Tourism In Vulnerable Ecosystems Of Kamchatka: Impacts And Management (On Example Of Kronotsky Natural Reserve, Kamchatka, Russia)

Increased number of tourists in Kamchatka has created negative impacts on fragile ecosystems and unique natural objects that support tourism industry. However, data on limits of use and impacts of tourism are scanty. The paper draws on results of our research, conducted in 2008-2012 in tundra and thermal ecosystems of Kronotsky Biosphere Reserve and devoted to study of their transformation under recreational impacts and finding management tools for securing their long-term future. Classification of recreation impacts was given. The scale for defining condition classes and limits of acceptable changes for tundra ecosystems have been developed. As a result of multi-parameter analysis of thermal areas, using hexagon cell-based GIS-model, strong correlation between soil temperature and ecosystems recreation durability was found. The research showed that the most attractive and unique thermal areas with endemic and threatened Red-listed species (Fimbrystilis ochotensis, Agrostis geminate, Ophioglossum thermale, Lycopus uniflorus, Spiranthes sinensis, etc.) have the lowest resistance to recreational impacts. Our findings became the base for development of methodology and spatial structure of long-term monitoring for vulnerable ecosystems and establishing the system of key sites in the study area. This research was supported by the Conservation Leadership Programme (project 0454611) and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (projects 12-04-00272, 13-05-00870, 13-04-10037).

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) promotes sustainable forest management by certifying forests and forest products that meet rigorous social and environmental standards. Social standards ensure workers and indigenous groups have land management rights and are included in the certification process. Despite their importance, social effects of certification in high conservation value tropical areas are not well understood. We evaluated effects and methodologies in literature from tropical regions that made specific claims about the nature or magnitude of social effects of certification published through 2010 (n=31). We categorized effects as positive or negative as well as in six categories: worker benefits, education initiatives, social services, subsistence, free and informed prior consent, and stakeholder engagement. Twenty-two studies had overall positive, and seven had slightly positive social effects, with benefit types highly variable across studies. The few negative effects were temporary or a result of the certification process itself. Only eight studies had well defined methodologies (interviews, questionnaires, or observations) and only nine explained the control group used for comparison. Broadening the geographic scope, eliminating reliance on anecdotal evidence, establishing more rigorous methodologies, defining management goals, and feeding data collection directly into an adaptive management framework would improve characterization of social effects.

An array of 28 acoustic receivers was installed over an area of 252 km2 in Moreton Bay near Brisbane and used to compare the potential of automated acoustic tracking and ARGOS/GPS tracking to inform dugong spatial management, especially in the vicinity of ports. We captured 10 dugongs in the region and fitted them with acoustic and ARGOS/GPS transmitters. Individual dugongs were tracked from 6 to 90 days. Acoustic detections closely matched the extent of occurrence and core areas of habitat use indicated by the ARGOS/GPS tags when the dugongs were within the range of the acoustic array, providing proof of the concept. Acoustic technology potentially has the following significant advantages over ARGOS/GPS technologies for studying dugong habitat use in port environments: (1) the acoustic transmitters are much less expensive allowing at least a five-fold increase in sample size for the same outlay; (2) individual dugongs can potentially be tracked for much longer using the acoustic technology; (3) the absence of a tether should greatly reduce animal welfare issues and (4) the potential to track fast swimming animals should be improved. Composite home ranges calculated from merged 0.95 and 0.50 home range data from all individuals indicated that the 10 dugongs were active in an area nearly four times the designated Go Slow Zone indicating the need to extend this area to reduce the risk of vessel strikes to dugongs in Moreton Bay.

