Considering the needs of indigenous and local populations in conservation programs

Local rural and indigenous communities have assumed increasing responsibility for conservation within and between areas buffering the impacts of agricultural or resource‐extraction zones and protected areas. Empowering local communities as central partners in conservation and climate‐change mitigation has allowed many people to gain access to land and citizenship rights but has provided limited improvements in access to social services and economic opportunities even as expectation about their role as environmental stewards grows. These expectations, however, are inconsistent with reality. We conducted multiple field studies in Brazil since the mid‐1980s to illustrate the discrepancies between conservation programs and local conditions and expectations. We suggest that public policies and conservation programs should not delegate responsibility for managing protected areas to local and indigenous communities without considering local needs and expectations and locals’ attitudes toward conservation. In other words, behavior that maintains or improves the environment should not be treated as traditional based on the expectations of outsiders. Framing local populations as traditional environmentalists creates contradictions and frustrations for local populations and for conservation professionals and policy makers.     

Control of invasive rats on islands and priorities for future action

Invasive rats are one of the world's most successful animal groups that cause native species extinctions and ecosystem change, particularly on islands. On large islands, rat eradication is often impossible and population control, defined as the local limitation of rat abundance, is now routinely performed on many of the world's islands as an alternative management tool. However, a synthesis of the motivations, techniques, costs, and outcomes of such rat‐control projects is lacking. We reviewed the literature, searched relevant websites, and conducted a survey via a questionnaire to synthesize the available information on rat‐control projects in island natural areas worldwide to improve rat management and native species conservation. Data were collected from 136 projects conducted over the last 40 years; most were located in Australasia (46%) and the tropical Pacific (25%) in forest ecosystems (65%) and coastal strands (22%). Most of the projects targeted Rattus rattus and most (82%) were aimed at protecting birds and endangered ecosystems. Poisoning (35%) and a combination of trapping and poisoning (42%) were the most common methods. Poisoning allows for treatment of larger areas, and poison projects generally last longer than trapping projects. Second‐generation anticoagulants (mainly brodifacoum and bromadiolone) were used most often. The median annual cost for rat‐control projects was US$17,262 or US$227/ha. Median project duration was 4 years. For 58% of the projects, rat population reduction was reported, and 51% of projects showed evidence of positive effects on biodiversity. Our data were from few countries, revealing the need to expand rat‐control distribution especially in some biodiversity hotspots. Improvement in control methods is needed as is regular monitoring to assess short‐ and long‐term effectiveness of rat‐control.     

Understanding the distribution of bushmeat hunting effort across landscapes by testing hypotheses about human foraging

Mitigating the massive impacts of defaunation on natural ecosystems requires understanding and predicting hunting effort across the landscape. But such understanding has been hindered by the difficulty of assessing the movement patterns of hunters in thick forests and across complex terrain. We statistically tested hypotheses about the spatial distribution of hunting with circuit theory and structural equation models. We used a data set of >7000 known kill locations in Guyana and hunter movement models to test these methods. Comparing models with different resistance layers (i.e., different estimates of how terrain and land cover influence human movement speed) showed that rivers, on average, limited movement rather than serving as transport arteries. Moreover, far more kills occurred close to villages than in remote areas. This, combined with the lack of support for structural equation models that included latent terms for prey depletion driven by past overhunting, suggests that kill locations in this system tended to be driven by where hunters were currently foraging rather than by influences of historical harvest. These analyses are generalizable to a variety of ecosystems, species, and data types, providing a powerful way of enhancing maps and predictions of hunting effort across complex landscapes.     

Cautioning against overemphasis of normative constructs in conservation decision making

Questions around how to conserve nature are increasingly leading to dissonance in conservation planning and action. While science can assist in unraveling the nature of conservation challenges, conservation responses rely heavily on normative positions and constructs to order actions, aid interpretations, and provide motivation. However, problems can arise when norms are mistaken for science or when they stymy scientific rigor. To highlight these potential pitfalls, we used the ethics-based tool of argument analysis to assess a controversial conservation intervention, the Pelorus Island Goat Control Program. The program proponents' argument for restorative justice was unsound because it relied on weak logical construction overly entrenched in normative assumptions. Overreliance on normative constructs, particularly the invocation of tragedy, creates a sense of urgency that can subvert scientific and ethical integrity, obscure values and assumptions, and increase the propensity for flawed logic. This example demonstrates how the same constructs that drive biodiversity conservation can also drive poor decision making, spur public backlash, and justify poor animal welfare outcomes. To provide clarity, a decision-making flowchart we devised demonstrates how values, norms, and ethics influence one another. We recommend practitioners follow 3 key points to improve decision making: be aware of values, as well as normative constructs and ethical theories that those values inform; be mindful of overreliance on either normative constructs or ethics when deciding action is justified; and be logically sound and transparent when building justifications. We also recommend 5 key attributes that practitioners should be attentive to when making conservation decisions: clarity, transparency, scientific integrity, adaptiveness, and compassion. Greater attention to the role of norms in decision making will improve conservation outcomes and garner greater public support for actions.     

