What influences how internationally adjoining protected area managers in the Americas respond to land use change?

What influences decisions by protected area managers? In this paper we examine the responses that protected area managers make to land use change within their protected areas. Theories from public administration and political science suggest two primary types of influences: policy networks and constraints, such as political pressures or budgets. We test these alternative hypotheses utilizing a unique dataset of internationally adjoining protected area managers in North, Central, and South America. An emphasis on policy networks would lead us to predict that managers of adjoining protected areas, particularly those that have international cooperation agreements, would behave similarly. In contrast, an emphasis on constraints would lead us to predict that managers of protected areas which face similar constraints would behave similarly. Important constraints, such as political pressures and budgets are determined independently from international boundaries, by political processes internal to individual countries. We examine the responses that protected area managers make to land use change, and find that constraints play a more important role than networks. This implies that creating resources for protected area managers may be a more effective conservation tool than creating exchanges between them.

We used a multicriteria algorithm to identify the irreplaceable areas for the conservation of biodiversity (habitats and species) of the Molise coastal region, specifically focusing on Natura 2000 sites (CEE 43/92). The three SAC, including a 27 km of seashore and an area of 2444 ha, are representative of the Adriatic coastal dunes (host 20 habitats, 48 species of fauna and 4 species of plants relevant for conservation - CEE 43/92). We divided the area into 100x100 m cell grids (PU, planning units). Each PU was assigned the cadastral cost and a value corresponding to the conservation targets, i.e the surface of habitats to be preserved within each PU. Surfaces of EC-habitats and suitable areas for animals to be preserved were fixed based on risk of extinction, ecological functional role, rarity and phenology. The Simulated Annealing algorithm (MARXAN) was used to assess how many and which PUs are necessary to achieve the existing conservation targets and to identify their best location in the landscape. Such analysis was performed for each site individually and globally for the entire Natura2000 network of coastal sites, for 100 iterations. We identified the 91,6% of the area in need of different conservation degree corresponding to three management zones (A,B,C), and the best management units configuration. As the solutions for single sites resulted unsatisfactory, the analysis of the Natura2000 sites as a network gave many different optimal and suboptimal solutions.

Our massive road-vehicle transportation system, a central catalyst for society, has diced the land into fragments with ramifying ecological and human effects. Road ecology principles and solutions, barely a decade old, are producing accelerated successes. Yet worldwide, increasing rates of both road construction and vehicle use far outstrip our mitigations. Transportation also now faces huge problems (fuel, CO2, congestion, accidents, bridges, funds). Could a significant portion of the land covered (e.g. >1% of USA) and ecologically degraded (>15% USA) by road corridors be recovered, and the rest of the land reconnected, quickly? A transportation system, based on renewable-energy electric-induction-transported pods under automated control on narrow elevated-to-sunken ways, with flexibility permitting efficient individual driving on ground-level roads, is outlined for the immediate future. No driving, no accidents, no fossil fuel use, no greenhouse gas or unhealthful pollutant emissions, more efficient relaxed travel. No roadkills, no wildlife barrier, no traffic-noise effect, new trail networks, market-gardening space, extensive recovered land, reconnected nature. The last transformation of surface transportation leaped from horsepower on dusty muddy roads in 1900 to motorized vehicles on black-top surfaces in 1925. It is time for the next 25-yr step pronto. Reverse our downward spiral, and create a multi-goal success for both nature and society.

Protected areas (PAs) have historically formed the cornerstone of conservation strategies, by assuming that ecosystems therein will be sustained indefinitely. Simultaneously, guidance for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) prioritizes areas at high risk of carbon loss from land use change. These conflicting paradigms set PAs at odds for receiving carbon financing. A recent study challenged this paradigm, documenting a global phenomenon in which PAs are subject to downgrading, downsizing and degazettement (PADDD). Here, we quantified the amount and value of carbon already lost and at future risk in PADDD areas. First, we documented all historic and proposed PADDD events in three countries: Malaysia, Peru, and DRC. In Peninsular Malaysia and Peru, we assessed carbon change from 2000-2010 using freely available land cover products and a global carbon map. In both countries, PADDD areas experienced rates of carbon loss exceeding rates in areas that had never experienced protection, and far exceeding carbon loss rates in PAs. We found that about 1.5 million Mg of carbon was lost in both study areas during this period, valued at $4 to $70 million. If trends continue to the year 2100, PADDD areas in Malaysia could experience a further $6 to $276 million in lost revenues, while PADDD areas in Peru could experience $69 million to $7.7 billion in lost revenue. Findings suggest that carbon in PAs is at risk, and should be eligible for REDD funding.

