查看更多>>摘要：? 2022Freshwater biodiversity is in a state of crisis. The recent development of a global emergency recovery plan to “bend the curve” for freshwater biodiversity lacks the necessary details for implementation in a regional context. Using Canada as an example, we describe a toolbox intended to equip decision-makers and practitioners with evidence-based tools for addressing threats to freshwater biodiversity. The toolbox includes two rubric-based scoring tools to inform users about the level of the reliability (e.g., transparent methods, critical appraisal) and relevancy to Canadian freshwater systems (e.g., habitat, species) of an evidence synthesis. Those scoring tools were applied to 259 evidence syntheses, also included in the toolbox, across fifty freshwater management actions. Habitat Creation, Invasive Species Removal, and Revegetation were found to have reliable evidence syntheses but there remain several actions for which the syntheses are not robust and where the evidence base is unreliable. We suggest the need for more rigorously conducted empirical tests of freshwater management actions, further evidence synthesis, and clearer conveyance of implications for decision-makers and practitioners. Decision-makers and practitioners should use the two scoring tools on syntheses outside this project and tailor them to their regions. Given the global interest in addressing the freshwater biodiversity crisis and the necessity to engage and empower decision-makers and practitioners on a regional basis, we anticipate this toolbox will serve as a model for regions beyond Canada. Future studies to understand if and how the toolbox is used will be needed to make refinements and ensure it benefits freshwater biodiversity.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdSixty years ago, Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring, which focused the world's attention on the dangers of pesticides. Since that time human impacts on the environment have accelerated and this has included reshaping the chemical landscape. Here we evaluate the severity of exposure of tropical terrestrial mammals to pesticides, pharmaceuticals, plastics, particulate matter associated with forest fires, and nanoparticles. We consider how these environmental contaminants interact with one another, with the endocrine and microbiome systems of mammals, and with other environmental changes to produce a larger negative impact than might initially be expected. Using this background and building on past conservation success, such as mending the ozone layer and decreasing acid rain, we tackle the difficult issue of how to construct meaningful policies and conservation plans that include a consideration of the chemical landscape. We document that policy solutions to improving the chemical landscape are already known and the path of how to construct a healthier planet is discernible.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdA pervasive but understudied global change is occurring in the Anthropocene. Wildlife mass mortality events (MMEs) are increasing in frequency causing the abrupt entry of unusually large amounts of carrion into ecosystems, while most vertebrate obligate scavenger species are declining. We hypothesized that behavioral plasticity could still allow obligate-vertebrate scavengers to maintain carrion recycling with increasing carrion biomass as a result of relaxed competition, and that consumption is likely to be driven by those species less behaviorally constrained. We designed an experiment by establishing plots with increasing carrion biomass. The lowest carrion biomass represented a normal level of carrion with a single carcass, with each subsequent level of carrion biomass roughly doubling until reaching a carrion density similar to a recent MME. We monitored behavior of two obligate scavenger species: a social feeder (i.e., black vulture, Coragyps atratus) and a relatively solitary feeder (i.e., turkey vulture, Cathartes aura). In support of our hypothesis, group size and number of individuals feeding increased at the highest carrion biomass level for the more social feeder, while the less social increased solely the number of individuals feeding. Likewise, activity pattern overlap between the species increased with carrion biomass likely because both spent more of the day consuming larger carrion inputs. The effects of these behavioral changes resulted in an increase in estimated consumption with carrion biomass, which was primarily driven by the more social species. Our results indicate that vulture behavioral plasticity may be critical to maintain carrion recycling services in the Anthropocene.
Franklin M.J.M.Bedward M.Price O.F.Bradstock R.A....
