Craig Groves

NATURE RESERVES: DO THEY CAPTURE THE FULL RANGE OF AMERICA'S BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY?

Less than 6% of the coterminous United States is in nature reserves. As- sessment of the occurrence of nature reserves across ranges of elevation and soil productivity classes indicates that nature reserves are most frequently found at higher elevations and on less productive soils. The distribution of plants and animals suggests that the greatest number of species is found at lower elevations. A preliminary assessment of the occurrence of mapped land cover types indicates that ;60% of mapped cover types have ,10% of their area in nature reserves. Land ownership patterns show that areas of lower elevation and more productive soils are most often privately owned and already extensively converted to urban and agricultural uses. Thus any effort to establish a system of nature reserves that captures the full geographical and ecological range of cover types and species must fully engage the private sector.

Policy-driven versus Evidence-based Conservation: A Review of Political Targets and Biological Needs

Abstract “How much is enough?” is a question that conservationists, scientists, and policymakers have struggled with for years in conservation planning. To answer this question, and to ensure the long-term protection of biodiversity, many have sought to establish quantitative targets or goals based on the percentage of area in a country or region that is conserved. In recent years, policy-driven targets have frequently been faulted for their lack of biological foundation. In this manuscript, we reviewed 159 articles reporting or proposing 222 conservation targets and assessed differences between policy-driven and evidence-based approaches. Our findings suggest that the average percentages of area recommended for evidence-based targets were nearly three times as high as those recommended in policy-driven approaches. Implementing a minimalist, policy-driven approach to conservation could result in unanticipated decreases in species numbers and increases in the number of endangered species.

Incorporating climate change into systematic conservation planning

The principles of systematic conservation planning are now widely used by governments and non-government organizations alike to develop biodiversity conservation plans for countries, states, regions, and ecoregions. Many of the species and ecosystems these plans were designed to conserve are now being affected by climate change, and there is a critical need to incorporate new and complementary approaches into these plans that will aid species and ecosystems in adjusting to potential climate change impacts. We propose five approaches to climate change adaptation that can be integrated into existing or new biodiversity conservation plans: (1) conserving the geophysical stage, (2) protecting climatic refugia, (3) enhancing regional connectivity, (4) sustaining ecosystem process and function, and (5) capitalizing on opportunities emerging in response to climate change. We discuss both key assumptions behind each approach and the trade-offs involved in using the approach for conservation planning. We also summarize additional data beyond those typically used in systematic conservation plans required to implement these approaches. A major strength of these approaches is that they are largely robust to the uncertainty in how climate impacts may manifest in any given region.

Designing a resilient network of marine protected areas for Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea

The Nature Conservancy takes a strategic and systematic approach to conservation planning. Ecoregional assessments are used to set goals and identify geographical priorities, and Conservation Action Planning is used to develop strategic plans for conservation areas. This study demonstrates how these planning processes were applied at the seascape scale based on a case study of Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea. Conservation Action Planning was used to identify key threats and strategies, and systematic conservation planning (similar to that used for ecoregional assessments) was used to design a network of marine protected areas to be resilient to the threat of climate change. The design was based on an assessment of biodiversity and socio-economic values, and identified 14 Areas of Interest that meet specific conservation goals. A detailed community-based planning process is now underway with local communities that own and manage these areas to refine and implement the marine protected area network.

The Adaptation for Conservation Targets (ACT) Framework: A Tool for Incorporating Climate Change into Natural Resource

As natural resource management agencies and conservation organizations seek guidance on responding to climate change, myriad potential actions and strategies have been proposed for increasing the long-term viability of some attributes of natural systems. Managers need practical tools for selecting among these actions and strategies to develop a tailored management approach for specific targets at a given location. We developed and present one such tool, the participatory Adaptation for Conservation Targets (ACT) framework, which considers the effects of climate change in the development of management actions for particular species, ecosystems and ecological functions. Our framework is based on the premise that effective adaptation of management to climate change can rely on local knowledge of an ecosystem and does not necessarily require detailed projections of climate change or its effects. We illustrate the ACT framework by applying it to an ecological function in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, USA)—water flows in the upper Yellowstone River. We suggest that the ACT framework is a practical tool for initiating adaptation planning, and for generating and communicating specific management interventions given an increasingly altered, yet uncertain, climate.