Nearly 20% of mammals are threatened or endangered, yet we have no long term, broad scale abundance and distribution data for these species. eMammal is a new initiative that integrates camera trap data from researchers with a growing citizen science effort to increase the spatial and temporal scale of survey data. We launched the citizen science camera trapping effort in the mid-Atlantic region of the USA. Volunteers are trained to set camera traps, receive instructions from the eMammal website, deploy cameras in protected areas, and identify and upload pictures using custom software. eMammal uses a cloud based workflow that includes a volunteer website, remote photo upload, expert review of photo ID to ensure data quality, and storage of photos and meta-data in a Smithsonian digital repository. Around 2 million researcher camera trap images from projects around the world are being entered in the same repository, which will soon be publically accessible. In 2012, 85 volunteers deployed cameras to 750 sites in for 15,750 trap days in 12 protected areas, and collected hundreds of thousands of pictures. We are initially using this data to test hypotheses about the effect of hunting and hiking on wildlife populations. eMammal is a framework for citizen scientists and professional researchers to build publically accessible, frequently updated, landscape scale wildlife datasets to enable conservation and education in today's rapidly changing world.

The Least Tern (Sternula antillarum) is a small, colonial nesting seabird which breeds along portions of both the eastern and western coasts of North America. In addition to nesting on open-beaches, Least Terns have adapted to nesting on gravel rooftops. Currently, gravel rooftops are declining because of changes to state building codes and the open beaches that are left are experiencing higher levels of overwash due to sea-level rise. Our research explored the effectiveness of floating nesting platforms for Least Terns by deploying two rafts (~14m2 each) in the lagoon of Ft. De Soto County Park, Florida where Least Terns had previously attempted to nest. During the first 2 years, only a few Least Terns attempted to nest and the birds quickly abandoned. In the third year of the study, 20 pairs nested on the rafts (10 on each) and fledged at least 14 chicks. This level of productivity is greater than any other ground colony in the Tampa and Sarasota Bay regions monitored during the past 10 years. Two of the birds nesting on the rafts were banded birds who had hatched on nearby rooftops. While this study was relatively limited in time and number of birds, it indicated that rafts should be considered as a management strategy to provide nesting areas as gravel rooftops are phased out.

We know next to nothing about the impacts of tropical shrimp trawlers on the vast majority species found at the bottom of their nets - the small fishes. The wide range of potential impacts makes it hard to predict how a species may respond to trawling, but the few studies that have applied data-poor approaches to fisheries assessment suggest that at least some small fishes - those with specialised life histories, or whose reproductive peak overlaps with peaks in trawl effort - show potential for overfishing. These studies call for a re-evaluation of the status of small species which have generally been considered resilient to fishing pressures. But even these methods are too data intensive to be viable for the hundreds of small fishes captured in hundreds of shrimp trawl fisheries, and too inconclusive to confirm impact. Thus, it may be necessary to apply precautionary methods to avoid potential effects of indiscriminate trawling. The perceived economic importance of shrimp fisheries in tropical countries means that lessening the problem requires pragmatic approaches that consider both socioeconomic and ecological goals. I argue that seasonal or regional closures to trawling may be the most pragmatic, practicable ways to reduce bycatch of small fish species globally. Finally, I present several research questions related to shrimp turned 'trash' fisheries that need immediate attention, lest the small fish bycatch issue become even more challenging to address.

Can size and spacing rules provide guidelines for marine spatial planning? The complexity and temporal variability of the coral reef systems make predictions for spatial planning challenging. General guidelines offer a solution if they predictably deliver benefits. However, are general guidelines, such as rules for the size and spacing of protected areas predictable and distinguishable enough to be useful? Using a population dynamics model of coral trout on the Great Barrier Reef, I test simulated marine protected areas varying across size and spacing rules. The model imitates realistic dispersal conditions using results of biophysical dispersal models. With each simulation, we track two long term outcomes: average annual catch (a fishery objective) and remaining abundance on the reef (a conservation objective). Our results indicate that although size and spacing guidelines can reveal tradeoffs in management objectives, the overall usefulness of general guidelines in this example is diminished because the noise of the system drowns out clear differences between the outcomes of particular sets of rules. This may provide evidence that simple guidelines are less useful for complex, dynamic marine systems.

As awareness of the importance of marine ecosystem services grows, so too does the recognition that better governance of social-ecological systems (SES) is critical to sustainability. An interdisciplinary team is unpacking the links between marine protected area (MPA) governance and ecosystem structure, function, and services, drawing upon the seminal work of Elinor Ostrom and building on existing efforts. With a cross-disciplinary theoretical framework and a common analytic platform (i.e., database) we will document the social and ecological impacts of MPAs at local, regional, and global scales by synthesizing existing interdisciplinary monitoring data from many MPAs. These datasets have been collected by MPA managers and scientists, with different levels of methodological rigor, but their collective power and emergent insights for both science and policy have not yet been tapped. Moreover, we are addressing a critical but under-recognized obstacle to adaptive management: the absence of a platform to turn raw MPA monitoring data into actionable information. MPA managers often struggle to effectively store, manage, process, and analyze monitoring data - especially in developing countries. Widespread adoption of an open-source MPA monitoring database would establish a new standard for increasingly rigorous monitoring of MPAs, empowering MPA managers and fostering adaptive management.aptive management.

