Adaptive Comanagement of a Marine Protected Area Network in Fiji

Adaptive management of natural resources is an iterative process of decision making whereby management strategies are progressively changed or adjusted in response to new information. Despite an increasing focus on the need for adaptive conservation strategies, there remain few applied examples. We describe the 9‐year process of adaptive comanagement of a marine protected area network in Kubulau District, Fiji. In 2011, a review of protected area boundaries and management rules was motivated by the need to enhance management effectiveness and the desire to improve resilience to climate change. Through a series of consultations, with the Wildlife Conservation Society providing scientific input to community decision making, the network of marine protected areas was reconfigured so as to maximize resilience and compliance. Factors identified as contributing to this outcome include well‐defined resource‐access rights; community respect for a flexible system of customary governance; long‐term commitment and presence of comanagement partners; supportive policy environment for comanagement; synthesis of traditional management approaches with systematic monitoring; and district‐wide coordination, which provided a broader spatial context for adaptive‐management decision making. Co‐Manejo Adaptativo de una Red de Áreas Marinas Protegidas en Fiyi     

The importance of tangible and intangible factors in human–carnivore coexistence

Conflict with humans is one of the major threats facing the world's remaining large carnivore populations, and understanding human attitudes is key to improving coexistence. We surveyed people living near Hwange National Park about their attitudes toward coexisting with lions. We used ordinal regression models with the results of the survey to investigate the importance of a range of tangible and intangible factors on attitudes. The variables investigated included the costs and benefits of wildlife presence, emotion, culture, religion, vulnerability, risk perception, notions of responsibility, and personal value orientations. This was for the purpose of effectively tailoring conservation efforts but also for ethical policy making. Intangible factors (e.g., fear and ecocentric values) were as important as, if not more important than, tangible factors (such as livestock losses) for understanding attitudes, based on the effect sizes of these variables. The degree to which participants’ fear of lions interfered with their daily activities was the most influential variable. The degree to which benefits accrue to households from the nearby protected area was also highly influential, as was number of livestock lost, number of dependents, ecocentric value orientation, and participation in conflict mitigation programs. Contrary to what is often assumed, metrics of livestock loss did not dominate attitudes to coexistence with lions. Furthermore, we found that socioeconomic variables may appear important when studied in isolation, but their effect may disappear when controlling for variables related to beliefs, perceptions, and past experiences. This raises questions about the widespread reliance on socioeconomic variables in the field of human–wildlife conflict and coexistence. To facilitate coexistence with large carnivores, we recommend measures that reduce fear (through education and through protective measures that reduce the need to be fearful), reduction of livestock losses, and ensuring local communities benefit from conservation. Ecocentric values also emerged as influential, highlighting the need to develop conservation initiatives tailored to local values.     

Reduced complexity models for regional aquatic habitat suitability assessment

Generalizable methods that identify suitable aquatic habitat across large river basins and regions are needed to inform resource management. Habitat suitability models intersect environmental variables to predict species occurrence, but are often data intensive and thus are typically developed at small spatial scales. This study estimated mean monthly aquatic habitat suitability throughout Utah (USA) for Bonneville Cutthroat Trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii utah) and Bluehead Sucker (Catostomus discobolus) with publicly available, geospatial datasets. We evaluated 15 habitat suitability models using unique combinations of percent of mean annual discharge, velocity, gradient, and stream temperature. Environmental variables were validated with observed conditions and species presence observations to verify habitat suitability estimates. Stream temperature, gradient, and discharge best predicted Bonneville Cutthroat Trout presence, and gradient and discharge best predicted Bluehead Sucker presence. Simple aquatic habitat suitability models outperformed models that used only streamflow to estimate habitat for both species, and are useful for conservation planning and water resources decision-making. This modeling approach could enable resource managers to prioritize stream restoration across vast regions within their management domain, and is potentially compatible with water management modeling to improve ecological objectives in management models.     