REVIEW: The evolving linkage between conservation science and practice at The Nature Conservancy.

Summary The Nature Conservancy (TNC) was founded by ecologists as a United States land trust to purchase parcels of habitat for the purpose of scientific study. It has evolved into a global organization working in 35 countries ‘to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends’. TNC is now the worlds largest conservation non‐governmental organization (NGO), an early adopter of advances in ecological theory and a producer of new science as a result of practising conservation. The Nature Conservancys initial scientific innovation was the use of distributional data for rare species and ecological communities to systematically target lands for conservation. This innovation later evolved into a more rigorous approach known as ‘Conservation by Design’ that contained elements of systematic conservation planning, strategic planning and monitoring and evaluation. The next scientific transition at TNC was a move to landscape‐scale projects, motivated by ideas from landscape ecology. Because the scale at which land could be set aside in areas untouched by humans fell far short of the spatial scale demanded by conservation, TNC became involved with best management practices for forestry, grazing, agriculture, hydropower and other land uses. A third scientific innovation at TNC came with the pursuit of multiobjective planning that accounts for economic and resource needs in the same plans that seek to protect biodiversity. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment prompted TNC to become increasingly concerned with ecosystem services and the material risk to people posed by ecosystem deterioration. Finally, because conservation depends heavily upon negotiation, TNC has recently recruited social scientists, economists and communication experts. One aspect still missing, however, is a solid scientific understanding of thresholds that should be averted. Synthesis and applications. Over its 60‐plus year history, scientific advances have informed The Nature Conservancy (TNC)s actions and strategies, and in turn the evolving practice of conservation has altered the type of science sought by TNC in order to maximize its conservation effectiveness.

Where now for protected areas? Setting the stage for the 2014 World Parks Congress

Protected areas are regarded as the most important tool in the conservation toolbox. They cover > 12% of the Earths terrestrial area, with over half of this designated since 1970, and are thus a unique example of governments and other stakeholders consciously changing management of land and water at a significant scale. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has a global programme to complete ecologically-representative protected area networks, and this is driving the creation of large numbers of new protected areas. But there is also growing criticism of protected areas because of the social costs of protection and doubts about their effectiveness. We acknowledge this criticism but believe that it is over-stated and applied to a protected area model that has already been replaced by newer thinking. As protected areas are becoming more complex in concept and more complicated in management, we review the six most important changes affecting them over the last 2 decades: (1) a new protected area definition with more emphasis on nature conservation; (2) a plurality of management and governance models; (3) acknowledgement of wider protected area benefits beyond nature conservation; (4) greater social safeguards for protected areas; (5) evidence that protected areas are effective conservation tools; and (6) a new emphasis on larger protected areas, transboundary protected areas, connectivity conservation and landscape approaches. We conclude by considering fresh challenges as a result of policy changes and the global criminal wildlife trade, and consider the potential of the forthcoming 2014 IUCN World Parks Congress.

