. Based on the observed data, ESD showed several positive associations with co-occurring species; however, species associations differed when imperfect detection was considered. Specifically, a negative association between ESD and rosyface shiner (Notropis rubellus) was observed only after accounting for imperfect detection in the Grand River. Alternatively, positive associations in the Grand River between ESD and northern hogsucker (Hypentelium nigricans) and silver shiner (Notropis photogenis) were observed regardless of whether imperfect detection was accounted for. Our models predicted several potential reintroduction sites for ESD in formerly occupied watersheds with high levels of certainty. Overall, our results demonstrate the importance of investigating imperfect detection and species co-occurrence when planning reintroduction efforts.     

Parasites as conservation tools

Parasite success typically depends on a close relationship with one or more hosts; therefore, attributes of parasitic infection have the potential to provide indirect details of host natural history and are biologically relevant to animal conservation. Characterization of parasite infections has been useful in delineating host populations and has served as a proxy for assessment of environmental quality. In other cases, the utility of parasites is just being explored, for example, as indicators of host connectivity. Innovative studies of parasite biology can provide information to manage major conservation threats by using parasite assemblage, prevalence, or genetic data to provide insights into the host. Overexploitation, habitat loss and fragmentation, invasive species, and climate change are major threats to animal conservation, and all of these can be informed by parasites.