Achieving conservation when opportunity costs are high: optimizing reserve design in Alberta's oil sands region

Recent studies have shown that conservation gains can be achieved when the spatial distributions of biological benefits and economic costs are incorporated in the conservation planning process. Using Alberta, Canada, as a case study we apply these techniques in the context of coarse-filter reserve design. Because targets for ecosystem representation and other coarse-filter design elements are difficult to define objectively we use a trade-off analysis to systematically explore the relationship between conservation targets and economic opportunity costs. We use the Marxan conservation planning software to generate reserve designs at each level of conservation target to ensure that our quantification of conservation and economic outcomes represents the optimal allocation of resources in each case. Opportunity cost is most affected by the ecological representation target and this relationship is nonlinear. Although petroleum resources are present throughout most of Alberta, and include highly valuable oil sands deposits, our analysis indicates that over 30% of public lands could be protected while maintaining access to more than 97% of the value of the region's resources. Our case study demonstrates that optimal resource allocation can be usefully employed to support strategic decision making in the context of land-use planning, even when conservation targets are not well defined.     

Connectivity and invasive species management: towards an integrated landscape approach

Invasive plants and animals are a major cause of global biodiversity loss. Invasive Species Management (ISM) helps conserve localized populations and ecosystems, but rarely have its potential benefits been explored at the landscape scale. We explore how ISM can enhance landscape connectivity, and how its incorporation into conservation planning algorithms could help design optimal reserve networks. Conversely, conservation planning and connectivity modelling can optimize targeting of ISM, achieving benefits for a wider range of taxa and ecological processes, without the need for additional resources. Empirical research must investigate the spatial pattern of benefits from ISM, and when to target priority conservation sites or the areas (matrix) between them. By bolstering populations within—and increasing connectivity between—focal patches, ISM should move beyond conserving individual sites to creating functionally connected networks of conservation areas.     

Integrating Economic Costs and Biological Traits into Global Conservation Priorities for Carnivores

Background

Prioritization schemes usually highlight species-rich areas, where many species are at imminent risk of extinction. To be ecologically relevant these schemes should also include species biological traits into area-setting methods. Furthermore, in a world of limited funds for conservation, conservation action is constrained by land acquisition costs. Hence, including economic costs into conservation priorities can substantially improve their conservation cost-effectiveness.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We examined four global conservation scenarios for carnivores based on the joint mapping of economic costs and species biological traits. These scenarios identify the most cost-effective priority sets of ecoregions, indicating best investment opportunities for safeguarding every carnivore species, and also establish priority sets that can maximize species representation in areas harboring highly vulnerable species. We compared these results with a scenario that minimizes the total number of ecoregions required for conserving all species, irrespective of other factors. We found that cost-effective conservation investments should focus on 41 ecoregions highlighted in the scenario that consider simultaneously both ecoregion vulnerability and economic costs of land acquisition. Ecoregions included in priority sets under these criteria should yield best returns of investments since they harbor species with high extinction risk and have lower mean land cost.

Conclusions/Significance

Our study highlights ecoregions of particular importance for the conservation of the world''s carnivores defining global conservation priorities in analyses that encompass socioeconomic and life-history factors. We consider the identification of a comprehensive priority-set of areas as a first step towards an in-situ biodiversity maintenance strategy.     

Mapping the economic costs and benefits of conservation

Resources for biodiversity conservation are severely limited, requiring strategic investment. Understanding both the economic benefits and costs of conserving ecosystems will help to allocate scarce dollars most efficiently. However, although cost-benefit analyses are common in many areas of policy, they are not typically used in conservation planning. We conducted a spatial evaluation of the costs and benefits of conservation for a landscape in the Atlantic forests of Paraguay. We considered five ecosystem services (i.e., sustainable bushmeat harvest, sustainable timber harvest, bioprospecting for pharmaceutical products, existence value, and carbon storage in aboveground biomass) and compared them to estimates of the opportunity costs of conservation. We found a high degree of spatial variability in both costs and benefits over this relatively small (~3,000 km²) landscape. Benefits exceeded costs in some areas, with carbon storage dominating the ecosystem service values and swamping opportunity costs. Other benefits associated with conservation were more modest and exceeded costs only in protected areas and indigenous reserves. We used this cost-benefit information to show that one potential corridor between two large forest patches had net benefits that were three times greater than two otherwise similar alternatives. Spatial cost-benefit analysis can powerfully inform conservation planning, even though the availability of relevant data may be limited, as was the case in our study area. It can help us understand the synergies between biodiversity conservation and economic development when the two are indeed aligned and to clearly understand the trade-offs when they are not.     

