How to ensure threatened species monitoring leads to threatened species conservation

Monitoring is essential for effective conservation and management of threatened species and ecological communities. However, more often than not, threatened species monitoring is poorly implemented, meaning that conservation decisions are not informed by the best available knowledge. We outline challenges and provide best‐practice guidelines for threatened species monitoring, informed by the diverse perspectives of 26 conservation managers and scientists from a range of organisations with expertise across Australian species and ecosystems. Our collective expertise synthesised five key principles that aim to enhance the design, implementation and outcomes of threatened species monitoring. These principles are (i) integrate monitoring with management; (ii) design fit‐for‐purpose monitoring programs; (iii) engage people and organisations; (iv) ensure good data management; and (v) communicate the value of monitoring. We describe how to incorporate these principles into existing frameworks to improve current and future monitoring programs. Effective monitoring is essential to inform appropriate management and enable better conservation outcomes for our most vulnerable species and ecological communities.     

Systems ecology,people ecology,and the anthropology of fishing communities

Ecological approaches within maritime anthropology are reviewed, particularly those concerned with resource management in fisheries and characterized by certain assumptions of systems ecology. The systems ecology approach used in anthropology exhibits certain problems, including the assumption of equilibria, the tendency to restrict analyses to immediate and natural environmental relations, and the reification of analytical systems. Under the rubric of people ecology, data from research among commercial fishermen of Fogo Island, Newfoundland, are used to explore an alternative that emphasizes people rather than systems as starting points for study, and underscores the role of larger social and political processes in affecting local man — environment relations.     

When and where to count? Implications of migratory connectivity and nonbreeding distribution to population censuses in a migratory bird population

Migratory connectivity is a metric of the co-occurrence of migratory animals originating from different breeding sites, and like their spatial dispersion, can vary substantially during the annual cycle. Together, both these properties affect the optimal times and sites of population censusing. We tracked taiga bean geese (Anser fabalis fabalis) during 2014–2021 to study their migratory connectivity and nonbreeding movements and determine optimal periods to assess the size of their main flyway population. We also compared available census data with tracking data, to examine how well two existing censuses covered the population. Daily Mantel's correlation between breeding and nonbreeding sites lay between 0 and 0.5 during most of the nonbreeding season, implying birds from different breeding areas were not strongly separated at other times in the annual cycle. However, the connectivity was higher among birds from the westernmost breeding areas compared to the birds breeding elsewhere. Daily Minimum Convex Polygons showed tracked birds were highly aggregated at census times, confirming their utility. The number of tracked birds absent at count sites during the censuses however exceeded numbers double-counted at several sites, indicating that censuses might have underestimated the true population size. Our results show that connectivity can vary in different times during the nonbreeding period, and should be studied throughout the annual cycle. Our results also confirm previous studies, which have found that estimates using marked individuals usually produce higher population size estimates than total counts. This should be considered when using total counts to assess population sizes in the future.     

Managing Critical Transition Zones

Ecosystems that function as critical transition zones (CTZs) among terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats are closely connected to the ecosystems adjacent to them and are characterized by a rapid flux of materials and organisms. CTZs play various roles, including mediating water flows, accumulating sediments and organic matter, processing nutrients, and providing opportunities for recreation. They are particularly difficult to manage because they tend to be small, albeit important, components of large watersheds, and managers may not have control over the entire landscape. Moreover, they are often the focus of intensive human activity. Consequently, CTZs are critically important zones, and their preservation and protection are likely to require unique collaboration among scientists, managers, and stakeholders. Scientists can learn a great deal from the study of these ecosystems, taking advantage of small size and the importance of fluxes, but a good understanding of adaptive management strategies is needed to establish a dialogue with managers and stakeholders on technical and management issues. An understanding of risk analysis is also important to help set meaningful goals and establish logical strategies that include all of the interested parties. Successful restoration of a CTZ is the best test of the quality of knowledge about its structure and function. Much has already been learned about coastal CTZs through restoration projects, and the large number of such projects involving riparian CTZs in particular suggests that there is considerable opportunity for fruitful collaborations between scientists and managers. Received 25 February 2000; accepted 6 February 2001.     

