Habitat Restoration in Watersheds Impacted by Legacy Sediments and Implications for the Bog Turtle (Glyptemys muhlenbergii)

New understanding of the cumulative impacts of historic anthropogenic landscape change is guiding a restoration experiment with implications for expanding Glyptemys muhlenbergii (bog turtle) habitat. Located in the Appalachian Piedmont of Pennsylvania, which contains a large segment of the historic range of the bog turtle (an endangered species), the Big Spring Run (BSR) restoration site is a headwater tributary in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Muhlenberg first collected and described the bog turtle several km from BSR in the late 1700s. The Chesapeake Bay is an impaired water body, as are many streams in the watershed. Efforts to improve ecological health of the watershed through stream restoration have met with mixed success due - in part - to misdiagnosing a primary cause of watershed impairment. Our research shows that construction of milldams in the 17th - 19th centuries, not modern land use, led to widespread valley bottom sedimentation (legacy sediment). Subsequent dam breaching led to incised streams and eroding banks. Legacy sediment buried and degraded stable Holocene aquatic ecosystems that were similar to present-day bog turtle habitat. Removal of ca. 18,000 m^3 of legacy sediment at BSR in November 2011 restored the buried Holocene wet meadow and key ecosystem components that are characteristic of bog turtle habitat. The potential to restore bog turtle populations is one of several long- term benefits of this new restoration strategy.

The eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica is an ecologically and commercially important species along the western Atlantic seaboard and Gulf of Mexico. With a goal of modeling the impact of sea level rise on intertidal C. virginica in the northern Gulf of Mexico, we deployed 10 oyster ladders in Apalachicola Bay, FL and 10 in Grand Bay, MS. Each ladder provides 36 oyster shells and 1 sediment trap at each of 5 intertidal heights (range: 30 cm increments from near mean low water to near mean high water). Hence, inundation time was our proxy for sea level rise. Oyster ladder data being collected for our model includes: oyster recruitment, oyster growth rates, oyster orientation, biodiversity (richness and abundance) of sessile and motile species, sediment loads, total suspended solids and abiotic variables. More sediment accumulated in traps closer to the benthos. Significant differences were also found with oyster recruitment - numbers peaked at intermediate submersion times while growth was greatest with longest submersion. Our data and subsequent model will be essential to resource managers and restoration specialists working to protect shellfish reefs over the long-term.

China has experienced a high-speed economic growth in the past 30 years, resulting in both remarkable human society improvement and critical environment crisis. Although Chinese government has devoted immense resources to establish protected areas (PAs), the limited funding is still the primary impediment for expanding their coverage and promoting their effectiveness. China's land tenure system is characteristic of state owns all lands, the forest tenure reform started in 2009 provided private investment opportunities being incorporated in PA establishment and management. Meanwhile the remarkable privates' wealthy accumulation leads to increasing interest in private owned and managed PA. As the attempt of this model, Laohegou, as China's first land-trust PA, is establishing in Sichuan Province since 2011, which is in the global biodiversity priority region. The new exploration is facing big challenges involving complex practical, political and legal issues that are all new to China: new funding mechanism is being established, new forest ownership pattern needs legal recognition, new management system based on science is being built, and new cooperation relationship between PA and local community is forming. This case will be a demonstration of emerging private PAs in China. The experience and lesson learnt from this exploring will benefit the PA management both in China and elsewhere, and provide guideline to the increasing private funding devoting to nature conservation.