The influence of planning unit characteristics on the efficiency and spatial pattern of systematic conservation planning assessments

Systematic conservation planning is a widely used approach for designing protected area systems and ecological networks. This generally involves dividing the planning region into a series of planning units and using computer software to select portfolios of these units that meet specified conservation targets whilst minimising conservation costs. Previous research has shown that changing the size and shape of these planning units can alter the apparent spatial characteristics of the underlying data and thus influence conservation assessment results. However, this may be less problematic when using newer software that can account for additional constraints based on portfolio costs and fragmentation levels. Here we investigate these issues using a dataset from southern Africa and measure the extent to which changing planning unit shape, size and baseline affects the results of conservation planning assessments. We show that using hexagonal planning units instead of squares produces more efficient and less fragmented portfolios and that using larger planning units produces portfolios that are less efficient but more likely to identify the same priority areas. We also show that using real-world constraints in the analysis, based on reducing socio-economic costs and minimising fragmentation levels, reduces the influence of planning unit characteristics on the results and so argue that future studies should adopt a similar approach when investigating factors that influence conservation assessments.     

Impacts of species-led conservation on ecosystem services of wetlands: understanding co-benefits and tradeoffs

Biodiversity conservation organisations have recently begun to consider a wider ecosystem services context for their activities. While the literature suggests the potential of ‘win–win’ situations where biodiversity conservation and the delivery of ecosystem services overlap, empirical evidence is wanting. Here we explore the role that species-led management for the benefit of biodiversity in cultural landscapes can play in the delivery of wider ecosystem services. We use UK lowland wetlands as a case study and show how successful delivery of species-led conservation through management interventions relies on practices that can affect greenhouse gas fluxes, water quality and regulation, and cultural benefits. In these wetlands, livestock grazing has potentially large effects on water and greenhouse gas related services, but there is little scope to alter management without compromising species objectives. Likewise, there is little potential to alter reedbed management without compromising conservation objectives. There is some potential to alter woodland and scrub management, but this would likely have limited influence due to the relatively small area over which such management is practiced. The management of water levels potentially has large effects on provision of several services and there does appear to be some scope to align this objective with biodiversity objectives. A comprehensive understanding of the net costs and benefits to society of these interventions will require fine-grained research integrating ecological, economic and social science research. However, a less analytic understanding of the potential costs and benefits can highlight ways by which land management principally to achieve biodiversity conservation objectives might be modified to enhance delivery of other ecosystem services.     

Reserves in Context: Planning for Leakage from Protected Areas

When protected areas reduce threats within their boundaries, they often displace a portion of these threats into adjacent areas through a process known as ‘leakage’, undermining conservation objectives. Using theoretical models and a case study of terrestrial mammals in Indonesia, we develop the first theoretical explanation of how leakage impacts conservation actions, and highlight conservation strategies that mitigate these impacts. Although leakage is a socio-economic process, we demonstrate that its negative impacts are also affected by the distribution of species, with leakage having larger impacts in landscapes with homogeneous distribution of species richness. Moreover, leakage has a greater negative effect when conservation strategies are implemented opportunistically, even creating the potential for perversely negative consequences from protected area establishment. Leakage thereby increases the relative benefits of systematic conservation planning over opportunism, especially in areas with high leakage and heterogeneously distributed species. Although leakage has the potential to undermine conservation actions, conservation planning can minimize this risk.     