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查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdForest fire size, frequency and severity are increasing worldwide, with corresponding reductions in long-unburnt habitat and greater modification of forest structure over wider areas. Understanding the implications for animals is imperative in optimizing management for species persistence and overall biodiversity. We investigated how avian responses to historical high-severity fire differ in forests at short (five years) and mid-range (16 years) time since fire, including whether increased time since fire mitigates any negative responses to high-severity fire. Sites were established in fire-prone dry forests of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, Australia. A Bayesian latent variable analysis of bird data obtained from acoustic recordings was used to estimate the occurrence of 74 species in relation to time since fire (short, mid-range), the spatial extent of historical high-severity fire (limited, extensive), and their interaction. Time since fire influenced the number of species present, but only where high-severity fire had been extensive. Here, the lowest and highest number of species in the study occurred where time since fire was short and mid-range, respectively. At least ten species responded either positively or negatively to high-severity fire, but for nine of these species the response did not change with time since fire, potentially implicating persistent effects of such fires on habitat. Six other species were unlikely to occur at short time since fire, requiring habitat at mid-range time since fire. This finding suggests that these species would benefit from strategic retention of forest with longer fire-ages under increased fire activity associated with climate change.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 The AuthorsThere is an urgent need to quantify the potential for conservation interventions to effectively manage the impacts of climate change on species' populations and ecological communities. In this first quantitative global assessment of biodiversity conservation interventions for climate change adaptation, we identified 77 peer-reviewed studies, including 443 cases describing the response of individual species' populations or assemblages to particular interventions, whilst also accounting for responses to climate change or particular climatic variables. Eighty-two percent of studies were from Europe or North America. In 30% of reported cases, interventions were regarded as beneficial (having a significant positive impact on a population also affected by a climatic variable). However, beneficial outcomes were more likely to be reported when fewer responses were analysed, suggesting a publication bias in the reporting of beneficial responses. Management focused on particular species (e.g. targeted habitat management and species recovery interventions) was modelled to have a higher probability (73%) of being beneficial than more generic interventions such as land and water management (22%) or protection (17%). Although more data on the effectiveness of climate change adaptation for species conservation are required, the diversity of examples reviewed suggests that climate change adaptation can successfully reduce negative impacts of, or enhance positive responses to, climate change. Targeted interventions maximise the persistence of the most vulnerable populations, whilst expanding habitat management and site protection interventions may benefit the largest number of species and ecosystems. The effective monitoring and evaluation of adaptation interventions is required to improve this evidence-base for future decision-making.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 The Author(s)Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been established across the globe to mitigate the effects of multiple stressors on marine communities. In many locations, MPAs have generated positive effects on fish communities, but the impacts of fishing pressure—the primary stressor MPAs seek to manage—have not been well investigated. We examined changes in fish biomass inside and outside of no-take MPAs over 14 years in central California, USA. Using data from the community-based science program, the California Collaborative Fisheries Research Program, we tested which environmental and human-induced stressors most influence the strength of MPA responses. While temperature and productivity were included in the best fit model, we found that fine-scale fishing effort data, following reserve implementation, best explained the spatial variation in fish community responses to MPAs. Specifically, differences in fish biomass between MPAs and sites open to fishing were larger for reserves near heavily fished locations and these areas exhibited the highest rate of change in fish biomass, indicating strong positive effects of the MPA on the most heavily exploited fish communities. As MPAs continue to be used as a prominent conservation strategy in coastal systems, managers should consider both the suite of human-induced (socio-ecological interactions) and environmental conditions that may alter MPA success as well as establish long-term monitoring programs to fully assess the functionality of marine reserves into the future.