Network analysis of a stakeholder community combatting illegal wildlife trade

The illegal wildlife trade has emerged as a growing and urgent environmental issue. Stakeholders involved in the efforts to curb wildlife trafficking include nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), academia, and state government and enforcement bodies. The extent to which these stakeholders work and communicate among each other is fundamental to effectively combatting illicit trade. Using the United Kingdom as a case study, we used a social network analysis and semistructured interviews of stakeholders to assess communication relationships in the counter wildlife trafficking community. The NGOs consistently occupied 4 of the 5 most central positions in the generated networks, whereas academic institutions routinely occupied 4 of the 5 most peripheral positions. However, NGOs were the least diverse in their communication practices compared with the other stakeholder groups. Stakeholders identified personal relationships as the most important aspect of functioning communication. Participant insights also showed that stakeholder-specific variables (e.g., ethical and confidentiality concerns), competition, and fundraising can have a confounding effect on intercommunication. Evaluating communication networks and intrastakeholder communication trends is essential to creating cohesive, productive, and efficient responses to the challenges of combatting illegal wildlife trade. Article impact statement: Communication among those combatting illegal wildlife trade is confounded by stakeholder variables (ethics, confidentiality), competition, and fundraising.     

Effects of publication bias on conservation planning

Conservation planners need reliable information on spatial patterns of biodiversity. However, existing data sets are skewed because some ecosystems, taxa, and locations are underrepresented. We determined how many articles have been published in recent decades on the biodiversity of different countries and their constituent provinces. We searched the Web of Science catalogues Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) for biodiversity-related articles published from 1993 to 2016 that included country and province names. We combined data on research publication frequency with other provincial-scale factors hypothesized to affect the likelihood of research activity (i.e., economic development, human presence, infrastructure, and remoteness). Areas that appeared understudied relative to the biodiversity expected based on site climate likely have been inaccessible to researchers for reasons, notably armed conflict. Geographic publication bias is of most concern in the most remote areas of sub-Saharan Africa and South America. Our provincial-scale model may help compensate for publication biases in conservation planning by revealing the spatial extent of research needs and the low cost of redoing this analysis annually.     

Landscape trajectory of natural boreal forest loss as an impediment to green infrastructure

Loss of natural forests by forest clearcutting has been identified as a critical conservation challenge worldwide. This study addressed forest fragmentation and loss in the context of the establishment of a functional green infrastructure as a spatiotemporally connected landscape-scale network of habitats enhancing biodiversity, favorable conservation status, and ecosystem services. Through retrospective analysis of satellite images, we assessed a 50- to 60-year spatiotemporal clearcutting impact trajectory on natural and near-natural boreal forests across a sizable and representative region from the Gulf of Bothnia to the Scandinavian Mountain Range in northern Fennoscandia. This period broadly covers the whole forest clearcutting period; thus, our approach and results can be applied to comprehensive impact assessment of industrial forest management. The entire study region covers close to 46,000 km² of forest-dominated landscape in a late phase of transition from a natural or near-natural to a land-use modified state. We found a substantial loss of intact forest, in particular of large, contiguous areas, a spatial polarization of remaining forest on regional scale where the inland has been more severely affected than the mountain and coastal zones, and a pronounced impact on interior forest core areas. Salient results were a decrease in area of the largest intact forest patch from 225,853 to 68,714 ha in the mountain zone and from 257,715 to 38,668 ha in the foothills zone, a decrease from 75% to 38% intact forest in the inland zones, a decrease in largest patch core area (assessed by considering 100-m patch edge disturbance) from 6114 to 351 ha in the coastal zone, and a geographic imbalance in protected forest with an evident predominance in the mountain zone. These results demonstrate profound disturbance of configuration of the natural forest landscape and disrupted connectivity, which challenges the establishment of functional green infrastructure. Our approach supports the identification of forests for expanded protection and conservation-oriented forest landscape restoration.     

