Conservation Businesses and Conservation Planning in a Biological Diversity Hotspot

The allocation of land to biological diversity conservation competes with other land uses and the needs of society for development, food, and extraction of natural resources. Trade‐offs between biological diversity conservation and alternative land uses are unavoidable, given the realities of limited conservation resources and the competing demands of society. We developed a conservation‐planning assessment for the South African province of KwaZulu‐Natal, which forms the central component of the Maputaland–Pondoland–Albany biological diversity hotspot. Our objective was to enhance biological diversity protection while promoting sustainable development and providing spatial guidance in the resolution of potential policy conflicts over priority areas for conservation at risk of transformation. The conservation‐planning assessment combined spatial‐distribution models for 646 conservation features, spatial economic‐return models for 28 alternative land uses, and spatial maps for 4 threats. Nature‐based tourism businesses were competitive with other land uses and could provide revenues of >US$60 million/year to local stakeholders and simultaneously help meeting conservation goals for almost half the conservation features in the planning region. Accounting for opportunity costs substantially decreased conflicts between biological diversity, agricultural use, commercial forestry, and mining. Accounting for economic benefits arising from conservation and reducing potential policy conflicts with alternative plans for development can provide opportunities for successful strategies that combine conservation and sustainable development and facilitate conservation action. Negocios de Conservación y Planificación de la Conservación en un Sitio de Importancia para la Biodiversidad     

稀有植物掌叶木生物学习性及其保护

掌叶木为我国特有残遗植物 ,仅分布在广西与贵州接壤的石灰岩地区。因人为破坏、生境特殊及自身特性影响 ,资源稀少 ,被列为国家重点保护植物。本文研究了其生态生物学特性 ,并初步探讨其致濒原因及解决方法     

The Control of Biological Invasions in the World's Oceans

Abstract: The introduction of alien, or nonindigenous, animals and plants has been identified by scientists and policy makers as a major threat to biodiversity in marine ecosystems. Although government agencies have struggled to control alien species on land and freshwater for decades with mixed success, the control of alien marine species is in its infancy. Prevention of introduction and establishment must be the first priority, but many populations of alien marine species are already well established worldwide. National and international policies leave loopholes for additional invasions to occur and provide only general guidance on how to control alien species once they are established. To address this issue, a multinational group of 25 scientists and attorneys convened in 1998 to examine options for controlling established populations of alien marine species. The discussions resulted in a framework for control of alien marine species to provide decision-making guidance to policymakers, managers, scientists, and other stakeholders. The framework consists of seven basic steps: (1) establish the nature and magnitude of the problem, (2) set objectives, (3) consider the full range of alternatives, (4) determine risk, (5) reduce risk, (6) assess benefits versus risks, and ( 7) monitor the situation. This framework can provide guidance for control efforts under the existing patchwork of national laws and can help provide a foundation for international cooperation.     

雅鲁藏布江中部地区生物多样性保护规划

由于独特的高原气候和错综复杂的地形地貌，雅鲁藏布江中部地区物种资源异常丰富，生态系统类型多样，具有很高的保护价值和利用价值。本文在该区物种资源和生态系统调查的基础上，提出了保护生物多样性的规划意见。     

When Agendas Collide: Human Welfare and Biological Conservation

Abstract:  Conservation should benefit ecosystems, nonhuman organisms, and current and future human beings. Nevertheless, tension among these goals engenders potential ethical conflicts: conservationists' true motivations may differ from the justifications they offer for their activities, and conservation projects have the potential to disempower and oppress people. We reviewed the promise and deficiencies of integrating social, economic, and biological concerns into conservation, focusing on research in ecosystem services and efforts in community-based conservation. Despite much progress, neither paradigm provides a silver bullet for conservation's most pressing problems, and both require additional thought and modification to become maximally effective. We conclude that the following strategies are needed to make conservation more effective in our human-dominated world. (1) Conservation research needs to integrate with social scholarship in a more sophisticated manner. (2) Conservation must be informed by a detailed understanding of the spatial, temporal, and social distributions of costs and benefits of conservation efforts. Strategies should reflect this understanding, particularly by equitably distributing conservation's costs. (3) We must better acknowledge the social concerns that accompany biodiversity conservation; accordingly, sometimes we must argue for conservation for biodiversity's sake, not for its direct human benefits.     

