Cindy E. Hauser

Streamlining 'search and destroy': cost-effective surveillance for invasive species management.

Invasive species surveillance has typically been targeted to where the species is most likely to occur. However, spatially varying environmental characteristics and land uses may affect more than just the probability of occurrence. Biodiversity or economic value, and the ease of detection and control are also likely to vary. We incorporate these factors into a detection and treatment model of a low-density invader to determine the surveillance strategy that minimizes expected management costs. Sites with a high probability of invader occurrence and great benefits associated with detection warrant intensive surveillance; however, the optimum investment is a nonlinear function of these factors. Environments where the invader is relatively easy to detect are prioritized for surveillance, although only a moderate investment is necessary to ensure a high probability of detection. Intensive surveillance effort may be allocated to other sites if the probability of occurrence, budget and/or expected benefits is sufficiently high.

Optimal adaptive management for the translocation of a threatened species

Active adaptive management (AAM) is an approach to wildlife management that acknowledges our imperfect understanding of natural systems and allows for some resolution of our uncertainty. Such learning may be characterized by risky strategies in the short term. Experimentation is only considered acceptable if it is expected to be repaid by increased returns in the long term, generated by an improved understanding of the system. By setting AAM problems within a decision theory framework, we can find this optimal balance between achieving our objectives in the short term and learning for the long term. We apply this approach to managing the translocation of the bridled nailtail wallaby (Onychogalea fraenata), an endangered species from Queensland, Australia. Our task is to allocate captive-bred animals, between two sites or populations to maximize abundance at the end of the translocation project. One population, at the original site of occupancy, has a known growth rate. A population potentially could be established at a second site of suitable habitat, but we can only learn the growth rate of this new population by monitoring translocated animals. We use a mathematical programming technique called stochastic dynamic programming, which determines optimal management decisions for every possible management trajectory. We find optimal strategies under active and passive adaptive management, which enables us to examine the balance between learning and managing directly. Learning is more often optimal when we have less prior information about the uncertain population growth rate at the new site, when the growth rate at the original site is low, and when there is substantial time remaining in the translocation project. Few studies outside the area of optimal harvesting have framed AAM within a decision theory context. This is the first application to threatened species translocation.

SHOULD MANAGED POPULATIONS BE MONITORED EVERY YEAR

We often need to estimate the size of wild populations to determine the appropriate management action, for example, to set a harvest quota. Monitoring is usually planned under the assumption that it must be carried out at fixed intervals in time, typically annually, before the harvest quota is set. However, monitoring can be very expensive, and we should weigh the cost of monitoring against the improvement that it makes in decision making. A less costly alternative to monitoring annually is to predict the population size using a population model and information from previous surveys. In this paper, the problem of monitoring frequency is posed within a decision-theory framework. We discover that a monitoring regime that varies according to the state of the system can outperform fixed-interval monitoring. This idea is illustrated using data for a red kangaroo (Macropus rufus) population in South Australia. Whether or not one should monitor in a given year is dependent on the estimated population density in the previous year, the uncertainty in that population estimate, and past rainfall. We discover that monitoring is important when a model-based prediction of population density is very uncertain. This may occur if monitoring has not taken place for several years, or if rainfall has been above average. Monitoring is also important when prior information suggests that the population is near a critical threshold in population abundance. However, monitoring is less important when the optimal management action would not be altered by new information.

Active adaptive conservation of threatened species in the face of uncertainty

Adaptive management has a long history in the natural resource management literature, but despite this, few practitioners have developed adaptive strategies to conserve threatened species. Active adaptive management provides a framework for valuing learning by measuring the degree to which it improves long-run management outcomes. The challenge of an active adaptive approach is to find the correct balance between gaining knowledge to improve management in the future and achieving the best short-term outcome based on current knowledge. We develop and analyze a framework for active adaptive management of a threatened species. Our case study concerns a novel facial tumor disease affecting the Australian threatened species Sarcophilus harrisii: the Tasmanian devil. We use stochastic dynamic programming with Bayesian updating to identify the management strategy that maximizes the Tasmanian devil population growth rate, taking into account improvements to management through learning to better understand disease latency and the relative effectiveness of three competing management options. Exactly which management action we choose each year is driven by the credibility of competing hypotheses about disease latency and by the population growth rate predicted by each hypothesis under the competing management actions. We discover that the optimal combination of management actions depends on the number of sites available and the time remaining to implement management. Our approach to active adaptive management provides a framework to identify the optimal amount of effort to invest in learning to achieve long-run conservation objectives.

Estimating detection-effort curves for plants using search experiments.

Recent studies suggest that plant detection is not perfect, even for large, highly visible plants. However, this is often not taken into account during plant surveys where failing to detect a plant when present can result in poor management and biodiversity outcomes. Including knowledge of imperfect detectability into survey design and evaluation is hampered by the paucity of empirical data, and in particular, how detectability will change with search effort, plant size and abundance, the surrounding vegetation, or observer experience. We carried out a search experiment to measure the detection-effort curve for the invasive species orange hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum) in Victoria, Australia. The probability that hawkweed was detected increased with increasing search effort and the number of plants at the location. While detection probability varied between observers, experience appeared to have little effect. Accounting for imperfect detectability in plant surveys holds much promise for improved survey design and biodiversity outcomes, and we encourage other researchers to undertake similar experiments to further our understanding of plant detectability.