Population viability and harvest sustainability for Madagascar lemurs

Subsistence hunting presents a conservation challenge by which biodiversity preservation must be balanced with safeguarding of human livelihoods. Globally, subsistence hunting threatens primate populations, including Madagascar's endemic lemurs. We used population viability analysis to assess the sustainability of lemur hunting in Makira Natural Park, Madagascar. We identified trends in seasonal hunting of 11 Makira lemur species from household interview data, estimated local lemur densities in populations adjacent to focal villages via transect surveys, and quantified extinction vulnerability for these populations based on species-specific demographic parameters and empirically derived hunting rates. We compared stage-based Lefkovitch with periodic Leslie matrices to evaluate the impact of regional dispersal on persistence trajectories and explored the consequences of perturbations to the timing of peak hunting relative to the lemur birth pulse, under assumptions of density-dependent reproductive compensation. Lemur hunting peaked during the fruit-abundant wet season (March–June). Estimated local lemur densities were roughly inverse to body size across our study area. Life-history modeling indicated that hunting most severely threatened the species with the largest bodies (i.e., Hapalemur occidentalis, Avahi laniger, Daubentonia madagascariensis, and Indri indi), characterized by late-age reproductive onsets and long interbirth intervals. In model simulations, lemur dispersal within a regional metapopulation buffered extinction threats when a majority of local sites supported growth rates above the replacement level but drove regional extirpations when most local sites were overharvested. Hunt simulations were most detrimental when timed to overlap lemur births (a reality for D. madagascariensis and I. indri). In sum, Makira lemurs were overharvested. Regional extirpations, which may contribute to broad-scale extinctions, will be likely if current hunting rates persist. Cessation of anthropogenic lemur harvest is a conservation priority, and development programs are needed to help communities switch from wildlife consumption to domestic protein alternatives.     

Ex situ collections and their potential for the restoration of extinct plants

The alarming current and predicted species extinction rates have galvanized conservationists in their efforts to avoid future biodiversity losses, but for species extinct in the wild, few options exist. We posed the questions, can these species be restored, and, if so, what role can ex situ plant collections (i.e., botanic gardens, germplasm banks, herbaria) play in the recovery of plant genetic diversity? We reviewed the relevant literature to assess the feasibility of recovering lost plant genetic diversity with using ex situ material and the probability of survival of subsequent translocations. Thirteen attempts to recover species extinct in the wild were found, most of which used material preserved in botanic gardens (12) and seed banks (2). One case of a locally extirpated population was recovered from herbarium material. Eight (60%) of these cases were successful or partially successful translocations of the focal species or population; the other 5 failed or it was too early to determine the outcome. Limiting factors of the use of ex situ source material for the restoration of plant genetic diversity in the wild include the scarcity of source material, low viability and reduced longevity of the material, low genetic variation, lack of evolution (especially for material stored in germplasm banks and herbaria), and socioeconomic factors. However, modern collecting practices present opportunities for plant conservation, such as improved collecting protocols and improved cultivation and storage conditions. Our findings suggest that all types of ex situ collections may contribute effectively to plant species conservation if their use is informed by a thorough understanding of the aforementioned problems. We conclude that the recovery of plant species currently classified as extinct in the wild is not 100% successful, and the possibility of successful reintroduction should not be used to justify insufficient in situ conservation.     

Cost‐effectiveness of conservation payment schemes for species with different range sizes

Payments to compensate landowners for carrying out costly land‐use measures that benefit endangered biodiversity have become an important policy instrument. When designing such payments, it is important to take into account that spatially connected habitats are more valuable for many species than isolated ones. One way to incentivize provision of connected habitats is to offer landowners an agglomeration bonus, that is, a bonus on top of payments they are receiving to conserve land if the land is spatially connected. Researchers have compared the cost‐effectiveness of the agglomeration bonus with 2 alternatives: an all‐or‐nothing, agglomeration payment, where landowners receive a payment only if the conserved land parcels have a certain level of spatial connectivity, and a spatially homogeneous payment, where landowners receive a payment for conserved land parcels irrespective of their location. Their results show the agglomeration bonus is rarely the most cost‐effective option, and when it is, it is only slightly better than one of the alternatives. This suggests that the agglomeration bonus should not be given priority as a policy design option. However, this finding is based on consideration of only 1 species. We examined whether the same applied to 2 species, one for which the homogeneous payment is best and the other for which the agglomeration payment is most cost‐effective. We modified a published conceptual model so that we were able to assess the cost‐effectiveness of payment schemes for 2 species and applied it to a grassland bird and a grassland butterfly in Germany that require the same habitat but have different spatial‐connectivity needs. When conserving both species, the agglomeration bonus was more cost‐effective than the agglomeration and the homogeneous payment; thus, we showed that as a policy the agglomeration bonus is a useful conservation‐payment option.