Giant panda are restricted to 30 isolated populations, 13 of which are small enough to be considered a high extinction risk. However, without adequate knowledge about how pandas move across landscapes, corridor establishment between existing populations is hypothetical. Assessing panda movement across the landscape outside of reserves, as well as movement for other large species, is the first step of an effective management plan. We surveyed 205 sites with camera traps, sign transects and vegetation plots along a presumptive panda corridor from 2010-2012 in Qinling Mountains, China. Occupancy models were constructed for 11 large mammal species to determine the relationship between species distribution, environmental variables and human infrastructure. The results were used to establish habitat suitability map and dispersal resistance surface. A network of hypothetical dispersal corridors was generated using least cost analysis. In addition, a scenario analysis was conducted to predict the effectiveness of different management options. The results suggest corridor connectivity varies among mammal species; small and medium-sized ungulates appeared neutral to human infrastructure, while small carnivores exhibited preference to human-caused fragmentations. Panda, black bear and takin avoided areas close to human infrastructure and lack migration corridors. Two potential movement corridors which cross highways are critical and should be considered conservation priorities.

There are frequent complaints about the inability of scientists to communicate their concerns about global climate change and its potential impact on the environment to the both decision makers and the general public. There are at least two underlying causes for the communication gap. First, the measures scientists often use, gigatons of carbon as CO2 or partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere, are not readily interpretable in terms that are meaningful to the average person. Second, there is seldom a direct connection established between individual activities aimed at reduction in CO2 emissions and environmental impact. I propose an example that relates CO2 emissions to the loss and degradation of a charismatic ecosystem, tropical coral reefs. Using data derived from real world observations combined with simulation results, I am able to determine a quantitative relationship between emissions and ecosystem impact. For each metric ton of carbon as CO2 that is not emitted, 0.3 to 0.6 m2 of coral reef that would have been lost may be saved. Application of this result allows both decision makers and the average person to see a direct effect of, for example, reducing energy consumption by using more energy efficient appliances or reducing fuel consumption through use of more efficient vehicles or simply driving less. In addition, it should be possible to extend the basic idea to other ecosystems to further encourage energy conservation.

One of the most species rich regions in Africa, the Albertine Rift region contains many threatened and endemic species that occur on mountain tops and as a result are likely to be sensitive to climate change. The high human population density in this region will exacerbate the impacts of climate change and there is a need to assess where dispersal corridors need to be conserved before they are lost to other land uses. Here we used three approaches to determine where corridors should be located: a) Modeling the current and predicted (in 2080) distributions of 93 endemic and threatened large mammals, birds and plants; b) modeling five key vegetation types both currently and in 2080; and c) identifying gradients in abiotic conditions which are likely to support a diverse set of habitat types today and under future climate change. This is the first time that such a three-pronged approach has been used to identify corridors. Results found key overlap areas for both species and vegetation types, many of which are found inside protected areas, and also identified critical corridors outside protected areas. Some key areas are the forested area between Maiko/Tayna and Kahuzi Biega Parks in DR Congo and between Ugalla and Moyowosi /Kigozi Game Reserves in western Tanzania.

Most approaches to conservation prioritization are focused on biodiversity features that are already threatened. While this is necessary in the face of accelerating anthropogenic threats, there have been calls to conserve large intact landscapes to ensure the long-term persistence of biodiversity. This is because intact areas sustain ecological and evolutionary processes that are vital for the ongoing persistence of biodiversity. Here we examine the implications of a recent systematic prioritization for future conservation investments in terrestrial Australia. Our analyses reveal that a comparatively small amount (19%) of Australia’s terrestrial wilderness is under formal protection and there is a significant (p<0.05) negative relationship between bioregions considered to be a priority for future reserve prioritization and the amount of wilderness they contain. While there is an urgent need to protect threatened species and landscapes, we believe future prioritization approaches should move towards recognizing the role large wilderness landscapes will play in conserving biodiversity in the long term. Prioritization approaches need to go beyond using measures of past threats as a surrogate for future threats and also incorporate key ecological processes within the planning framework.

Rapid population growth, human-forced climate change and the quest of economic development is changing how governments and local communities view the landscapes they live in. In the past decade we have seen significant changes to ecosystems as they have been reshaped to meet the demands of a variety of stakeholders from subsistence farmers, to forestry and extractive industries. In allocating scarce conservation resources from funding sources like REDD+, stakeholders that include governments, local communities and large scale industrial developers have been challenged to deliver co-benefits for biodiversity conservation and sustainable livelihoods through the protection of ecosystem services. However it is not clear whether there are always win-wins for the environment and the development community. Using the Marxan decision support tool, we outline a scenario planning based approach to landscape analysis designed to allow different stakeholders to identify clear land-use objectives, explore trade-offs in achieving those objectives and promote thoughtful and informed land-use decisions. We discuss the experiences in applying the methodology in three East African landscapes.

