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Gopher Tortoise Council
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The Gopher Tortoise Council was formed in 1978 by a group of southeastern biologists and other citizens concerned with the decline of the gopher tortoise. The goals of the Council are: (1) to offer professional advice for management, conservation, and protection of gopher tortoises; (2) to encourage the study of the life history, ecology, behavior, physiology, and management of gopher tortoises and other upland species; (3) to conduct active public information and conservation education programs; (4) to seek effective protection of the gopher tortoise and other upland species throughout the southeastern United States.
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Fear of failure in conservation: The problem and potential solutions to aid conservation of extremely small populations
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The potential for extirpation of extremely small populations (ESPs) is high due to their vulnerability to
demographic and environmental stochasticity and negative impacts of human activity. We argue that
conservation actions that could aid ESPs are sometimes delayed because of a fear of failure. In human
psychology, the fear of failure is composed of several distinct cognitive elements, including ‘‘uncertainty
about the future’’ and ‘‘upsetting important others.’’ Uncertainty about the future is often driven by information obstacles in conservation: information is either not easily shared among practitioners or information is lacking. Whereas, fear of upsetting important others can be due to apprehension about angering constituents, peers, funders, and other stakeholders. We present several ways to address these fears in hopes of improving the conservation process. We describe methods for increased information sharing and improved decision-making in the face of uncertainty, and recommend a shift in focus to cooperative actions and improving methods for evaluating success. Our hope is that by tackling stumbling blocks due to the apprehension of failure, conservation and management organizations can take steps to move from fear to action.
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Are conservation organizations configured for effective adaptation to global change?
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Conservation organizations must adapt to respond to the ecological impacts of global change. Numerous
changes to conservation actions (eg facilitated ecological transitions, managed relocations, or increased corridordevelopment) have been recommended, but some institutional restructuring within organizations may also be needed. Here we discuss the capacity of conservation organizations to adapt to changing environmental
conditions, focusing primarily on public agencies and nonprofits active in land protection and management
in the US. After first reviewing how these organizations anticipate and detect impacts affecting target
species and ecosystems, we then discuss whether they are sufficiently flexible to prepare and respond by reallocating funding, staff, or other resources. We raise new hypotheses about how the configuration of different
organizations enables them to protect particular conservation targets and manage for particular biophysical
changes that require coordinated management actions over different spatial and temporal scales. Finally, we
provide a discussion resource to help conservation organizations assess their capacity to adapt.
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Climate change and the ecologist
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The evidence for rapid climate change now seems overwhelming. Global temperatures are predicted to rise by up to 4 °C by 2100, with associated alterations in precipitation patterns. Assessing the consequences for biodiversity, and how they might be mitigated, is a Grand Challenge in ecology.
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Effect of Risk Aversion on Prioritizing Conservation Projects
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Agencies making decisions about what threat mitigation actions to take to save which species frequently face the dilemma of whether to invest in actions with high probability of success and guaranteed benefits or to choose projects with a greater risk of failure that might provide higher benefits if they succeed. The answer to this dilemma lies in the decision maker’s aversion to risk—their unwillingness to accept uncertain outcomes. Little guidance exists on how risk preferences affect conservation investment priorities. Using a prioritization approach based on cost effectiveness, we compared 2 approaches: a conservative probability threshold approach that excludes investment in projects with a risk of management failure greater than a fixed level, and a variance-discounting heuristic used in economics that explicitly accounts for risk tolerance and the probabilities of management success and failure. We applied both approaches to prioritizing projects for 700 of New Zealand’s threatened species across 8303 management actions. Both decision makers’ risk tolerance and our choice of approach to dealing with risk preferences drove the prioritization solution (i.e., the species selected for management). Use of a probability threshold minimized uncertainty, but more expensive projects were selected than with variance discounting, which maximized expected benefits by selecting the management of species with higher extinction risk and higher conservation value. Explicitly incorporating risk preferences within the decision making process reduced the number of species expected to be safe from extinction because lower risk tolerance resulted in more species being excluded from management, but the approach allowed decision makers to choose a level of acceptable risk that fit with their ability to accommodate failure. We argue for transparency in risk tolerance and recommend that decision makers accept risk in an adaptive management framework to maximize benefits and avoid potential extinctions due to inefficient allocation of limited resources.