Exploring the emergence of a tipping point for conservation with increased recognition of social considerations

Despite a common understanding of the harmful impacts of Western conservation models that separate people from nature, widespread progress toward incorporating socioeconomic, political, cultural, and spiritual considerations in conservation practice is lacking. For some, the concept of nature-based solutions (NbS) is seen as an interdisciplinary and holistic pathway to better integrate human well-being in conservation. We examined how conservation practitioners in the United States view NbS and how social considerations are or are not incorporated in conservation adaptation projects. We interviewed 28 individuals working on 15 different such projects associated with the Wildlife Conservation Society's Climate Adaptation Fund. We completed 2 rounds of iterative coding in NVivo 12.6.1 to identify in the full text of all interview responses an a priori set of themes related to our research questions and emergent themes. Many respondents saw this moment as a tipping point for the field (one in which the perceived values of social considerations are increasing in conservation practice) (76%) and that social justice concerns and the need to overcome racist and colonial roots of Western conservation have risen to the forefront. Respondents also tentatively agreed that NbS in conservation could support social and ecological outcomes for conservation, but that it was far from guaranteed. Despite individual intention and awareness among practitioners to incorporate social considerations in conservation practice, structural barriers, including limited funding and inflexible grant structures, continue to constrain systemic change. Ultimately, systemic changes that address power and justice in policy and practice are required to leverage this moment to more fully address social considerations in conservation.     

Reserve design to optimize functional connectivity and animal density

Ecological distance-based spatial capture–recapture models (SCR) are a promising approach for simultaneously estimating animal density and connectivity, both of which affect spatial population processes and ultimately species persistence. We explored how SCR models can be integrated into reserve-design frameworks that explicitly acknowledge both the spatial distribution of individuals and their space use resulting from landscape structure. We formulated the design of wildlife reserves as a budget-constrained optimization problem and conducted a simulation to explore 3 different SCR-informed optimization objectives that prioritized different conservation goals by maximizing the number of protected individuals, reserve connectivity, and density-weighted connectivity. We also studied the effect on our 3 objectives of enforcing that the space-use requirements of individuals be met by the reserve for individuals to be considered conserved (referred to as home-range constraints). Maximizing local population density resulted in fragmented reserves that would likely not aid long-term population persistence, and maximizing the connectivity objective yielded reserves that protected the fewest individuals. However, maximizing density-weighted connectivity or preemptively imposing home-range constraints on reserve design yielded reserves of largely spatially compact sets of parcels covering high-density areas in the landscape with high functional connectivity between them. Our results quantify the extent to which reserve design is constrained by individual home-range requirements and highlight that accounting for individual space use in the objective and constraints can help in the design of reserves that balance abundance and connectivity in a biologically relevant manner.     

Devising Appropriate Policies and Instruments in Support of Private Conservation Areas: Lessons Learned from the Klein Karoo,South Africa

Abstract: The amount of privately conserved land is increasing worldwide. The potential of these areas to contribute to the global conservation of biodiversity is significant, given that statutory protected areas alone will not suffice. Nevertheless, there is still inadequate support for private conservation areas, and further research on appropriate, flexible, and generally applicable incentive measures is necessary. We conducted 25 semistructured interviews with the owners of private conservation areas in the Little Karoo, South Africa, to examine landowner opinions of existing conservation policies and their relationships with the local conservation authority. We also assessed landowner preferences regarding conservation incentive measures. Landowners doubted the conservation authority's capacity to implement its stewardship program and were also discouraged by the bureaucracy of the program. The conservation authority was often viewed negatively, except where landowners had experienced personal contact from conservation staff or where strong social capital had formed among landowners. Landowners did not desire financial rewards for their conservation efforts, but sought recognition of their stewardship role and greater involvement from the conservation authority through personal contact. We conclude that conservation policies for private lands could benefit from the provision of extension services to landowners, promotion of formation of groups of landowners and other stakeholders, and public acknowledgment of the contributions private conservation areas make.     

Consistent Ecological Selectivity through Time in Pacific Island Avian Extinctions

Abstract: Understanding the ecological mechanisms that lead to extinction is a central goal of conservation. Can understanding ancient avian extinctions help to predict extinction risk in modern birds? I used classification trees trained on both paleoecological and historical data from islands across the Pacific to determine the ecological traits associated with extinction risk. Intrinsic traits, including endemism, large body size, and certain feeding guilds, were tightly linked with avian extinction over the past 3500 years. Species ecology and phylogeny were better predictors of extinction risk through time than extrinsic or abiotic factors. Although human impacts on birds and their habitats have changed over time, modern endangered birds share many of the same ecological characteristics as victims of previous extinction waves. My use of detailed predictions of extinction risk to identify species potentially in need of conservation attention demonstrates the utility of paleoecological knowledge for modern conservation biology.     