河流底泥污染及其控制与修复

水体底泥污染是世界范围内的一个环境问题。污染物通过大气沉降、废水排放、雨水淋溶与冲刷进入水体,最后沉积到底泥中并逐渐富集,使底泥受到严重污染。在河流环境中,河床沉积底泥以推移和悬浮形式输送,很大程度上导致了上覆水和沉积底泥的相互物理作用。河流有强有力的自然环境,在河流系统中趋向有利于沉积底泥的解吸作用,从而将会影响上覆水的水质。因此,在水质管理计划中,应该将已污染的沉积底泥作为一个污染源予以考虑,沉积底泥是河流污染的一个重要方面。文章根据近年来国内外对河流底泥污染的控制、处理、修复及利用的文献资料,分析了河流底泥的污染现状及主要类型,包括重金属、NP营养物质、难降解有机物和持久性有毒污染物等,指出了目前在底泥污染修复中存在的问题。针对河流底泥污染控制与修复技术,介绍了除控制外源污染物外的物理修复、化学修复和生物修复等几种主要的修复方法和技术,分析了各种方法的利弊以及适用情况。在阐述了堆肥、建材利用、低温热解、湿地及栖息地建设、修复废弃地和建设填方等利用方式后,提出具体的控制和修复应因地制宜,综合各种恢复技术及利用方式,以达到控制及修复污染的河流底泥,恢复河流生态系统之目的。     

不同森林恢复类型对土壤生物学特性的影响

比较研究了南方红壤侵蚀区4种主要森林恢复类型下土壤中有机质、微生物结构与功能以及酶活性.结果表明,不同的森林恢复类型导致了土壤生物学性状的明显差异.4种森林类型的土壤生物学性状均比长期干扰下CK的高.人工林土壤生物学性状相对比天然次生林土壤差.整合上述指标的土壤生物学肥力指数分别为:天然次生林(0.752)、油茶林(0.611)、杉木林(0.422)、湿地松林(0.439)、对照(0.124).在森林恢复初期,采用自然恢复有效地提高了土壤生物学肥力.导致天然次生林土壤生物学活性相对较高的主要因素是较高的凋落物产量和质量、较高的根系生物量、较丰富的植物种类组成、较优越的土壤生态条件和快速的植物生长.在反映土壤生物学活性的指标选择方面,培养基平均颜色变化率(AWCD)、培养基丰富度和培养基Shannon-Wiener多样性指数与反映土壤生物学活性的大部分指标具有较好的相关关系,是反映土壤生物学活性的较好指标.图3表6参68     

Biological, Conservation, and Ethical Implications of Exploiting and Controlling Wolves

The widespread claim that wolf populations can withstand 25–50% or greater annual reductions without major biological consequences is based primarily on the observation that populations often maintain their size from year to year as harvest or control continues or recover within a few years afterward. This emphasis on numerical status overlooks the likelihood of major, lingering impacts on the size, number, stability, and persistence of family-group social units, on reproductive, hunting, and territorial behavior, on the role of learning and related traditions, on within- and between-group patterns of genetic variation, and on overall mortality rates. The tendency of biologists and agencies in northern North America to promote wolf harvests that are four to eight times greater than ungulate harvests, in accord with the wolf versus ungulate difference in reproductive rates but contradictory to a broad array of differences in social organization and related behavior, is reason enough to question the logic of this prevailing management view. True sustained-yield management requires more emphasis on qualitative biological features to determine the extent to which wolves and other species with evolutionary histories as predators rather than as prey should be harvested. Most recent government-sponsored wolf control programs and proposals, including sterilization, relocation, and "redirected" killing, have been based on questionable claims about ungulate or livestock problems and have not adequately considered potential biological costs (especially to the target wolf populations), benefits, or management alternatives. The high sentience of wolves justifies overlapping biological-ethical concerns about such programs and especially about the heavy, indiscriminate, deceptively reported public hunting and trapping of wolves that is currently permitted throughout most of Alaska (U.S.A.)—including in national parks—and elsewhere.     