Quantitative method for identifying networks of minimum priority sites for protection of rare and endangered plant species in Guangdong,China

The approaches to enlarge the protected areas are deeply embedded in the conservation planning.In practice,however,even in some sites of top conservation priority,there exist problems of inefficient conservation for lack of funding,to say nothing of assisting all species under threat from the viewpoint of conservationists.Identifying priority sites for conservation and establishing networks of minimum priority sites (NOMPS) are helpful for promoting the transition from number and size oriented,to quality and effectiveness oriented practices of biological conservation,and for realizing the target of biodiversity conservation with the most benefits for the least costs.Based on heuristic algorithm and integer linear programming (ILP),we propose a refined method of heuristic integer linear programming (HILP) for quantitative identification of the NOMPS to protect rare and endangered plant species (REPS) in Guangdong Province,China.The results indicate that there are 19 priority sites which are essential for protecting all of the 107 REPS distributed in 83 sites in Guangdong.These should be the paramount targets of financing and management.Compared with the ILP,which uses minimum number of sites as the only constraint,HILP takes into consideration of the effect of species richness,and is thus more suitable for conservation practices though with a little more number of priority sites selected.It is suggested that ILP and HILP are both effective quantitative methods for identifying NOMPS and can yield important information for decision making,especially when economic factors are constraints for biological conservation.     

Quantitative method for identifying networks of minimum priority sites for protection of rare and endangered plant species in Guangdong, China

The approaches to enlarge the protected areas are deeply embedded in the conservation planning. In practice, however, even in some sites of top conservation priority, there exist problems of inefficient conservation for lack of funding, to say nothing of assisting all species under threat from the viewpoint of conservationists. Identifying priority sites for conservation and establishing networks of minimum priority sites (NOMPS) are helpful for promoting the transition from number and size oriented, to quality and effectiveness oriented practices of biological conservation, and for realizing the target of biodiversity conservation with the most benefits for the least costs. Based on heuristic algorithm and integer linear programming (ILP), we propose a refined method of heuristic integer linear programming (HILP) for quantitative identification of the NOMPS to protect rare and endangered plant species (REPS) in Guangdong Province, China. The results indicate that there are 19 priority sites which are essential for protecting all of the 107 REPS distributed in 83 sites in Guangdong. These should be the paramount targets of financing and management. Compared with the ILP, which uses minimum number of sites as the only constraint, HILP takes into consideration of the effect of species richness, and is thus more suitable for conservation practices though with a little more number of priority sites selected. It is suggested that ILP and HILP are both effective quantitative methods for identifying NOMPS and can yield important information for decision making, especially when economic factors are constraints for biological conservation.     

Governance factors in the identification of global conservation priorities for mammals

Global conservation priorities have often been identified based on the combination of species richness and threat information. With the development of the field of systematic conservation planning, more attention has been given to conservation costs. This leads to prioritizing developing countries, where costs are generally low and biodiversity is high. But many of these countries have poor governance, which may result in ineffective conservation or in larger costs than initially expected. We explore how the consideration of governance affects the selection of global conservation priorities for the world's mammals in a complementarity-based conservation prioritization. We use data on Control of Corruption (Worldwide Governance Indicators project) as an indicator of governance effectiveness, and gross domestic product per capita as an indicator of cost. We show that, while core areas with high levels of endemism are always selected as important regardless of governance and cost values, there are clear regional differences in selected sites when biodiversity, cost or governance are taken into account separately. Overall, the analysis supports the concentration of conservation efforts in most of the regions generally considered of high priority, but stresses the need for different conservation approaches in different continents owing to spatial patterns of governance and economic development.     

Shifting paradigms in the history of classical biological control

Classical biological control using insects has led to the partial or complete control of at least 226 invasive insect and 57 invasive weed species worldwide since 1888. However, at least ten introductions of biological control agents have led to unintended negative consequences and these cases have led to a focus on risk that came to dominate the science and practice of classical biological control by the 1990s. Based upon historical developments in the field we consider that the era of focus on benefits began in 1888 and that it was supplanted by an era in which the focus was on risks during the 1990s. This paradigm shift greatly improved the safety of biological control releases but also led to a decline in the number of introductions, probably resulting in opportunity costs. We note here the development of a third paradigm: one in which the benefits and risks of biological control are clearly and explicitly balanced so that decisions can be made that maximize benefits while minimizing risks.     

