Holly Doremus

A policy portfolio approach to biodiversity protection on private lands

Abstract Although arguments about biodiversity policy frequently frame the options as either top-down regulation or voluntary incentive-based approaches, in fact a broad spectrum of biodiversity conservation strategies are available. Drawing largely on examples from the United States to support broader conclusions, this article examines the range of policy options and the metrics that should be used to evaluate them. Because the options have different strengths and weaknesses, are suited to different contexts, and all carry substantial risk of failure, a portfolio of biodiversity policies is likely to outperform exclusive reliance on any one strategy. Designing an effective biodiversity policy portfolio requires clarifying conservation goals, systematically evaluating existing programs, being sensitive to the context, closely monitoring policy implementation and results, and revising the portfolio as new information becomes available.

Managed Relocation: Integrating the Scientific, Regulatory, and Ethical Challenges

Managed relocation is defined as the movement of species, populations, or genotypes to places outside the areas of their historical distributions to maintain biological diversity or ecosystem functioning with changing climate. It has been claimed that a major extinction event is under way and that climate change is increasing its severity. Projections indicating that climate change may drive substantial losses of biodiversity have compelled some scientists to suggest that traditional management strategies are insufficient. The managed relocation of species is a controversial management response to climate change. The published literature has emphasized biological concerns over difficult ethical, legal, and policy issues. Furthermore, ongoing managed relocation actions lack scientific and societal engagement. Our interdisciplinary team considered ethics, law, policy, ecology, and natural resources management in order to identify the key issues of managed relocation relevant for developing sound policies that support decisions for resource management. We recommend that government agencies develop and adopt best practices for managed relocation.

Species Coverage in Multispecies Habitat Conservation Plans: Where's the Science?

Abstract Habitat conservation plans (HCPs) permit the incidental take of threatened or endangered species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the NOAA Fisheries Service endorse multispecies HCPs, claiming that they offer advantages for both conservation and development. However, the conservation benefits of multispecies plans to individual covered species may be overestimated. We reviewed the species selected for coverage in 22 multispecies HCPs from USFWS Region 1. We found that conservation measures were often not clearly defined, and that the presence of the species in the planning area was not even confirmed for 41 percent of covered species. While we do not question the conservation value of multispecies plans, our study suggests that changes are needed to achieve full conservation potential.

Merging paleobiology with conservation biology to guide the future of terrestrial ecosystems

Looking back to move forward The current impacts of humanity on nature are rapid and destructive, but species turnover and change have occurred throughout the history of life. Although there is much debate about the best approaches to take in conservation, ultimately, we need to permit or enhance the resilience of natural systems so that they can continue to adapt and function into the future. In a Review, Barnosky et al. argue that the best way to do this is to look back at paleontological history as a way to understand how ecological resilience is maintained, even in the face of change. Science, this issue p. eaah4787 BACKGROUND The pace and magnitude of human-caused global change has accelerated dramatically over the past 50 years, overwhelming the capacity of many ecosystems and species to maintain themselves as they have under the more stable conditions that prevailed for at least 11,000 years. The next few decades threaten even more rapid transformations because by 2050, the human population is projected to grow by 3 billion while simultaneously increasing per capita consumption. Thus, to avoid losing many species and the crucial aspects of ecosystems that we need—for both our physical and emotional well-being—new conservation paradigms and integration of information from conservation biology, paleobiology, and the Earth sciences are required. ADVANCES Rather than attempting to hold ecosystems to an idealized conception of the past, as has been the prevailing conservation paradigm until recently, maintaining vibrant ecosystems for the future now requires new approaches that use both historical and novel conservation landscapes, enhance adaptive capacity for ecosystems and organisms, facilitate connectedness, and manage ecosystems for functional integrity rather than focusing entirely on particular species. Scientific breakthroughs needed to underpin such a paradigm shift are emerging at the intersection of ecology and paleobiology, revealing (i) which species and ecosystems will need human intervention to persist; (ii) how to foster population connectivity that anticipates rapidly changing climate and land use; (iii) functional attributes that characterize ecosystems through thousands to millions of years, irrespective of the species that are involved; and (iv) the range of compositional and functional variation that ecosystems have exhibited over their long histories. Such information is necessary for recognizing which current changes foretell transitions to less robust ecological states and which changes may signal benign ecosystem shifts that will cause no substantial loss of ecosystem function or services. Conservation success will also increasingly hinge on choosing among different, sometimes mutually exclusive approaches to best achieve three conceptually distinct goals: maximizing biodiversity, maximizing ecosystem services, and preserving wilderness. These goals vary in applicability depending on whether historical or novel ecosystems are the conservation target. Tradeoffs already occur—for example, managing to maximize certain ecosystem services upon which people depend (such as food production on farm or rangelands) versus maintaining healthy populations of vulnerable species (such as wolves, lions, or elephants). In the future, the choices will be starker, likely involving decisions such as which species are candidates for managed relocation and to which areas, and whether certain areas should be off limits for intensive management, even if it means losing some species that now live there. Developing the capacity to make those choices will require conservation in both historical and novel ecosystems and effective collaboration of scientists, governmental officials, nongovernmental organizations, the legal community, and other stakeholders. OUTLOOK Conservation efforts are currently in a state of transition, with active debate about the relative importance of preserving historical landscapes with minimal human impact on one end of the ideological spectrum versus manipulating novel ecosystems that result from human activities on the other. Although the two approaches are often presented as dichotomous, in fact they are connected by a continuum of practices, and both are needed. In most landscapes, maximizing conservation success will require more integration of paleobiology and conservation biology because in a rapidly changing world, a long-term perspective (encompassing at least millennia) is necessary to specify and select appropriate conservation targets and plans. Although adding this long-term perspective will be essential to sustain biodiversity and all of the facets of nature that humans need as we continue to rapidly change the world over the next few decades, maximizing the chances of success will also require dealing with the root causes of the conservation crisis: rapid growth of the human population, increasing per capita consumption especially in developed countries, and anthropogenic climate change that is rapidly pushing habitats outside the bounds experienced by today’s species. Fewer than 900 mountain gorillas are left in the world, and their continued existence depends upon the choices humans make, exemplifying the state of many species and ecosystems. Can conservation biology save biodiversity and all the aspects of nature that people need and value as 3 billion more of us are added to the planet by 2050, while climate continues to change to states outside the bounds that most of today’s ecosystems have ever experienced? Photo: E. A. Hadly, at Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda Conservation of species and ecosystems is increasingly difficult because anthropogenic impacts are pervasive and accelerating. Under this rapid global change, maximizing conservation success requires a paradigm shift from maintaining ecosystems in idealized past states toward facilitating their adaptive and functional capacities, even as species ebb and flow individually. Developing effective strategies under this new paradigm will require deeper understanding of the long-term dynamics that govern ecosystem persistence and reconciliation of conflicts among approaches to conserving historical versus novel ecosystems. Integrating emerging information from conservation biology, paleobiology, and the Earth sciences is an important step forward on the path to success. Maintaining nature in all its aspects will also entail immediately addressing the overarching threats of growing human population, overconsumption, pollution, and climate change.

