Numerical response of the endangered Karner blue butterfly (Lycaeides melissa samuelis) to recovery efforts at the Albany Pine Bush Preserve

Pitch pine-scrub oak barrens is a globally unique, fire-dependent ecosystem of the northeastern United States. The destruction, fragmentation, and degradation of this ecosystem has contributed to the decline of the Karner blue butterfly (Lycaeides melissa samuelis; KBB), which is dependent on the barrens in the northeastern portion of its range. One of the last naturally-occurring populations of this endangered species occurs at the Albany Pine Bush Preserve in eastern NY. State, private, and federal partners have been actively recovering the Preserve's KBB population by restoring >200 ha of habitat since 1992 and by accelerating the colonization of habitat through the annual release of locally-derived, captive-reared individuals since 2008. To evaluate the effectiveness of these efforts, we have been monitoring abundances of first and second brood adults annually since 2007 using distance sampling. Preliminary results suggest that recovery efforts are succeeding. The first brood increased from 900 to 1800 adults whereas the second brood increased from 600 to 3800 adults. These abundance estimates are likely conservative because occupancy surveys revealed that KBB were present in many other parts of the Preserve. While KBB abundance was above the recovery threshold for the Preserve in 2012, we continue to monitor KBB abundance to ensure that recovery is maintained and to document the effects of future recovery efforts and other long-term processes such as climate change.

Within reintroduction programs for endangered species, releases of different life stages can influence both management costs and program success. We assessed the trade-offs between releasing eggs or sub-adults in the ongoing captive breeding program for the critically endangered Southern Corroboree frog Pseudophryne corroboree in Australia. We used population models and numerical optimization to identify the release strategies that would maximize the wild population whilst meeting budget constraints and accounting for parametric uncertainty and demographic stochasticity. We measured success as the number of individuals in the wild after ten years. We compared optimal strategies with fixed plans in which only either eggs or sub-adults were released at constant rates. The optimal strategies identified were predicted to provide outcomes similar to the best fixed plans for sub-adult releases, but were up to 75% cheaper, and to yield up to 500% more wild adults than the best fixed plans for egg releases for only a 72% average increase in cost. Releasing early life stages might represent a viable option for risk-seeking managers with strict budget constraints, whereas releasing later stages may maximize the probability of establishing a viable population but increase management costs. Simple optimization of release strategies can help managers address this trade-off, improving outcomes, decreasing costs and explicitly accounting for uncertainty and constraints.

Isolation management is the most successful method of protecting cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii) from invasive species. Yet, isolation may reduce viability and cause loss of genetic diversity. Theoretical models for maintaining genetic diversity in isolated trout populations recommend a minimum 8km of stream habitat based on population density and effective size. To test these models and inform management, we compared genetic diversity in cutthroat trout across populations in two connected and 12 isolated streams of the Flathead River Basin, Montana. As expected, isolated populations in smaller streams had lower genetic diversity. However, the amount of genetic diversity lost within isolated populations varied independently of time since isolation. To better understand of how genetic diversity changes through time, we also analyzed seven geologically isolated populations from the same river basin. These seven populations showed reduced heterozygosity, regardless of stream length. Furthermore, geologically isolated streams had significantly lower average heterozygosity compared to streams recently isolated by anthropogenic activities. These results demonstrate inevitable loss of genetic diversity in populations persisting in isolated systems, highlighting the need to explore prevention of inbreeding depression under isolation. Our study has direct implications for management of native trout of the Rockies, and for genetic theory applied broadly across taxa.

Ecological restoration (defined as the return of an ecosystem to its former or historic condition) presents many significant challenges to managers and conservation practitioners as the climate continues to shift and change across the globe, creating a need for substantial revision of working conceptual models, planning, strategies, tools, datasets, and monitoring paradigms if these projects are to succeed. Here, we review: (a) the types of challenges that managers and stakeholders are likely to face as they endeavor to address climate change and restoration simultaneously in large landscapes, and (b) examples of the ways in which integrated, multi-disciplinary approaches to conservation and management across geospatial scales can provide innovative solutions to these challenges. Our discussion stems from lessons learned during the first three years of work on a ten-year, collaborative restoration project across 1.5 million acres of the Crown of the Continent in Montana. We have found that: (a) efforts to incorporate climate change principles, datasets, and tools into restoration projects become most feasible when focusing on specific restoration priorities and objectives within a project; (b) incorporation of climate change scenarios into existing management tools is critically important in facilitating planning for restoration treatments; and (c) significant changes to all aspects of monitoring programs are necessary to create information feedback loops for managers.