On the importance of taking into account agricultural practices when defining conservation priorities for regional planning

Conserving biodiversity in managed landscapes requires the definition of spatial conservation priorities. The systematic conservation planning tools which are used to define these conservation priorities, assess the vulnerability of different locations by combining two different elements: some measurement of the biological assets in question, and some measurement of the key processes which threaten these biological assets. For instance, in cumulative impact mapping, maps of individual human activities that impact ecosystems (hereafter referred to as ‘stressor’ for individual maps and ‘cumulative stressor’ for combined maps) are overlaid with maps of ecosystem vulnerability, in order to estimate the overall ecological impact of human activities on natural ecosystems. These tools are appealing because they are easy to use and inform regional land planning. However, given that once these spatial conservation priorities are defined they potentially have far-reaching consequences, there is a need to test their robustness and reliability. Here we propose to investigate how the uncertainties related to the estimation of a cumulative stressor layer affect the definition of spatial conservation priorities. We conduct a sensitivity analysis of the different ways of estimating major stressors related to human activities (transport, urbanization and population) with a specific focus on agriculture. We show that spatial conservation priorities are little sensitive to most of the parameters and input data used to estimate the cumulative stressor map. In particular, they are not very sensitive to changes in spatially overlapping stressors, i.e. those which overlap spatially with other stressors. However, our analyses also reveal that spatial conservation priorities are highly sensitive to how the agriculture stressor is defined. These results highlight the importance of better understanding how agricultural activities impact biodiversity and establishing how more accurate information on agricultural practices can be used to define spatial conservation priorities.     

Evaluating management options for aquatic invasive species: concepts and methods

In analyses that attempt to estimate the costs of species invasions, it has been typical to report the costs of management and/or to multiply per-unit costs by the number affected to arrive at a total. These estimates are of limited value for most policy questions. We start our discussion by recognizing that biological pollutants such as aquatic invasive species are like conventional pollutants in important ways and appeal to the well-developed literature on conventional pollution to guide our thinking into how best to conceptualize the problem. We use a standard pollution control framework to identify the margins over which costs and benefits should be estimated to guide wise decision-making. We then use examples from the literature to illustrate how transactions in related markets can be used to estimate the benefits of management. The roles of adaptation, mitigation, and species population growth have particular relevance and are highlighted. In the final section of the paper, we think through the conditions under which investing in genetic biocontrol methods would be economically justified.     

Using probability of persistence to identify important areas for biodiversity conservation

Most attempts to identify important areas for biodiversity have sought to represent valued features from what is known of their current distribution, and have treated all included records as equivalent. We develop the idea that a more direct way of planning for conservation success is to consider the probability of persistence for the valued features. Probabilities also provide a consistent basis for integrating the many pattern and process factors affecting conservation success. To apply the approach, we describe a method for seeking networks of conservation areas that maximize probabilities of persistence across species. With data for European trees, this method requires less than half as many areas as an earlier method to represent all species with a probability of at least 0.95 (where possible). Alternatively, for trials choosing any number of areas between one and 50, the method increases the mean probability among species by more than 10%. This improvement benefits the least-widespread species the most and results in greater connectivity among selected areas. The proposed method can accommodate local differences in viability, vulnerability, threats, costs, or other social and political constraints, and is applicable in principle to any surrogate measure for biodiversity value.     

Incorporating Conservation Zone Effectiveness for Protecting Biodiversity in Marine Planning

Establishing different types of conservation zones is becoming commonplace. However, spatial prioritization methods that can accommodate multiple zones are poorly understood in theory and application. It is typically assumed that management regulations across zones have differential levels of effectiveness (“zone effectiveness”) for biodiversity protection, but the influence of zone effectiveness on achieving conservation targets has not yet been explored. Here, we consider the zone effectiveness of three zones: permanent closure, partial protection, and open, for planning for the protection of five different marine habitats in the Vatu-i-Ra Seascape, Fiji. We explore the impact of differential zone effectiveness on the location and costs of conservation priorities. We assume that permanent closure zones are fully effective at protecting all habitats, open zones do not contribute towards the conservation targets and partial protection zones lie between these two extremes. We use four different estimates for zone effectiveness and three different estimates for zone cost of the partial protection zone. To enhance the practical utility of the approach, we also explore how much of each traditional fishing ground can remain open for fishing while still achieving conservation targets. Our results show that all of the high priority areas for permanent closure zones would not be a high priority when the zone effectiveness of the partial protection zone is equal to that of permanent closure zones. When differential zone effectiveness and costs are considered, the resulting marine protected area network consequently increases in size, with more area allocated to permanent closure zones to meet conservation targets. By distributing the loss of fishing opportunity equitably among local communities, we find that 84–88% of each traditional fishing ground can be left open while still meeting conservation targets. Finally, we summarize the steps for developing marine zoning that accounts for zone effectiveness.     