Organization of the pathway of de novo pyrimidine nucleotide biosynthesis in pea (Pisum sativum L. cv Progress No. 9) leaves

The organization of the enzymes of de novo pyrimidine nucleotide biosynthesis in pea (Pisum sativum L. cv Progress No. 9) has been studied. The first three enzymes of the pathway, carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase, aspartate carbamoyltransferase, and dihydroorotase, are readily separable from one another; they are not part of a multifunctional complex. The final two activities of the pathway, orotate phosphoribosyltransferase and orotidylate decarboxylase, copurify and appear to be complexed in vivo. This organizational pattern is distinct from those reported for bacteria, yeast, and mammals. The differences in organization, in a pathway which is present in all organisms, make the pyrimidine biosynthetic pathway a very interesting candidate for evolutionary studies.

Science Plays Defense: Natural Resource Management in the Bush Administration

The Bush administration has been heavily criticized by scientists for its use of science in the policy arena generally, including in natural resource management. The most widely circulated criticisms have accused the administration of politicizing science. The fundamental problem, though, is the opposite, the scientizing of politics. Political actors are often tempted to describe their decisions as scientific, but science is not, and cannot be, the primary driver of most regulatory decisions. The long history of scientific leadership within the conservation community has produced a sense in that community that emphasizing the scientific aspects of natural resource management necessarily works to their advantage. The current administration, however, has shown that the rhetoric of science can also be used defensively, as a barrier to regulation. This paper details several key methods the administration has used to pursue its strategy of defensive science in natural resource management. It concludes with the suggestion that a more normatively defensible, and perhaps also a more politically effective, strategy for conservationists would emphasize the need to bring two key procedural aspects of scientific practice, transparency and a commitment to updating, more strongly into the regulatory arena.

Preserving Citizen Participation in the Era of Reinvention: The Endangered Species Act Example

Introduction .......................................................................... 707 I. Building a Strong Citizen Role ...................................... 707 II. Government Reinvention and Citizen Participation ........ 710 A. Reinventing the ESA ............................................... 710 B. Barriers to Citizen Participation ................ 712 III. Preserving Citizen Participation in the Era of Reinvention .................................................................. 7 15 C on clu sion ............................................................................ 7 17

Large-Scale Ecosystem Restoration: Five Case Studies from the United States Mary Doyle and Cynthia A. Drew, editors. 2008. Washington DC: Island Press. Cloth,

Even though some uncertainty virtually always underlies the expected outcomes of environmental policies and interventions, especially when outcomes depend on stochastic events such as droughts or floods, most surveys of environmental preferences ignore the element of uncertainty. This paper challenges the assumption that uncertainty plays no role when people care only about final environmental states. In a careful statistical study, visitors to a recreation site in Oklahoma were asked about their preferences for various states of lake quality and their willingness to pay for the desired outcome. The answers differed, depending on whether interviewees were asked to choose between final states or between probabilities of final states. For example, people were less willing to pay when the likelihood of a favorable outcome without intervention was high, and a 70% chance of good outcome was considered about the same as 100%. The authors suggest that when faced with uncertainty, respondents are more critical in their evaluation of trade-offs.