Natural resource managers and coastal communities have begun to plan for the impacts of climate change on their local ecosystems and infrastructure. Many of these processes and approaches require the use of geospatial analyses and tools to model and visualize the impacts of a changing climate on ecosystems and human infrastructure, explore the effects of potential management decisions, and conduct effective public engagement. The variety of tools and lack of information on them make it difficult for practitioners to select tools most suited to their needs and capacities. The EBM Tools Network has developed a guide to geospatial tools for assessing and reducing the vulnerability of coastal ecosystems and infrastructure to climate change. The guide provides information on a set of key tools for multi-sector climate-related planning (e.g. planning which incorporates both ecosystem health and human well-being concerns), explains and illustrates the utility and role of tools in planning, and helps practitioners select appropriate tools for their projects. This presentation will describe available tools and the capabilities, limitations, and requirements for use for these tools and will provide advice for practitioners on how to go about selecting the "right" tools for their climate change vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning projects.

Fragmentation and habitat loss are the main threats of primates worldwide. Primate species with restricted diet and/or higher spatial requirements have more risk of local extinction due to fragmentation and habitat loss. The Colombian squirrel monkey (Saimiri sciureus albigena) is a small endemic primate species that is endangered due to its high space requirements and small distribution area. Home range and diet data for one group of this species was collected using slow scan sampling in a fragmented area in Colombian Llanos. Home range of squirrel monkeys in fragmented areas was less than half of the reported home ranges in continuous areas. However, their diet was similar when compared to data from continuous areas. Fence-rows (tree-lines used to separate adjoining pastures) connecting fragments were being used as part of their home range and as a food resource in months of less fruit productivity of the forest fragments. Therefore, these corridors were seen to be essential for the species survival as they help cope with the high spatial requirements in fragmented landscapes.

Recent reviews of the “conservation-reliant species” concept have proposed that human intervention in ecosystems is now so pervasive that we cannot realistically recover self-sustaining populations in the wild for the majority (e.g., 84%) of species. Some proportion of listed species may indeed require long-term intensive management, especially in light of twenty first century threats such as invasive species and climate change. However, applying the conservation-reliant paradigm to the majority of listed species represents an effort to fundamentally revise the normative basis for the ESA. Shifting the threshold of feasibility to allow delisting of conservation-reliant populations lowers the likelihood that delisted populations will meet other common recovery standards such as resiliency, redundancy, and representation. Such a change would shift the focus of the Services from achieving the broader goals of the ESA towards assisting non-federal agencies as “zookeepers” of narrowly-distributed populations. The normative debate as to whether a species should be delisted before acheiving a self-sustaining population should be informed by both the statute and the biology of the particular species. We use a case study on population connectivity restoration to propose a method for categorizing threatened species into four types of conservation reliance in order to better inform discussions on the tradeoffs inherent in accelerated delisting of threatened species.

Fishing communities throughout the world now face the imminent threat of fisheries collapse. Although marine protected areas have demonstrated positive biological impacts, the acceptance, adherence, and enforcement of these areas are a socio-economic challenge. Rare is tackling this challenge by training local leaders and partners to use social marketing coupled with a strong conservation research framework in near-shore fishing communities across the Philippines and Indonesia. The impact of each campaign on the knowledge, attitudes, and support for marine conservation as well as key metrics associated with behavior change, enforcement, and reef health are monitored before, during, and after each campaign. Preliminary analysis of sites in the Philippines found 7/12 campaign sites with significant changes in knowledge, attitudes, behavior, and enforcement along with a mean 38.8% increase in fish biomass. Results from Indonesia demonstrate similar progress with mean increases in knowledge and attitudes greater than 20 percentage points post-campaign, significant changes in behavior and biophysical response at 5/10 sites. This analysis provides support for the role of community leaders and behavior change in developing appropriate fisheries management highlights the critical intersection of science, communication, and management needed for effective conservation.

The use of landscape genetics in conservation biology has increased in popularity because it provides a robust framework for evaluating hypotheses relating landscape to population connectivity. The appropriateness of Mantel tests, a standard method for evaluating correlation of genetic and ecological distances in such studies, has been questioned. However, few suitable alternatives have been proposed and rigorously evaluated. We use Mantel and partial Mantel tests in a causal modeling framework to evaluate the correlation between gene flow and landscape variables with American pikas (Ochotona princeps) in Crater Lake National Park. To assess whether this method correctly identifies the underlying relationship between landscape and gene flow, we followed with a population genetics simulation study that incorporated landscape resistance into individual dispersal probability. The results suggest that while it is difficult to distinguish among landscape resistance hypotheses that are highly correlated, the causal modeling approach is able to correctly identify the underlying relationships even with complex landscape hypotheses. We conclude 1) this approach is robust and 2) gene flow in pikas in Crater Lake National Park appears to be impeded by topographic relief and, to a lesser degree, south facing aspects. This study improves our ability to predict future effects of climate change on population connectivity of the American pika, and ultimately population vulnerability.