Island area,body size and demographic history shape genomic diversity in Darwin's finches and related tanagers

Genomic diversity is the evolutionary foundation for adaptation to environmental change and thus is essential to consider in conservation planning. Island species are ideal for investigating the evolutionary drivers of genomic diversity, in part because of the potential for biological replicates. Here, we use genome data from 180 individuals spread among 27 island populations from 17 avian species to study the effects of island area, body size, demographic history and conservation status on contemporary genomic diversity. Our study expands earlier work on a small number of neutral loci to the entire genome and from a few species to many. We find significant positive correlation between island size and genomic diversity, a significant negative correlation between body size and genomic diversity, and that historical population declines significantly reduced contemporary genomic diversity. Our study shows that island size is the key factor in determining genomic diversity, indicating that habitat conservation is key to maintaining adaptive potential in the face of global environmental change. We found that threatened species generally had a significantly smaller values of Watterson's theta (θ_W = 4N_eμ) compared to nonthreatened species, suggesting that θ_W may be useful as a conservation indicator for at‐risk species. Overall, these findings (a) provide biological insights into how genomic diversity scales with ecological, morphological and demographic factors; and (b) illustrate how population genomic data can be leveraged to better inform conservation efforts.     

跨界自然保护区——实现生物多样性保护的新手段

随着区域合作和大尺度景观保护的需求不断增加,跨界资源管理越来越受到人们的关注,作为跨界资源管理的一种典型方式,跨界自然保护区正成为保护区研究中的热点问题。在对跨界自然保护区概念、类型及历史发展进行阐述的基础上,分析了建立跨界自然保护区的效益和代价及影响跨界自然保护区成败的因素,指出建立跨界自然保护区可能是在更大尺度上实现生态系统管理和生物多样性保护的有效途径。同时,分析了我国保护区的跨界现状和存在的问题,并对我国不同行政区间展开跨界合作的必要性进行了探讨。最后对跨界保护的未来研究提出展望。     

Advancing marine conservation planning in the Mediterranean Sea

Twenty leading scientists in the field of marine conservation planning attended the first international workshop on conservation planning in the Mediterranean Sea. This globally significant biodiversity hotspot has been subjected to human exploitation and degradation for 1,000s of years. Recently, several initiatives have tried to identify priority areas for conservation across the Mediterranean Sea. However, none of these efforts have led to large-scale actions yet. The aim of the workshop was to establish a network of scientists who are involved in large-scale conservation planning initiatives throughout the Mediterranean basin to promote collaboration and reduce redundancy in conservation initiatives. The three focus groups of the workshop build on existing efforts and intend to deliver: (1) a roadmap for setting conservation priorities, (2) a methodological framework for linking threats, actions and costs to improve the prioritization process, and (3) a systematic conservation planning process tailored to complex environments such as the Mediterranean Sea. Joining forces and involving more scientists (especially from the South-eastern part of the region) in following meetings, the participants endeavour to provide guidelines on how to bridge the science-policy gap and hence aid decision-makers to take efficient conservation actions.     

系统保护规划的理论、方法及关键问题

为了减缓生物多样性丧失的趋势、将有限的保护资源用于关键区域,Margules等提出了系统保护规划(Systematic Conservation Planning)概念和方法,目前该方法已成为国际主流保护规划方法。与传统基于专家决策的保护体系规划方法不同,系统保护规划拥有量化的保护目标、保护成本,并综合考虑保护体系连通性、人为干扰因素,使用优化算法计算,从而获得空间明晰的生物多样性保护体系。在阐述规划理念、规划流程与方法的基础上,重点评述了生物多样性替代指标的选择、保护规划成本的计算、保护目标的设置、规划结果的可靠性评估等关键问题,并结合我国的具体情况,探讨了该方法在我国的应用前景,以期为推进我国生物多样性与生态服务功能的保护做出贡献。