Resource allocation for efficient environmental management

Environmental managers must decide how to invest available resources. Researchers have previously determined how to allocate conservation resources among regions, design nature reserves, allocate funding to species conservation programs, design biodiversity surveys and monitoring programs, manage species and invest in greenhouse gas mitigation schemes. However, these issues have not been addressed with a unified theory. Furthermore, uncertainty is prevalent in environmental management, and needs to be considered to manage risks. We present a theory for optimal environmental management, synthesizing previous approaches to the topic and incorporating uncertainty. We show that the theory solves a diverse range of important problems of resource allocation, including distributing conservation resources among the worlds biodiversity hotspots; surveillance to detect the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus in Thailand; and choosing survey methods for the insect order Hemiptera. Environmental management decisions are similar to decisions about financial investments, with trade-offs between risk and reward.

HOW WE VALUE THE FUTURE AFFECTS OUR DESIRE TO LEARN

Active adaptive management is increasingly advocated in natural resource management and conservation biology. Active adaptive management looks at the benefit of employing strategies that may be suboptimal in the near term but which may provide additional information that will facilitate better management in future years. However, when comparing management policies it is traditional to weigh future rewards geometrically (at a constant discount rate) which results in far-distant rewards making a negligible contribution to the total benefit. Under such a discounting scheme active adaptive management is rarely of much benefit, especially if learning is slow. A growing number of authors advocate the use of alternative forms of discounting when evaluating optimal strategies for long-term decisions which have a social component. We consider a theoretical harvested population for which the recovery rate from an unharvestably small population size is unknown and look at the effects on the benefit of experimental management when three different forms of discounting are employed. Under geometric discounting, with a discount rate of 5% per annum, managing to learn actively had little benefit. This study demonstrates that discount functions which weigh future rewards more heavily result in more conservative harvesting strategies, but do not necessarily encourage active learning. Furthermore, the optimal management strategy is not equivalent to employing geometric discounting at a lower rate. If alternative discount functions are made mandatory in calculating optimal management strategies for environmental management then this will affect the structure of optimal management regimes and change when and how much we are willing to invest in learning.

Quantifying Plant Colour and Colour Difference as Perceived by Humans Using Digital Images

Human perception of plant leaf and flower colour can influence species management. Colour and colour contrast may influence the detectability of invasive or rare species during surveys. Quantitative, repeatable measures of plant colour are required for comparison across studies and generalisation across species. We present a standard method for measuring plant leaf and flower colour traits using images taken with digital cameras. We demonstrate the method by quantifying the colour of and colour difference between the flowers of eleven grassland species near Falls Creek, Australia, as part of an invasive species detection experiment. The reliability of the method was tested by measuring the leaf colour of five residential garden shrub species in Ballarat, Australia using five different types of digital camera. Flowers and leaves had overlapping but distinct colour distributions. Calculated colour differences corresponded well with qualitative comparisons. Estimates of proportional cover of yellow flowers identified using colour measurements correlated well with estimates obtained by measuring and counting individual flowers. Digital SLR and mirrorless cameras were superior to phone cameras and point-and-shoot cameras for producing reliable measurements, particularly under variable lighting conditions. The analysis of digital images taken with digital cameras is a practicable method for quantifying plant flower and leaf colour in the field or lab. Quantitative, repeatable measurements allow for comparisons between species and generalisations across species and studies. This allows plant colour to be related to human perception and preferences and, ultimately, species management.

Consequences of inconsistently classifying woodland birds

There is a longstanding debate regarding the need for ecology to develop consistent terminology. On one hand, consistent terminology would aid in synthesizing results between studies and ease communication of results. On the other hand, there is no proof that standardizing terminology is necessary and it could limit the scope of research in certain fields. This article is the first to provide evidence that terminology can influence results of ecological studies. We find that researchers are classifying ‘woodland birds’ inconsistently because of their research aims and linguistic uncertainty. Importantly, we show that these inconsistencies introduce a systematic bias to results. We argue that using inconsistent terms can bias the results of studies, thereby harming the field of ecology, because scientific progress relies on the ability to synthesize information from multiple studies.

Optimal surveillance strategy for invasive species management when surveys stop after detection

Invasive species are a cause for concern in natural and economic systems and require both monitoring and management. There is a trade-off between the amount of resources spent on surveying for the species and conducting early management of occupied sites, and the resources that are ultimately spent in delayed management at sites where the species was present but undetected. Previous work addressed this optimal resource allocation problem assuming that surveys continue despite detection until the initially planned survey effort is consumed. However, a more realistic scenario is often that surveys stop after detection (i.e., follow a “removal” sampling design) and then management begins. Such an approach will indicate a different optimal survey design and can be expected to be more efficient. We analyze this case and compare the expected efficiency of invasive species management programs under both survey methods. We also evaluate the impact of mis-specifying the type of sampling approach during the program design phase. We derive analytical expressions that optimize resource allocation between monitoring and management in surveillance programs when surveys stop after detection. We do this under a scenario of unconstrained resources and scenarios where survey budget is constrained. The efficiency of surveillance programs is greater if a “removal survey” design is used, with larger gains obtained when savings from early detection are high, occupancy is high, and survey costs are not much lower than early management costs at a site. Designing a surveillance program disregarding that surveys stop after detection can result in an efficiency loss. Our results help guide the design of future surveillance programs for invasive species. Addressing program design within a decision-theoretic framework can lead to a better use of available resources. We show how species prevalence, its detectability, and the benefits derived from early detection can be considered.