Despite their high biodiversity value and role in providing important services to different stakeholders, freshwaters are among the most threatened and modified environments on the planet, and require immediate conservation action. As threats to freshwater systems are diverse and spatially heterogeneous - while resources for conservation are finite - it is critical to identify priority management actions, as well as where these should be implemented, especially dealing with financial and socio-economic constraints. Unfortunately, traditional conservation planning does not identify the specific actions required to meet a particular conservation target, and rarely considers the cost and socio-economic impacts of multiple actions. We developed a framework for prioritizing different management actions, while minimizing costs and socio-economic impacts. We implemented the framework by combining distribution models for a suite of freshwater dependent species (fishes, turtles and water birds) with optimization techniques based on the functional response of species to different management actions. We applied the prototype framework within the Daly River catchment, in the Northern Territory, Australia. The framework allows the spatial allocation of different management actions, by including both ecological and socio-economic objectives. It therefore represents a novel approach that will greatly improve the effectiveness of freshwater biodiversity management and conservation.

Coffee agroforestry is a conservation strategy that has shown promise to support the diversity of bird, bat, and insect communities, but few studies have focused on terrestrial mammals in coffee farms. We surveyed mammal diversity in three coffee-forest landscapes of Costa Rica. Each site contained a 25-ha trap grid and was sampled in four sessions with a total of 46 sampling nights per site. We captured 1,258 mammals (600 of individuals) and recorded 16 species, with track plates and camera traps yielding an additional three species. In general, we found forest habitats to have greater richness and abundance of mammals than shade coffee, which in turn had more species and higher abundances than sun coffee habitats. The species richness within shade coffee rivaled that of the nearby forested areas, suggesting that shade coffee may be a complement to, although not a substitute for, native forests. Habitat type was significantly associated with abundance and richness, but the distance to forest was not. Increased amounts of shade canopy and herbaceous ground cover within the habitats were shown to significantly increase the mammal abundance and richness. Within coffee habitats, higher amounts of canopy cover within coffee farms was the influencing factor for higher abundance and species richness of mammals. Our results indicate that mammals should be included in the list of taxa that benefits from the increased canopy cover and vegetation complexity that shade coffee provides.

This study examined how well undergraduate students can develop data analysis skills relevant to conservation biology over the course of a single semester. Students completed two conservation data analysis exercises, pre and post self-assessments of confidence in data analysis skills, a classroom discussion, and pre/post content assessments. Between the first and second exercises, a data analysis teaching intervention was administered in all classes. Instructional and assessment materials were created and validated by 24 conservation educators led by the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at AMNH. Results from one semester (100+ students) show that students scored significantly higher on post-content assessments for both exercises. We also found significant increases in student self-assessment of confidence in data analysis skills. However, when evaluated at the level of different skill dimensions, students' ability to represent and interpret data improved between exercises, but ability to complete calculations and draw conclusions was significantly worse on the second exercise. While our study demonstrates that direct instruction in data analysis does improve student performance overall, there is a disconnect between student self-assessment of their data analysis skills and their actual ability. This indicates that some aspects of data analysis may require different teaching intervention approaches.

Scientific understanding of neotropical floodplains comes mainly from work on large rivers with predictable seasonal flooding regimes. Less studied rivers and floodplains on the Andean-Amazon interface have multiple and more erratic regimes. Ecological roles of floodplain inundation differ in those ecosystems and have implications for animal and plant communities, and human activities. The goal of this study was to understand the hydrological interactions and habitat diversity of the Napo River, a major Andean tributary of the Amazon that drains exceptionally biodiverse foreland plains. This river system is envisioned by developers as an industrial waterway that would require hydrological alterations and affect floodplain ecosystems. Water level regimes of the Napo River and its associated environments were assessed using networks of data loggers that recorded time under water across transects extending inland from the river. These networks also included rising stage samplers that collected flood water samples for determination of their origin based on chemical composition. We found that wetlands along the river corridor exist across a continuum from strong to absent river influence, and are extrapolating this information to the whole area through remote sensing to better assess the extent and diversity of flooded environments. This research is improving the understanding of Andean Amazon ecosystems with implications for their sustainable management and conservation.