Elizabeth A. Law

Importance of Baseline Specification in Evaluating Conservation Interventions and Achieving No Net Loss of Biodiversity

There is an urgent need to improve the evaluation of conservation interventions. This requires specifying an objective and a frame of reference from which to measure performance. Reference frames can be baselines (i.e., known biodiversity at a fixed point in history) or counterfactuals (i.e., a scenario that would have occurred without the intervention). Biodiversity offsets are interventions with the objective of no net loss of biodiversity (NNL). We used biodiversity offsets to analyze the effects of the choice of reference frame on whether interventions met stated objectives. We developed 2 models to investigate the implications of setting different frames of reference in regions subject to various biodiversity trends and anthropogenic impacts. First, a general analytic model evaluated offsets against a range of baseline and counterfactual specifications. Second, a simulation model then replicated these results with a complex real world case study: native grassland offsets in Melbourne, Australia. Both models showed that achieving NNL depended upon the interaction between reference frame and background biodiversity trends. With a baseline, offsets were less likely to achieve NNL where biodiversity was decreasing than where biodiversity was stable or increasing. With a no-development counterfactual, however, NNL was achievable only where biodiversity was declining. Otherwise, preventing development was better for biodiversity. Uncertainty about compliance was a stronger determinant of success than uncertainty in underlying biodiversity trends. When only development and offset locations were considered, offsets sometimes resulted in NNL, but not across an entire region. Choice of reference frame determined feasibility and effort required to attain objectives when designing and evaluating biodiversity offset schemes. We argue the choice is thus of fundamental importance for conservation policy. Our results shed light on situations in which biodiversity offsets may be an inappropriate policy instrument Importancia de la Especificación de Línea de Base en la Evaluación de Intervenciones de Conservación y la Obtención de Ninguna Pérdida Neta de la Biodiversidad

Distinctive yellow bands on a sit-and-wait predator: prey attractant or camouflage?

Many animals have conspicuous body colour that may serve physiological, camouflage or communicative functions. This study investigated the influence of bright coloration in orb-web spiders on the response of predator and prey using Argiope keyserlingi, the St Andrews Cross spider. This species has three conspicuous yellow bands on its dorsal abdominal surface. These bands could act as camouflage devise through disruptive colouration or attract prey to the web by exploiting colour preferences in the insect visual system. In the field, naturally yellow spiders captured more prey than spiders where the yellow bands were coloured over with black marker. Similarly, some prey (Harlequin beetles: Tectocoris diophthalamus) moved towards yellow spiders and away from blackened spiders in Y-choice tests. However, native bees (Trigona carbonaria) did not seem to discriminate naturally coloured spiders at a distance when approaching a spider on a web or an empty web. Similarly, praying mantid predators (Pseudomantis albofimbriata) preferred blackened spiders over yellow spiders in a Y-maze, but they showed no preference when offered an empty web and a web occupied by a naturally coloured spider. Thus our data suggest that the main function of the conspicuous yellow bands is crypsis, perhaps via disruptive colouration that obscures the outline of the spider.

Global climatic drivers of leaf size

Leaf size, climate, and energy balance Why does plant leaf size increase at lower latitudes, as exemplified by the evolutionary success of species with very large leaves in the tropics? Wright et al. analyzed leaf data for 7670 plant species, along with climatic data, from 682 sites worldwide. Their findings reveal consistent patterns and explain why earlier predictions from energy balance theory had only limited success. The authors provide a fully quantitative explanation for the latitudinal gradient in leaf size, with implications for plant ecology and physiology, vegetation modeling, and paleobotany. Science, this issue p. 917 Day- and nighttime leaf-to-air temperature differences drive global gradients in leaf size. Leaf size varies by over a 100,000-fold among species worldwide. Although 19th-century plant geographers noted that the wet tropics harbor plants with exceptionally large leaves, the latitudinal gradient of leaf size has not been well quantified nor the key climatic drivers convincingly identified. Here, we characterize worldwide patterns in leaf size. Large-leaved species predominate in wet, hot, sunny environments; small-leaved species typify hot, sunny environments only in arid conditions; small leaves are also found in high latitudes and elevations. By modeling the balance of leaf energy inputs and outputs, we show that daytime and nighttime leaf-to-air temperature differences are key to geographic gradients in leaf size. This knowledge can enrich “next-generation” vegetation models in which leaf temperature and water use during photosynthesis play key roles.