Habitat-tree protection concepts over 200 years

The protection and sustainable management of habitat trees is an integral part of modern forest nature conservation concepts such as retention forestry. Bats, cavity-nesting birds, arboreal marsupials, and many different saproxylic species depend on habitat trees and their great variety of microhabitats and old-growth characteristics. With a focus on insights from temperate forests, we traced the development of habitat-tree protection over 200 years. The idea was first conceptualized by foresters and natural scientists in the early 19th century. At that time, utilitarian conservation aimed to protect cavity trees that provided roosts and nesting holes for insectivorous bats and birds. By the second half of the 19th century, habitat-tree protection was well known to foresters and was occasionally implemented. Knowledge of the protection of large old trees, a special kind of habitat tree, for sociocultural and aesthetic reasons developed similarly. But, many foresters of that time and in the following decades fundamentally rejected protection of habitat trees for economic reasons. Beginning in the 1970s, forest conservation and integrative forest management became increasingly important issues worldwide. Since then, the protection of habitat trees has been implemented on a large scale. Long-term views on the development of conservation concepts are important to inform the implementation of conservation today. In particular, historical analyses of conservation concepts allow the testing of long-term conservation outcomes and make it possible to study the resilience of conservation approaches to changing social or ecological conditions. We encourage all conservation ecologists to assess the practical and conceptual impact of the initial ideas that led to modern conservation concepts in terms of long-term biodiversity conservation.     

Evaluation of pay-for-release conservation incentives for unintentionally caught threatened species

In the developing world, the exploitation of threatened species jeopardizes their permanence in the wild. Because not all captures are intentional, for instance when capture methods have low selectivity, pressure on these species may be lessened by releasing living incidentally caught animals. However, it is often unrealistic to expect people to voluntarily do so because it means foregoing the benefits of resource extraction. Financial incentives for such animal release may foster conservation objectives. Reducing human–animal conflicts, protecting natural habitat, and conserving nests of threatened species are examples of conservation benefits that can be built on financial reward systems. However, incentives aiming to protect unintentionally captured threatened species are scarce. We considered pay for release, a type of ecosystem-service payment designed to foster the release of incidentally captured threatened species. We aimed to determine the best conditions to implement this scheme, its potential benefits (e.g., incentivizing the release of threatened species), and pitfalls and priority research needs (e.g., required conditions for pay for release to work) to show that its global applicability is possible. Given that approaches solely based on education and law enforcement may be ineffective under some circumstances, we argue that pay for release can protect incidentally captured endangered species if used under conditions conducive for its success. When local participants’ intrinsic motivation for conservation is weak, but the release of incidentally live-caught animals into their habitats is readily achievable, pay-for-release schemes could jump start urgently needed conservation efforts against indiscriminate animal harvesting.     

Testing the presence of marine protected areas against their ability to reduce pressures on biodiversity

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are the preferred tool for preventing marine biodiversity loss, as reflected in international protected area targets. Although the area covered by MPAs is expanding, there is a concern that opposition from resource users is driving them into already low-use locations, whereas high-pressure areas remain unprotected, which has serious implications for biodiversity conservation. We tested the spatial relationships between different human-induced pressures on marine biodiversity and global MPAs. We used global, modeled pressure data and the World Database on Protected Areas to calculate the levels of 15 different human-induced pressures inside and outside the world's MPAs. We fitted binomial generalized linear models to the data to determine whether each pressure had a positive or negative effect on the likelihood of an area being protected and whether this effect changed with different categories of protection. Pelagic and artisanal fishing, shipping, and introductions of invasive species by ships had a negative relationship with protection, and this relationship persisted under even the least restrictive categories of protection (e.g., protected areas classified as category VI under the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a category that permits sustainable use). In contrast, pressures from dispersed, diffusive sources (e.g., pollution and ocean acidification) had positive relationships with protection. Our results showed that MPAs are systematically established in areas where there is low political opposition, limiting the capacity of existing MPAs to manage key drivers of biodiversity loss. We suggest that conservation efforts focus on biodiversity outcomes and effective reduction of pressures rather than prescribing area-based targets, and that alternative approaches to conservation are needed in areas where protection is not feasible.