Conservation stories, conservation science, and the role of the intergovernmental platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Science and stories are not the same thing, although stories have long been the outward face of conservation science. The rate of species’ extinctions that framed the launch of our discipline was too high not to use whatever communication tools would be most effective to get people to address the crisis. We practiced science, and science structured the programs conservation practitioners implemented, but science showed no promise of changing peoples’ attitudes and behaviors. Stories did that, and we used them to convince the world of the urgency of paying attention to the global loss of biodiversity (genes, species, and ecosystems). But with the launch of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES; www.ipbes.net), we are going to have to more carefully and strategically untangle our stories from our science. The IPBES was established by more than 90 governments in Panama City, Panama, on 21 April 2012 as a “global mechanism recognized by both the scientific and policy communities that will gather, analyze, and synthesize information to inform decision making in a range of policy fora such as global and regional environmental conventions and development policy dialogues.” The IPBES is promising to provide scientific information on biodiversity and ecosystem services to governments and will have four main functions: identify and prioritize scientific information needed by policy makers and catalyze efforts to generate new knowledge, perform regular and timely assessments of knowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem services and their relations; support policy formulation and implementation; and prioritize capacity building and call for financial and other support for the highest priority needs. Although national governments are the major clients of IPBES, there is a major effort to involve the scientific community, nongovernmental stakeholders, and civil society in general in its activities. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has called for IPBES to be the “most authoritative, multidisciplinary, overarching mechanism on biodiversity and ecosystem services” (IUCN 2011). The IPBES has the potential to give conservation science the visibility that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave to climate science. Climate science has captured world attention by relating changes in climate to events that affect the lives of people (e.g., sea-level rise, severe storms), while conservation science has languished. The lack of world attention to our discipline may change as activities designed to increase governments’ attention to biodiversity and its connections to human welfare are conducted by the IPBES (Perring et al. 2011; Vohland et al. 2011). Many commentators have remarked on the similarity between IPBES and IPCC. The journal Nature (2010) editorialized, “Wanted: an IPCC for Biodiversity,” and Larigauderie and Mooney (2010) call for IPBES to be an “IPCC-like mechanism for biodiversity.” We suggest that conservation professionals need to be careful as biodiversity conservation becomes the priority we hoped it would. The stories conservation practitioners have told to gain public support may be chosen for analysis rather than the science underlying them. Our reliance on storytelling is understandable because storytelling is an ancient human behavior and a very effective way to engage an audience. We tell compelling stories about the impending loss of a species and the speed of ecosystem destruction. We tell success stories to inspire people to replicate success. These stories, originally told by conservation practitioners, are written down and widely shared by public affairs, development, and communication scribes. As with court scribes of old, these scribes make the stories more engaging, more inspiring, and scarier—with the aim of engaging more donors and reaching a broader public. The IPBES and its activities may focus on some of our stories that will not stand up to careful scientific scrutiny. We are concerned about not only the conflation of stories with science, but also about the robustness of the science underlying the stories. If the science is merely an inspiration for the stories then it has probably been shielded from testing and refining through the rough

Use of monitoring data to support conservation management and policy decisions in Micronesia.

Adaptive management implies a continuous knowledge-based decision-making process in conservation. Yet, the coupling of scientific monitoring and management frameworks remains rare in practice because formal and informal communication pathways are lacking. We examined 4 cases in Micronesia where conservation practitioners are using new knowledge in the form of monitoring data to advance marine conservation. These cases were drawn from projects in Micronesia Challenge jurisdictions that received funding for coupled monitoring-to-management frameworks and encompassed all segments of adaptive management. Monitoring in Helen Reef, Republic of Palau, was catalyzed by coral bleaching and revealed evidence of overfishing that led to increased enforcement and outreach. In Nimpal Channel, Yap, Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), monitoring the recovery of marine food resources after customary restrictions were put in place led to new, more effective enforcement approaches. Monitoring in Laolao Bay, Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, was catalyzed by observable sediment loads from poor land-use practices and resulted in actions that reduced land-based threats, particularly littering and illegal burning, and revealed additional threats from overfishing. Pohnpei (FSM) began monitoring after observed declines in grouper spawning aggregations. This data led to adjusting marine conservation area boundaries and implementing market-based size class restrictions. Two themes emerged from these cases. First, in each case monitoring was conducted in a manner relevant to the social and ecological systems and integrated into the decision-making process. Second, conservation practitioners and scientists in these cases integrated culturally appropriate stakeholder engagement throughout all phases of the adaptive management cycle. More broadly, our study suggests, when describing adaptive management, providing more details on how monitoring and management activities are linked at similar spatial scales and across similar time frames can enhance the application of knowledge.

Implementation strategies for systematic conservation planning

The field of systematic conservation planning has grown substantially, with hundreds of publications in the peer-reviewed literature and numerous applications to regional conservation planning globally. However, the extent to which systematic conservation plans have influenced management is unclear. This paper analyses factors that facilitate the transition from assessment to implementation in conservation planning, in order to help integrate assessment and implementation into a seamless process. We propose a framework for designing implementation strategies, taking into account three critical planning aspects: processes, inputs, and context. Our review identified sixteen processes, which we broadly grouped into four themes and eight inputs. We illustrate how the framework can be used to inform context-dependent implementation strategies, using the process of ‘engagement’ as an example. The example application includes both lessons learned from successfully implemented plans across the engagement spectrum, and highlights key barriers that can hinder attempts to bridge the assessment-implementation gap.