Ecosystem services from a degraded peatland of Central Kalimantan: implications for policy, planning, and management

Increasingly, landscapes are managed for multiple objectives to balance social, economic, and environmental goals. The Ex-Mega Rice Project (EMRP) peatland in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia provides a timely example with globally significant development, carbon, and biodiversity concerns. To inform future policy, planning, and management in the EMRP, we quantified and mapped ecosystem service values, assessed their spatial interactions, and evaluated the potential provision of ecosystem services under future land-use scenarios. We focus on key policy-relevant regulating (carbon stocks and the potential for emissions reduction), provisioning (timber, crops from smallholder agriculture, palm oil), and supporting (biodiversity) services. We found that implementation of existing land-use plans has the potential to improve total ecosystem service provision. We identify a number of significant inefficiencies, trade-offs, and unintended outcomes that may arise. For example, the potential development of existing palm oil concessions over one-third of the region may shift smallholder agriculture into low-productivity regions and substantially impact carbon and biodiversity outcomes. While improved management of conservation zones may enhance the protection of carbon stocks, not all biodiversity features will be represented, and there will be a reduction in timber harvesting and agricultural production. This study highlights how ecosystem service analyses can be structured to better inform policy, planning, and management in globally significant but data-poor regions.

Mixed policies give more options in multifunctional tropical forest landscapes

Tropical forest landscapes face competing demands for conserving biodiversity, sustaining ecosystem services and accommodating production systems such as forestry and agriculture. Land-sparing and land-sharing have emerged as contrasting strategies to manage trade-offs between production and biodiversity conservation. Both strategies are evident in land-management policies at local-to-international scales. However, studies rarely report the impacts of these strategies, assessed for multiple stakeholders and multiple ecosystem services, particularly in real landscapes. Using a case study from a high-priority region for forest protection, restoration and rural development in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, we analysed the potential outcomes under 10 alternative policy scenarios, including land-sharing, land-sparing and mixed strategies. We used a novel optimization process integrating integer programming with conservation-planning software (Marxan with Zones) to identify production possibility frontiers (PPFs), highlighting the trade-off between smallholder agriculture and oil palm, subject to achievement of a set of carbon, timber and biodiversity conservation targets. All policy scenarios modelled proved to be capable of achieving all targets simultaneously. Most strategies resulted in an expansion of the PPF from the baseline, increasing the flexibility of land allocation to achieve all targets. Mixed strategies gave the greatest flexibility to achieve targets, followed closely by land-sparing. Land-sharing only performed better than the baseline when no yield penalties were incurred, and resulted in PPF contraction otherwise. Strategies assessed required a minimum of 29-37 to be placed in conservation zones, notably protecting the majority of remaining forest, but requiring little reforestation. Policy implications. Production possibility frontiers (PPFs) can evaluate a broad spectrum of land-use policy options. When using targets sought by multiple stakeholders within an ecosystem services framework, PPFs can characterize biophysical, socio-economic and institutional dimensions of policy trade-offs in heterogeneous landscapes. All 10 policy strategies assessed in our case study are biophysically capable of achieving all stakeholder objectives, provided at least 29-37 of the landscape is conserved for biodiversity. This novel methodological approach provides practical options for systematic analysis in complex, multifunctional landscapes, and could, when integrated within a larger planning and implementation process, inform the design of land-use policies that maximize stakeholder satisfaction and minimize conflict. © 2016 The Authors. Journal of Applied Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.