Support for research on the impacts of human activity has increased in agencies of the U.S. Federal Government. This stems from a number of factors, including: decreasing uncertainty about near-term impacts of climate change and other human-induced global changes, new initiatives emerging from the Executive Branch, and Legislative oversight. Executive agencies have created or transformed programs to explicitly incorporate human dimensions into basic research, promoting interdisciplinary research within and among agencies, and conducting internal assessments that demonstrate the broader impacts of publicly funded research. In this talk I present a brief overview of federal agency programs that support research on natural resource management, highlighting innovative programs at the nexus of environmental, social and economic sustainability. Most of the presentation will then discuss cultural change at the National Science Foundation (NSF) with 1) renewed emphasis on the Broader Impacts Criterion of Merit Review and 2) recent efforts to promote interdisciplinary research on sustainability. As “the only federal agency whose mission includes support for all fields of fundamental science and engineering” (except biomedical science), NSF reflects the tensions between conducting academic research and applying it. I hope to prompt practical discussion of how best to strike this balance while continuing to support basic research in an era of strained budgets.

A central tenet of conservation psychology is that cultivating environmental concern requires an understanding of what motivates people to act. Surprisingly however, few formal theories of human motivation have been applied to this question. Regulatory focus theory (RFT) provides a promising new approach. RFT posits that people are primarily motivated via one of two self-regulatory orientations: promotion or prevention. While promotion emphasizes advancement toward desired ends, prevention emphasizes maintenance of current states. In this study, participants are given a wildlife conservation pamphlet in either a promotion- or prevention-frame. We then assess their level of motivation, defined as their concern for the initiatives in those brochures and their willingness to act (by donating a proportion of their compensation to support relevant causes). We are interested in the effectiveness of wildlife conservation communications depending on: 1) whether they are framed as a promotion or a prevention message, 2) chronic (or induced) promotion/prevention differences in the audience to which one is presenting the message, and 3) the 'fit' between the way the message is framed and the orientation of the audience. The results of this ongoing study will shed light on the potential utility of applying RFT to wildlife conservation communications effectiveness, and can illuminate a fruitful intersection between formal human motivational theory and conservation psychology more broadly.

Human-wildlife conflicts have been a constant through human history. Across the world's pastoral communities, conflict with carnivores predating on livestock threatens the economic welfare of families and is often responded to with retaliatory killings. In Central Asia, herding communities must coexist with an entire suite of carnivores, including the endangered snow leopard. Loss of snow leopards to retaliatory killings is an important conservation concern. In 2009-2011 we conducted surveys with 144 households to better understand the economic, personal and cultural impacts of snow leopards and other carnivores on stakeholders in the Sanjiangyuan Region of the Tibetan Plateau. Of the interview respondents, 58% knew of snow leopard parts being used in traditional customs in the past. Results also showed that livestock mortalities cost local herder households nearly $6200 USD per year. Yet, only 10% of losses were attributed to snow leopards, as compared to 45% for wolves and 42% to disease. Snow leopard deaths to retaliatory killings may be disproportional to their depredation contribution as they may also be unintentionally killed by poison traps meant for wolves. We recommend multi-stakeholder actions to incorporate compensation and insurance programs; to better train and equip veterinarians to treat diseases; and to provide the public education necessary to alleviate the responses to human-wildlife conflicts that negatively impact snow leopards and other carnivores.