"Large landscape conservation" is the recommended prescription for combating the twin threats of habitat fragmentation and climate change. Few efforts anywhere are practicing conservation at the scale of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, an organization that promotes connectivity across the mountainous landscape stretching 1.3M square kilometers from Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. to north of the Arctic Circle in Canada's Yukon Territory. The Cabinet-Purcell Mountain Corridor Project, a regional effort within the larger Yellowstone to Yukon strategy, will be presented as an example of a successful large scale, trans-boundary conservation collaboration. More than sixty government agencies, private land conservancies, indigenous tribes and non-government organizations are coordinating efforts to secure core areas on public lands, protect wildlife connectivity across private land, mitigate the impacts of highways, remove and restore obsolete forestry access roads, augment endangered grizzly populations, and reduce conflicts between people and wildlife. Collectively, these efforts are restoring functional connectivity between source populations of large animals in Canada and recovering populations in western Montana and northern Idaho.

Over the last years, the relation between spiritual values and conservation has received growing attention by ecologists and practitioners. Not the least, a clear connection between sacred areas and biodiversity has been highlighted in a number of instances throughout East Asia and Africa. Such a link, however, remains vastly underexplored in Western Christian contexts, probably also due to a dominant view of Christianity as essentially anti-naturalistic and Western societies as entirely secularized. Here, I rely on first-hand ecological data to demonstrate that, on the contrary, also Catholic sites in Central Italy play an important role for the conservation of biological diversity. Further, although the sites in question are no longer crucial for the livelihoods of local populations, they remain fundamental for maintaining social cohesion, cultural traditions, and as sources of local identities.

Black rhinoceros (rhinos) defecate in latrines and frequently use sharp kicking motions to scatter their feces in conspicuous scrapings. Although these fecal markings are believed to be advertisements to conspecifics, the type of information they encode has not been investigated. Due to the secretive nature of black rhinos, camera traps were used to identify individuals scraping their feces in Addo Elephant National Park (AENP), South Africa. Fecal samples (n=137) were collected (July '09-Nov '10) from known individuals (captured on photo). Data about fecal scrapings (e.g. length and location) were gathered and samples were analyzed for progestagen and androgen metabolite (FPM, FAM respectively) concentrations. We predicted that scraping parameters would vary with respect to sex, age and hormone concentration. Lengths of scrapings increased with age for both sexes and were negatively related to FPM concentrations for females. Males scraped more than females, which were more likely to scrape next to a bush. These fecal markings may advertise the territories of males and the sexual state of females. Much is still unknown about black rhino ecology due to their elusive and solitary nature and field studies are costly and logistically difficult. Thus, any information about black rhino that can be collected non-invasively (e.g. fecal scraping and endocrine data) could enhance knowledge about populations and potentially guide conservation management of this endangered species.

Marine reserves regulate people by adjusting costs and incentives to alter the behavior of human users, for example by reducing fishing visits with a fine. Understanding how a reserve alters the landscape of human use provides insight into how the reserve is functioning mechanistically and can assist passive adaptive management. I use a novel dataset that is a complete census of recreational fishing trips taken by a large recreational angling community in the Gulf of California, Mexico, over nine years. I use discrete choice models to show that the creation of the marine reserve only temporarily decreased visitation to the reserve site. I determine the actual additional travel cost (in expected enforced trespassing penalties) the anglers perceived the reserve imposed upon them. This value is very small, especially compared to the total cost of travel to the reserve site. Such a small cost increase likely had little effect on behavior, and would explain why the reserve was unable to reduce visits in the long term. I use the model to project the different "fines" that would be necessary to reduce site visitation by a given percentage. I find this relationship to be non-linear, such that eventually the fine to reduce each additional percent of site visitation skyrockets. If a small amount of reserve non-compliance is deemed acceptable to reserve goals, these results suggest for this system a data-driven level of fine that should be both effective and not undesirably high.

Restoration of the tidal marsh ecosystem in San Francisco Bay is a regional priority for natural resources managers. Existing documents do not fully describe transitional habitats, quantify the amount needed to aid species of special concern while allowing for SLR, nor prioritize specific sites for protection and restoration. Our inventory, and site ranking of these transitional zones, integrated into a wider MARXAN planning framework and delivered through easy to use web mapping tools, will provide the resources needed to help planners consider both current and predicted needs of the tidal marsh ecosystem in the face of sea level rise and land use pressures. We will provide a summary of the process for developing and utilizing the DSS. We have taken a a strategic approach towards decision support, accounting for the landward migration of the ecosystem in response to predicted sea level rise (SLR). The first phase will define and characterize transitional habitats with an advisory committee of regional specialists. Utilizing the definition developed in the first phase, the second phase will inventory and map the current (and potential historic) extent of these transitional habitats within the SF Bay estuary.  Then utilizing the characterization developed in phase one, the third phase will identify criteria (e.g. ecological function) to rank and prioritize sites for refuge managers based on both ecological needs and management goals.