Reconciling Ecosystem Rehabilitation and Service Reliability Mandates in Large Technical Systems: Findings and Implications of Three Major US Ecosystem Management Initiatives for Managing Human-Dominated Aquatic-Terrestrial Ecosystems

How can decision makers reconcile the demand for increasingly reliable services drawn from the environment (including water and power) with the desire for both a better environment and more environmental amenities? In this paper, which is based on US case studies of ecosystem rehabilitation initiatives in the San Francisco Bay-Delta, the Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest, and the Florida Everglades, we focus on several notable problems in current management practice. We assess the role of adaptive management and identify five areas of major innovation by which ecologists and the authorities that operate large water and hydropower systems attempt to reconcile the tension between maintaining service reliability and promoting ecological rehabilitation. The implications of the findings for a wider framework within which ecosystems can be matched to the most appropriate management regime are related specifically to aquatic-terrestrial ecosystems. Finally, we emphasize the importance of redefining ecosystem functions and services so that the inherent conflict between high-reliability services and ecosystem rehabilitation can be reconciled.     

Life Cycle Sustainability Dashboard

One method to assess the sustainability performance of products is life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA), which assesses product performance considering the environmental, economic, and social dimensions of the life cycle. The results of LCSA can be used to compare different products or to support decision making toward sustainable production and consumption. In both cases, LCSA results could be too disaggregated and consequently too difficult to understand and interpret by decision makers. As non‐experts are usually the target audience of experts and scientists, and are also involved in decision‐making processes, the necessity for a straightforward but comprehensive presentation of LCSA results is becoming strategically important. The implementation of the dashboard of sustainability proposed in this article offers a possible solution. An outstanding characteristic of the dashboard of sustainability is the communicability of the results by means of a graphical representation (a cartogram), characterized by a suitable chromatic scale and ranking score. The integration of LCSA and the dashboard of sustainability into a so‐called Life Cycle Sustainability Dashboard (LCSD) is described here. The first application of LCSD to a group of hard floor coverings is presented to show the applicability and limitations of the methodology.     

Trophic divergence despite morphological convergence in a continental radiation of snakes

Ecological and phenotypic convergence is a potential outcome of adaptive radiation in response to ecological opportunity. However, a number of factors may limit convergence during evolutionary radiations, including interregional differences in biogeographic history and clade-specific constraints on form and function. Here, we demonstrate that a single clade of terrestrial snakes from Australia—the oxyuranine elapids—exhibits widespread morphological convergence with a phylogenetically diverse and distantly related assemblage of snakes from North America. Australian elapids have evolved nearly the full spectrum of phenotypic modalities that occurs among North American snakes. Much of the convergence appears to involve the recurrent evolution of stereotyped morphologies associated with foraging mode, locomotion and habitat use. By contrast, analysis of snake diets indicates striking divergence in feeding ecology between these faunas, partially reflecting regional differences in ecological allometry between Australia and North America. Widespread phenotypic convergence with the North American snake fauna coupled with divergence in feeding ecology are clear examples of how independent continental radiations may converge along some ecological axes yet differ profoundly along others.     

The Sustainability Balanced Scorecard as a Framework for Eco-efficiency Analysis

To provide valuable support for successful decision-making, managers need a balanced set of financial and nonfinancial measures that represent different requirements, strategic goals, strategies, resources, and capabilities and the causal relationships between these domains. The balanced scorecard is such a measurement system. As an open system the balanced scorecard facilitates the consideration of sustainability issues. But enhanced balanced scorecards require a new type of data. This is where eco-efficiency analysis comes into play.
This article discusses the relationship between so-called sustainability balanced scorecards and eco-efficiency analysis. Eco-efficiency analysis not only provides a data source for sustainability balanced scorecards; in the perspective of environmental information systems it also serves as a link between the balanced scorecard and corporate environmental accounting systems so that eco-efficiency as a component of an environmental information system becomes an adapter with two interfaces, which are characterized in this article. The main focus is on the principle of cause and effect, its different forms, and the implications for the design of appropriate information system components.     

Murine model of colonization with fungal pathogen Candida auris to explore skin tropism,host risk factors and therapeutic strategies

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