This study describes a landscape model of a fire-dependent longleaf pine ecosystem that was linked to a model of red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW) demography and behavior. We used RCW populations on Eglin Air Force Base in Florida as a case study. The landscape model was parameterized in the state-and-transition platform ST-Sim and simulated landscape change following fire, management activities, and anthropogenic development. Maps derived from ST-Sim then acted as inputs in the Decision Support System, a GIS-based simulation of RCW movement, reproduction, mortality, and social transitions. By incorporating additional complexity into RCW simulations in the form of landscape change, emergent properties of the system were revealed that were not apparent from the results of the demographic model alone, which has important implications for landscape and climate change in this system. As a result, this model is an important tool for managers, especially on military installations across the southeastern United States. In addition, this linked landscape -demographic model has been essential for connecting concepts, information, and experts from a variety of fields to create a single tool for evaluating management hypotheses and landuse planning decisions in a way that is accessible to all stakeholders, including scientists, managers, and landowners. As such, this study provides an important methodological example for conserving other endangered species on multi-use landscapes.

In recent years, the use of Geospatial positioning (GPS) radio collars has skyrocketed due to their many advantages over VHF radio collars. However, battery life is usually the limiting factor of GPS collars and researchers are often forced to decide on a compromise between collar longevity and sampling intensity. There is little research to serve as guidance in making this decision. The studies that have examined this issue have focused on how sampling interval affects movement distance or home range size. Because GPS data is often used in resource selection functions, we looked at how sampling intensity affects inferences of habitat use. We used data collected on mountain lions (Puma concolor) in southern California at a five-minute sampling interval. We subset this data to represent longer sampling intervals, from ten minutes up to six hours, and performed both point and step selection functions. We compared the resource selection function results from longer sampling intervals to the five-minute data and found that, for both point and step selection functions, the relative bias increases sharply between the five-minute and the 60-minute interval, at which point a threshold is reached. Our results suggest fix intervals as short as an hour may be insufficient for acquiring accurate estimates of resource use.

Ecosystem engineers are key to the maintenance of ecological function in natural systems. Some of these species control wetland dynamics through changes in factors such as hydrology and biodiversity. For example, by converting streams to ponds, beaver (Castor canadensis) stabilize system hydrology. Such changes may be critical in maintaining amphibian diversity. To test the effects of habitat modification by beaver, we conducted occupancy surveys in southeastern Wyoming to examine presence at wetlands with and without beaver. Sites (n=60 in 9 drainages) were surveyed at the beginning (snowmelt) and end (post-metamorphosis) of the breeding season (2 visits per sampling period). While occupancy surveys such as these are valuable, they are time-intensive and may have high pseudo-absence rates. Molecular detection methods using environmental DNA (eDNA) from water may increase the accuracy and efficiency of occupancy surveys for rare or secretive species. Concurrent with these surveys, we developed species-specific mtDNA qPCR tests for detection of northern leopard frogs (Lithobates pipiens), boreal chorus frogs (Pseudacris maculata), and tiger salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum) from water samples collected at each site. With the combined presence-absence data obtained from both direct (occupancy) and indirect (eDNA) detection methods, we determined that amphibians prefer to breed in beaver ponds, and that eDNA results are concordant with standard occupancy methods.

Australia is an island continent. Its marine environment is the most biologically diverse in the world. For over 15 years Australian governments have been working to establish a comprehensive, adequate and representative National Reserve System of Marine Protected Areas. Whilst the principle of representing each major habitat type is scientifically valid, a representative network fails to excite the public’s imagination, unless in a world-recognised icon such as the Great Barrier Reef. Without public pressure, governments are not inclined to invest scare funds in marine protection. The Global Ocean Legacy project therefore set out to ignite the public’s imagination with a bold and simple vision: to secure the establishment of the world’s largest fully protected marine reserve in the Coral Sea. A very large offshore reserve is also the most effective way to protect pelagic species and the cheapest with respect to recurrent management costs. We believed that by setting a very high bar of protection, the principle of representation would take care of itself. The 2012 proclamation proved this assumption correct: the Coral Sea Marine Reserve is now the largest reserve in the world, including the second largest fully protected area, and scores highly on representation of regional ecosystems.