Data needed for informed conservation prioritization are generally greater than the data available, and surrogates are often used. Although the need to anticipate dynamic threats is recognized, the effectiveness of surrogates for vulnerability to habitat conversion is seldom tested. Here we consider the importance of using validated vulnerability data in conservation planning tools that assist prioritization of conservation land in grasslands. We compared properties of two different vulnerability surrogates that have been applied in our study area to a validated prediction of habitat conversion-vulnerability based on recent assessment of land-use change. We found that neither surrogate was a particularly effective predictor of validated vulnerability. Importantly, both surrogates performed poorly in places where grasslands were most imminently threatened with habitat conversion. Our study suggests the integration of validated estimates of vulnerability into conservation planning tools may be an important requirement for effective conservation planning under dynamic threats and in rapidly changing landscapes. We apply our results to discuss the practical considerations and potential value of incorporating validated vulnerability into conservation planning tools both generally and in the context of New Zealand's indigenous grasslands.

Pacific Island cultures and livelihoods are inextricably linked to the ocean; thus, it should not be surprising that Pacific Island Nations have established targets for protecting marine and coastal resources that greatly exceed those set by international conventions and treaties. Yet, whilst commitments are made and conservation priorities identified at the national scale, management actions are undertaken primarily by communities and local governments. Too often, national protected area network designs and community-driven actions proceed in parallel, with neither effectively informing the other. I will discuss two contrasting implementation strategies from the region that show promise in bridging this gap. In Palau, a nationwide protected area network (PAN) planning process undertaken in 2006 produced a design that did not adequately take local ecological knowledge or socioeconomic factors into account, and consequently did not result in implementation. Seven years later, national PAN planning is being revisited, this time as a locally-led process with an implementation strategy from the outset: the National PAN design will be refined through subsequent State level planning to incorporate fine-scale socioeconomic information. In Fiji, an implementation strategy is developing from the bottom up: systematic conservation plans developed and implemented in one district have inspired adjacent districts, and later Provincial Governments, to engage with planning processes.

Climate change and landcover modification are one of the major challenges for conservation and biodiversity loss. Pereira et al. (2013) identified this challenge and argue for a coordinated global monitoring program. Necessary parameter to monitor biodiversity similar to the Essential Climate Variables are discussed within the Essential Biodiversity Variable discussion. This EBV system is currently defining relevant globally applicable variables and some of these variables can be derived by means of remote sensing. Space borne measurements like habitat extent or its vertical structure and its changes over time is relevant for e.g. CBD targets and especially for on the ground conservation efforts. These new measurements need a strong interdisciplinary coordination effort in order to provide valuable variables for biodiversity monitoring as well as grasping the full capacity of remote sensing technology. The development and launch of new space borne sensors which are filling identified gaps needs a strong political joint effort. These sensors could be space borne LIDAR and hyperspectral data sets as well as multi-spectral data sets with a strong emphasis on providing long-term comparable information. We will present a range of case studies how remote sensing is used currently to derive valuable parameters for monitoring and as well future perspectives of integrated remote sensing biodiversity variable development including the political initiatives driving it.

Inbreeding depression can jeopardize the survival of endangered species. However, the effects of inbreeding depend on the genetic history of the species in question, and can be strongly influenced by chance events. The black robin (Petroica traversi), one of New Zealand's iconic bird species, has recovered from a single-pair bottleneck in 1979 to 260 highly inbred adults today. Despite apparent demographic viability thus far, there is concern that inbreeding depression may eventually threaten this species; though either previous purging of deleterious alleles or historic fixation of mildly deleterious alleles could reduce the effects of further inbreeding. We found no effects of inbreeding on adult survival, but moderate inbreeding depression on juvenile survival and annual reproductive success of males. In contrast, we found an unexpected positive effect of inbreeding on reproductive success of females, strongest when females were closely related to their mates. To our knowledge, this is the first positive effect of inbreeding that has been clearly documented in a wild vertebrate population. The combination of positive and negative effects of inbreeding will have implications for the continuing conservation of the endangered black robin; and underscores the fact that the effects of inbreeding, while often negative, are influenced too strongly by chance and past events to be managed without an in-depth analysis.