Integrating Biological and Social Values When Prioritizing Places for Biodiversity Conservation

The consideration of information on social values in conjunction with biological data is critical for achieving both socially acceptable and scientifically defensible conservation planning outcomes. However, the influence of social values on spatial conservation priorities has received limited attention and is poorly understood. We present an approach that incorporates quantitative data on social values for conservation and social preferences for development into spatial conservation planning. We undertook a public participation GIS survey to spatially represent social values and development preferences and used species distribution models for 7 threatened fauna species to represent biological values. These spatially explicit data were simultaneously included in the conservation planning software Zonation to examine how conservation priorities changed with the inclusion of social data. Integrating spatially explicit information about social values and development preferences with biological data produced prioritizations that differed spatially from the solution based on only biological data. However, the integrated solutions protected a similar proportion of the species’ distributions, indicating that Zonation effectively combined the biological and social data to produce socially feasible conservation solutions of approximately equivalent biological value. We were able to identify areas of the landscape where synergies and conflicts between different value sets are likely to occur. Identification of these synergies and conflicts will allow decision makers to target communication strategies to specific areas and ensure effective community engagement and positive conservation outcomes. Integración de Valores Biológicos y Sociales al Priorizar Sitios para la Conservación de la Biodiversidad     

Integrating Paleobiology,Archeology, and History to Inform Biological Conservation

The search for novel approaches to establishing ecological baselines (reference conditions) is constrained by the fact that most ecological studies span the past few decades, at most, and investigate ecosystems that have been substantially altered by human activities for decades, centuries, or more. Paleobiology, archeology, and history provide historical ecological context for biological conservation, remediation, and restoration. We argue that linking historical ecology explicitly with conservation can help unify related disciplines of conservation paleobiology, conservation archeobiology, and environmental history. Differences in the spatial and temporal resolution and extent (scale) of prehistoric, historic, and modern ecological data remain obstacles to integrating historical ecology and conservation biology, but the prolonged temporal extents of historical ecological data can help establish more complete baselines for restoration, document a historical range of ecological variability, and assist in determining desired future conditions. We used the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) fishery of the Chesapeake Bay (U.S.A.) to demonstrate the utility of historical ecological data for elucidating oyster conservation and the need for an approach to conservation that transcends disciplinary boundaries. Historical ecological studies from the Chesapeake have documented dramatic declines (as much as 99%) in oyster abundance since the early to mid‐1800s, changes in oyster size in response to different nutrient levels from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, and substantial reductions in oyster accretion rates (from 10 mm/year to effectively 0 mm/year) from the Late Holocene to modern times. Better integration of different historical ecological data sets and increased collaboration between paleobiologists, geologists, archeologists, environmental historians, and ecologists to create standardized research designs and methodologies will help unify prehistoric, historic, and modern time perspectives on biological conservation. Integración de Paleobiología, Arqueología e Historia para Informar a la Biología de la Conservación     

On the Compatibility of a Conservation Ethic with Biological Science

Abstract:  If value entails or implies purpose, it follows that natural objects (e.g., endangered species) lack value and thus cannot be worth protecting except for a purpose they may serve—either the end for which God created the world (according to natural theology) or some use to which human beings may put them (according to a consequentialist or utilitarian ethic). If value requires purpose, the refutation of natural theology after Darwin implies that humanity has no obligation to respect or preserve the natural world except insofar as it is economically efficient to do so. Drawing on the distinction between explanation and communication found in Calvinist theology, I argue that value does not entail purpose. The expressive, aesthetic, or communicative aspects of nature may be valuable or endow natural objects with value apart from any use or purpose these objects may serve. The crucial distinction between explanation and communication—one scientific, the other aesthetic—offers a rationale for an obligation to protect the natural world that may appeal to members of faith communities and to biologists and other scientists. This approach also helps resolve the "lurking inconsistency" some scholars see in the relationship between a deterministic biological science and a conservationist ethic.