The jaguar occurs in 19 range states across Latin America, from southern Arizona to northern Argentina. Few pristine areas remain in which jaguars survive protected from the influences and threats presented by human populations. 65% of the remaining 11 million km2 jaguar range is outside protected areas, and it is here that they come into contact with livestock, on which they occasionally prey and which leads to retaliatory killing by farmers. Direct persecution of jaguars (and hunting of their prey) is the most serious and widespread threat to their survival. We conducted an expert-based survey of human-jaguar conflicts, involving more than 80 jaguar experts from 17 range countries. The vast majority of conflicts reported by the sample of experts surveyed occurred at the edges of protected area, and a surprisingly high proportion (85%) of the jaguar range has overlap with livestock and therefore potential for conflict with people. We combined the survey results with available GIS datasets of geographical variables such as protected areas, livestock densities, human geography and jaguar distribution, in order to examine the spatial relationships of variables relevant to such conflicts and present a predictive model of conflict "hotspots" across the species range, and validated this with experts on the ground. Such insight into emerging regions of threats to jaguars may prove useful for species and landscape-level conservation initiatives and prioritization.

As a result of climate change, the duration of the ground snow cover in the temperate regions has shortened. We describe a novel and striking climate change effect on wildlife, whereby seasonal coat color becomes mismatched with background snow or lack of snow. Our objective was to quantify for snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) the phenology of seasonal coat color change and potential for coat color mismatch, as first step in exploring whether hares can adapt to a decreasing snowpack. We quantified snowshoe hare molt phenology, mismatch and survival for three years at two sites in western Montana, USA. We monitored over 450 hares weekly with radiotelemetry, quantifying the progression of the molts and snow cover across three years with vastly different snow conditions. We observed considerable mismatch between hare coat color and their background during spring and fall seasons. Some level of plasticity was observed in the rate of the spring molt which mitigated the color mismatch; during the spring of 2011 hares completed the molt about 2 weeks later than in 2010. By contrast, onset of coat color molts remained constant. We developed global circulation models downscaled at ecologically relevant scales (30m resolution) to predict changes in snowpack hares are likely to face in the future. Without evolution in coat color phenology, the reduced snow duration will increase the number of days that white hares will be mismatched on a snowless background by 3 - 8 fold.

The Department of Defense (DoD) manages over 25 million acres of land in the United States of America. While their primary mission is ensuring the readiness of armed forces, these lands also represent a wide range of natural ecosystems that benefits soldiers, their families, local communities and society in general. Furthermore, they host a disproportionate number of sensitive plant and animal species. The Natural Capital Project is working with the DoD to demonstrate how values and trade-offs of ES on DoD lands can be assessed and mapped using the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) toolset. Working in Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) in Washington State, we have modeled three ecosystem services of interests: timber production, carbon sequestration, and habitat provision for sensitive species. We also developed new ES models to assess training capacity on prairieland. Here we compare a "business-as-usual" scenario and four alternative management scenarios reflecting possible future mission and budget constraints. Our analysis highlights complex dynamics between drivers, stressors, and ecosystem services, and portrays an intricate trade-off between maintaining (or increasing) training and sustainable ecosystem services provisioning. These outcomes are expected to better inform conservation planning and decision-making at JBLM, to achieve the goal of jointly maintaining armed forces readiness and ecosystems sustainability.

Environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) play an important role in ocean and coastal governance, highlighting the need to protect, maintain, and restore healthy ocean and coastal habitats. They can have expertise in social and natural science, public participation strategies, communications, and governance. Because of their role on the periphery they are uniquely positioned to serve as knowledge brokers in ocean governance issues. At the same time, ENGOs advocate for particular policy solutions, which creates a tension between their work helping different types of knowledge travel among a range of policy, civil society, and research communities and their work advocating for specific programs. If an organization is at the same time transmitting knowledge and seeking to promote one particular perspective, can it, in fact, be a knowledge broker? While ENGOs clearly have relevant skills, do they have legitimacy? To look at these questions, I present a case study of Ocean Conservancy, an ENGO that works on the issue of ocean use planning. Its program involves educating, informing, and connecting the public, stakeholders, researchers, and decision-makers as well as advocacting for US Congressional support of science-based, participatory, comprehensive planning as a tool to achieve healthy and sustainable ocean and coastal ecosystems. Ocean Conservancy is at once an advocate, a translator of knowledge, a recipient of information, and a public communicator.