Martin Taylor

What works for threatened species recovery? An empirical evaluation for Australia

Despite the growing numbers of threatened species and high levels of spending on their recovery worldwide, there is surprisingly little evidence about which conservation approaches are effective in arresting or reversing threatened species declines. Using two government data sets, we examined associations between population trends for 841 nationally-threatened terrestrial species in Australia, and four measures of conservation effort: (a) how much their distribution overlaps with strictly protected areas (IUCN I–IV), (b) and other protected areas (IUCN V–VI), (c) the number of recovery activities directed at the species, and (d) numbers of natural resource conservation activities applied in areas where populations of the threatened species occur. We found that all populations of 606 (72%) species were in decline. Species with greater distributional overlap with strictly protected areas had proportionately more populations that were increasing or stable. This effect was robust to geographic range size, data quality differences and extent of protection. Measures other than strictly protected areas showed no positive associations with stable or increasing trends. Indeed, species from regions with more natural resource conservation activities were found to be more likely to be declining, consistent with differential targeting of such generalised conservation activities to highly disturbed landscapes. Major differences in trends were also found among the different jurisdictions in which species predominantly occurred, which may be related to different legislative protections against habitat destruction. Although we were not able to test causation, this research corroborates other evidence that protected areas contribute to the stabilization or recovery of threatened species, and provides little empirical support for other conservation approaches.

Mapping the Drivers of Climate Change Vulnerability for Australia's Threatened Species

Effective conservation management for climate adaptation rests on understanding the factors driving species’ vulnerability in a spatially explicit manner so as to direct on-ground action. However, there have been only few attempts to map the spatial distribution of the factors driving vulnerability to climate change. Here we conduct a species-level assessment of climate change vulnerability for a sample of Australia’s threatened species and map the distribution of species affected by each factor driving climate change vulnerability across the continent. Almost half of the threatened species assessed were considered vulnerable to the impacts of climate change: amphibians being the most vulnerable group, followed by plants, reptiles, mammals and birds. Species with more restricted distributions were more likely to show high climate change vulnerability than widespread species. The main factors driving climate change vulnerability were low genetic variation, dependence on a particular disturbance regime and reliance on a particular moisture regime or habitat. The geographic distribution of the species impacted by each driver varies markedly across the continent, for example species impacted by low genetic variation are prevalent across the human-dominated south-east of the country, while reliance on particular moisture regimes is prevalent across northern Australia. Our results show that actions to address climate adaptation will need to be spatially appropriate, and that in some regions a complex suite of factors driving climate change vulnerability will need to be addressed. Taxonomic and geographic variation in the factors driving climate change vulnerability highlights an urgent need for a spatial prioritisation of climate adaptation actions for threatened species.