Ethics of Conservation Triage

Conservation triage seems to be at a stalemate between those who accept triage based on utilitarian rationalization, and those that reject it based on a number of ethical principles. We argue that without considered attention to the ethics of conservation triage we risk further polarization in the field of conservation. We draw lessons from the medical sector, where triage is more intuitive and acceptable, and also from disaster planning, to help navigate the challenges that triage entails for conservation science, practice, and policy. We clarify the consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethical stances that influence the level of acceptance of triage. We emphasize the ethical dimensions of conservation triage in principle and in practice, particularly in the context of stakeholder diversity, a wide range of possible objectives and actions, broader institutions, and significant uncertainties. A focus on a more diverse set of ethics, more considered choice of triage as a conservation tool, open communication of triage objectives, and protocols, greater consideration of risk preferences, and regular review and adaptation of triage protocols is required for conservation triage to become more acceptable among diverse conservation practitioners, institutions, and the general public. Accepting conservation triage as fundamentally an ethical problem would foster more open dialog and constructive debate about the role of conservation triage in a wider system of care.

Equity trade-offs in conservation decision making

Conservation decisions increasingly involve multiple environmental and social objectives, which result in complex decision contexts with high potential for trade-offs. Improving social equity is one such objective that is often considered an enabler of successful outcomes and a virtuous ideal in itself. Despite its idealized importance in conservation policy, social equity is often highly simplified or ill-defined and is applied uncritically. What constitutes equitable outcomes and processes is highly normative and subject to ethical deliberation. Different ethical frameworks may lead to different conceptions of equity through alternative perspectives of what is good or right. This can lead to different and potentially conflicting equity objectives in practice. We promote a more transparent, nuanced, and pluralistic conceptualization of equity in conservation decision making that particularly recognizes where multidimensional equity objectives may conflict. To help identify and mitigate ethical conflicts and avoid cases of good intentions producing bad outcomes, we encourage a more analytical incorporation of equity into conservation decision making particularly during mechanistic integration of equity objectives. We recommend that in conservation planning motivations and objectives for equity be made explicit within the problem context, methods used to incorporate equity objectives be applied with respect to stated objectives, and, should objectives dictate, evaluation of equity outcomes and adaptation of strategies be employed during policy implementation.

How to Avoid Underselling Biodiversity with Ecosystem Services: A Response to Silvertown.

Silvertown [1] questions whether ecosystem services (ES) have been oversold. Here we highlight the value of the broader ES framework beyond markets and provide guidelines on how we can avoid underselling biodiversity in a world increasingly interested in sustaining the services provided by nature.

A reckoning for reckoning.

Ghazoul et al. [1] proposed to ‘reckon’ the environmental and development implications of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). It is hard not to agree with their basic premise that any REDD-type mechanism would ideally ‘need to recognize and appropriately compensate the full range of economic, social and political net costs of REDD’, just as it is hard not to agree with the basic principles of REDD+ itself. However, we are concerned that Ghazoul et al. misrepresent the state of current REDD+ negotiations, present contradictory implications and fail to justify their opinions adequately.

Inequality in access to cultural ecosystem services from protected areas in the Chilean biodiversity hotspot

Experiences with nature through visits to protected areas provide important cultural ecosystem services that have the potential to strengthen pro-environmental attitudes and behavior. Understanding accessibility to protected areas and likely preferences for enjoying the benefits of nature visits are key factors in identifying ways to reduce inequality in access and inform the planning and management for future protected areas. We develop, at a regional scale, a novel social media database of visits to public protected areas in part of the Chilean biodiversity hotspot using geotagged photographs and assess the inequality of access using the home locations of the visitors and socio-economic data. We find that 20% of the population of the region make 87% of the visits to protected areas. The larger, more biodiverse protected areas were the most visited and provided most cultural ecosystem services. Wealthier people tend to travel further to visit protected areas while people with lower incomes tend to visit protected areas that are closer to home. By providing information on the current spatial flows of people to protected areas, we demonstrate the need to expand the protected area network, especially in lower income areas, to reduce inequality in access to the benefits from cultural ecosystem services provided by nature to people.