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022In recent times arguments for conservation allying with corporations have been prominent and not least in the advocacy of ‘new conservation’. This has set up a false dichotomy between traditional conservation and concern for humanity. The supposed intrinsic/instrumental, human/non-human conflict in conservation appears as a diversion from the actual problem which is the modern organisation of society as a capital accumulating machine based on competition and shifting costs on to others. This is particularly evident in the corporate and financial forms of capitalism which have been taking over conservation, and more broadly environmental policy debates. Pragmatism in the form of ‘new conservation’ is argued to involve contradictions going back to Pinchot and encapsulated in modern ideas of sustainable development. This has accelerated environmental destruction and social inequity, exploitation and injustice. The loss of biodiversity will accelerate with the financialisation of Nature via a range of new instruments (e.g. biodiversity banking, trading, offsetting, green/blue bonds, species credits, extinction futures markets and climate catastrophe bonds) that are being promoted by major conservation NGOs (e.g. WWF, TNC). Preserving, empowering and developing alternative social-ecological forms of running economies is then seen as the central issue for protecting both humans and non-humans alike. Divisions in conservation are argued to be real conflicts over the form and function of economic systems and the currently dominant role of capitalism in its corporate and financial forms.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 The AuthorsLarge carnivores are making remarkable comebacks in Europe, but how this affects human-wildlife conflict remains unclear. Rebounding carnivore populations lead to increasing livestock depredation, which in turn leads to greater economic losses for farmers. However, returning carnivores could also influence the behavior of wild ungulates, which are themselves responsible for major crop damage and associated economic losses. Here, we exploit the natural experiment of a rebounding wolf population in the Italian Apennines to study how this affected both types of human-wildlife conflic. We used large datasets of wolf occurrences (n = 351), livestock depredation events (n = 165), and crop damage events by wild boar (n = 3442) to independently model the determinants of livestock depredation and crop damage distribution in relation to wolf habitat suitability over a ten-year period of increasing wolf numbers. These analyses yielded two major insights. First, livestock depredations were mainly related to insufficient prevention measures (e.g. lacking fencing) rather than landscape context, providing a clear pathway to conflict mitigation. Second, crop damage decreased in areas of higher wolf habitat suitability and became more likely in areas of lower wolf habitat suitability, closer to settlements. This suggests increasing predation pressure forces wild boars to avoid the most suitable wolf habitat, leading to a redistribution of crop damage in the landscape. More generally, our study highlights complex human-wildlife interactions as large carnivores recover in human-dominated landscapes, suggesting that multiple, co-occurring conflicts need to be assessed jointly and adaptively in order to foster coexistence between humans and wildlife.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdAlthough critical to evaluating success, monitoring is often neglected in ecological restoration. An important question is how much area should be sampled to adequately monitor restoration projects, particularly as projects become larger. We elucidate this issue by testing the following hypotheses: There is an optimal sampling area (OSA) that efficiently captures variation in the estimation of ecological indicators; The restoration intervention and forest type affect OSA; The OSA change over time as restoration projects age. Information on large-scale vegetation monitoring (n = 374) in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest was used to test our hypotheses. We studied moderately assisted recovery (MAR) and lightly assisted recovery (LAR) projects within three forest types (50.5-ha of sampling). The projects were between three months and seven years in age. We calculated the variance for 11 indicators and the proportion of a restoration site that was sampled. We performed segmented regressions to find the OSA. Across all indicators, OSA ranged from 0.25–2.16% for MAR and 0.24–4.67% for LAR. There was weak evidence that OSA was greater in LAR projects (P = 0.052) and semideciduous seasonal forest type (P = 0.060). OSA increased over time, reaching 4.0% of the project area for projects seven years in age. By knowing the OSA for a range of indicators, practitioners can plan for the minimum monitoring needed to evaluate the restoration trajectory confidently and avoid vague or erroneous conclusions. The restoration of large areas will mark this decade, and this study helps fill the knowledge gap on how to monitor them more effectively.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022Migratory birds generally use one or more stopover sites for rest and/or refuelling during long-distance migration where a large abundance of diverse species can concentrate into temporary assemblages. Habitat loss at stopover sites has resulted in population declines for many species, in particular shorebirds along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. However, the consequences of habitat loss on the characteristics of bird assemblages at specific stopover sites are still unclear. We compared the results of shorebird surveys during northward migration between an “early” study period (1996 to 2005) and a “late” study period (2013 to 2014) at 14 stopover sites on the Yellow Sea coast in China, where a large tidal habitat area for shorebirds was destroyed. The total tidal flat area decreased by 35.6%, while the total shorebird abundance decreased by 7.8%, suggesting increased competition for space and food among shorebirds at stopover sites. However, changes in bird abundance (?72.9% to +210.0%) were not significantly related to tidal flat area changes (?71.2% to ?2.0%) at the sites. Bray–Curtis similarity analysis indicated that community composition significantly differed among sites, but was similar within sites between study periods. This suggests habitat conditions, which determine the composition of bird communities, exhibited consistent site differences between study periods. These results imply that habitat loss at one stopover site is unlikely to be offset by conserving others; thus, protecting an extensive number of existing key stopover sites is crucial for the conservation of migratory birds.
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