Keywords: conservation decisionmaking,cost-effectiveness analysis, management effectiveness,Project Prioritization Protocol, risk analysis, risk tolerance, threatened species, uncertainty
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Conservation VALUE OF ROADLESS AREAS FOR VULNERABLE FISH AND Wildlife Species in the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, Montana
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The Crown of the Continent Ecosystem is one of the most spectacular landscapes
in the world and most ecologically intact ecosystem remaining in the
contiguous United States. Straddling the Continental Divide in the heart of the
Rocky Mountains, the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem extends for >250
miles from the fabled Blackfoot River valley in northwest Montana north to Elk
Pass south of Banff and Kootenay National Parks in Canada. It reaches from
the short-grass plains along the eastern slopes of the Rockies westward nearly
100 miles to the Flathead and Kootenai River valleys. The Crown sparkles with
a variety of dramatic landscapes, clean sources of blue waters, and diversity of
plants and animals.Over the past century, citizens and government leaders have worked hard to
save the core of this splendid ecosystem in Montana by establishing world-class
parks and wildernesses – coupled with conservation of critical wildlife habitat
on state and private lands along the periphery. These include jewels such as
Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall-Scapegoat-Great Bear Wilderness,
the first-ever Tribal Wilderness in the Mission Mountains, numerous State of
Montana Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs), and vital private lands through
land trusts such as The Nature Conservancy. Their combined efforts have
protected 3.3 million acres and constitute a truly impressive commitment to
conservation. It was a remarkable legacy and great gift …but, in the face of new
challenges, it may not have been enough.
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Challenges in the conservation, rehabilitation and recovery of native stream salmonid populations: beyond the 2010 Luarca symposium
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– In May 2010, I chaired a session on challenges to salmonid conservation at the international symposium
‘Advances in the population ecology of stream salmonids’ in Luarca, Spain. I suggested that in addition to scientific challenges, a major challenge will be improving the links between ecologists, conservationists and policy makers. Because the Luarca symposium focused mainly on ecological research, little time was explicitly devoted to conservation. My objective in this paper is to further discuss the role of ecological research in informing salmonid conservation. I begin with a brief overview of research highlights from the symposium. I then use selected examples to show that ecological research has already contributed much towards informing salmonid conservation, but that ecologists will always be faced with limitations in their predictive ability. I suggest that conservation will need to move forward regardless of these limitations, and I call attention to some recent efforts wherein ecological research has played a crucial role. I conclude that ecologists should take urgent action to ensure that their results are availableto inform resource managers, conservation organisations and policy makers regarding past losses and present threats to native, locally-adapted salmonid stocks.
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Comment: Don’t judge species on their origins
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SUMMARY: Conservationists should assess organisms on environmental impact rather than on whether they are natives, argue Mark Davis and 18 other ecologists. FROM THE TEXT: Nativeness is not a sign of evolutionary fitness or of a species having positive effects.The insect currently suspected to be killing
more trees than any other in North Americais the native mountain pine beetle Dendroctonus ponderosae. Classifying biota according to their adherence to cultural standards of belonging, citizenship, fair play and
morality does not advance our understanding of ecology. Over the past few decades, this perspective has led many conservation and restoration efforts down paths that make little ecological or economic sense
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Comment: Time to Model all Life on Earth
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To help transform our understanding of the biosphere, ecologists — like climate scientists — should simulate whole ecosystems, argue Drew Purves and colleagues. FROM THE TEXT: General circulation models, which simulatethe physics and chemistry of Earth’s land, ocean and atmosphere, embody scientists’ best understanding of how the climate system works and are crucial to making predictions and shaping policies. We think that analogous general ecosystem models (GEMs) could radically improve understanding of the biosphere and inform policy decisions about biodiversity and conservation.
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COMMENTARY: Overshoot, adapt and recover
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We will probably overshoot our current climate targets, so policies of adaptation and recovery need much more attention, say Martin Parry, Jason Lowe and Clair Hanson. FROM THE TEXT: “We should be planning to adapt
to at least 4°C of warming.”
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