Differential space use patterns by translocated, control, and resident Mojave desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) in the Ivanpah Valley, CA, USA

The need for renewable energy sources in the U.S. has led to a dramatic growth in the development of solar energy, which frequently occurs in locations inhabited by the Mojave desert tortoise, Gopherus agassizii. The translocation of desert tortoises has become a common conservation tool for this federally threatened species. To understand how space use differed between approximately 400 translocated, resident, and control groups of tortoises in the Ivanpah Valley, CA, USA, location data were collected using radio tracking on an approximately weekly basis. At each encounter, information on tortoise habitat use (e.g., in burrow, cover type) was noted by field biologists. From a suite of demographic and environmental variables, we developed a candidate set of statistical models to 1) compare occurrence probabilities for each habitat type at individual and group levels, and 2) identify which environmental and demographic variables most strongly influenced those probabilities. We found that space use patterns differed for translocated tortoises when compared to the resident and control groups. Our results suggest that newly translocated tortoises spend more time above ground than resident or control groups, possibly while establishing new home ranges. As translocation activities increase, it remains important to identify the effects of translocation on tortoise space use patterns, and, ultimately, how those patterns influence survival in a region of rapid energy development.

The objectives of this research were to investigate the landscape characteristics essential to use of areas by lynx and bobcats in northern New England, map a habitat availability model for each species, and explore connectivity across areas of the region likely to experience future development pressure. A Mahalanobis distance analysis was conducted on location data collected from 16 bobcats in western Vermont and 31 lynx in northern Maine to determine which variables remained most consistent across locations using local, daily distance moved, and home range scales. The model providing the widest separation between habitat and the landscape for bobcats suggests that they cue into landscape features such as edge, availability of cover, and development rather than specific habitat types. The selected lynx model contained natural habitat, cover, elevation, and shrub scrub habitat?where their preferred prey was most abundant?was represented at the daily distance moved scale. Cross validation indicated that outliers had little effect on models for either species. A habitat value was calculated for each 30 m2 pixel across Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine for each species and used to map connectivity between conserved lands within selected areas across the region. Projections of future landscape change illustrated potential impacts of anthropogenic development on areas lynx and bobcat may use, and indicated where connectivity for bobcats and lynx may be lost.

The harvest of wildlife is an important ecosystem service in small resource dependent communities worldwide. In some regions, this harvest is also considered among the greatest threats to biodiversity. Here, we investigate how subsistence-based communities in the circumpolar Arctic tundra region fit to three distinct models of the socio-ecological system. The conservation model predicts that population growth, new hunting technology and poverty will result in increased hunting pressure, and that a biodiversity crisis only can be avoided through poverty alleviation and stronger regulations. Under the stewardship model, the hunters regulate the productivity of the system through active management. Lack of sustainability is related to poor knowledge and governance, and adaptive co-management is advocated as a solution. According to the indigenous model, hunters and wildlife have co-evolved to form resilient socio-ecological systems. The hunters do not control the resource; they adapt to the natural fluctuations, and the management authority should be transferred to the local communities. We used population statistics, harvest data, management reports and literature review to evaluate the evidence for the three models. The harvest is poorly regulated by the governments. There is little evidence that the subsistence hunting affect biodiversity and the communities have evolved a range of adaptations to a variable resource. Our study does therefore support the indigenous model.

An essential component of marine Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) is the recognition of the role of environmental pressures on ecosystem dynamics. Direct and indirect effects of species responses to climate drivers can result in interactions that complicate system level predictions, and alter the response of management tools such as reference points or ecosystem indicators to human pressures (e.g. fishing). An understanding of the ecosystem consequences of climate change scenarios is required to assess tradeoffs among key ecosystem services (e.g. fishery yield, conservation of protected species, sensitive habitat, etc.). Simulation frameworks using ecosystem models can be used to evaluate the effects of changes in system dynamics. We apply an End to end system model, Atlantis, to the Northeast US continental shelf marine ecosystem to demonstrate methods for assessing system-wide consequences of including climate change related impacts. We focus on the responses of upper trophic level groups that are the primary targets of fishing activity in the region, and expected changes in the values for systemic indicators. Scenarios exploring the effects of increases in temperature and ocean acidification identify robust management strategies that minimize the inability to achieve objectives across numerous tradeoffs. Most of these strategies are suboptimal than when focusing on any one objective, but show the utility of novel evaluations among a suite of ecosystem indicators.

The conversion of wetlands and bottomlands to aquaculture provided alternate aquatic habitat for a variety of waterbirds. In response to the 2010 British Petroleum oil spill, the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) enacted the Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative (MBHI). The NRCS partnered with landowners and managers through easements to provide additional habitat for migrating waterbirds. Eligible lands included aquaculture and farm land, which provided mudflats and shallow water. In addition to easements, the NRCS sponsored research to evaluate the MBHI relative to avian response and food availability in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley (MAV). Our study area included 12 idled and production aquaculture sites throughout the Mississippi portion of the MAV. Our objectives were to: (1) assess winter waterbird abundance and diversity in aquaculture ponds during winters of 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, (2) compare current winter waterbird use of aquaculture ponds with historical data, and (3) estimate invertebrate and seed abundances in aquaculture ponds. Production sites exhibited less dynamic fluxes in bird abundance than idled sites, with peak use in mid-December 2011. Idled sites had similar peaks in mid-December 2011 and late January 2012. While conditions provided by aquaculture are not a substitute for restoration and management of natural wetlands, our results suggest these environments provide important migration and wintering habitat for a diverse waterbird community.

The Rana pipiens (=Lithobates pipiens) complex has long been a source of taxonomic uncertainty due to cryptic variation between phenotypically similar and morphologically conservative congeners. We review the pending diagnosis and taxonomic description of a new cryptic leopard frog species, Rana sp. nov., from the northeast and mid-Atlantic US. Our research employed several lines of evidence including genetic data (nuclear and mitochondrial), bioacoustic signals (pulse number, call length, call rate, dominant frequency), and morphology to diagnose the new species and compare it to similar congeners. Despite a coastal distribution almost entirely endemic to the I-95 corridor, this frog remained undetected for hundreds of years in one of the most well-studied and heavily populated urban areas on earth. This unique and unexpected discovery poses conservation concerns and underscores the potential for future 'hidden' species in post-glaciated and urban locales rarely associated with contemporary species discovery. This discovery will also create challenges for wildlife agencies as the new species is incorporated into at least seven states, some of which already protect various leopard frog species. Lastly, this discovery demonstrates at least one non-disease risk associated with species relocations and reintroductions that is applicable to all taxa for which cryptic species may exist.

Currently my research projects concentrate, on one side, on studies of the latitudinal distribution of modes of development of marine invertebrates, and the consequences of the potential for dispersal of marine species for fisheries management and conservation. On the other side, we are trying to understand the evolutionary context that favored the great diversity of modes of development that we observe among marine invertebrates.

Asian elephants are endangered, with some populations critically endangered. Human-elephant conflict (HEC) is the biggest threat to their survival. HEC has continued to grow in severity and extent across the Asian elephant range of 13 South and Southeast Asian states and is now a major socio-economic and political issue. Across the range, HEC mitigation and elephant conservation are almost the sole responsibility of conservation agencies. In Sri Lanka, as in the rest of Asia, elephant conservation and HEC mitigation has been based on limiting elephants to protected areas. We conducted island-wide surveys of elephant distribution and HEC, based on a 25 km2 grid. We found that the majority of elephant range lay outside the protected areas. A few thousand elephants and a few million people shared the same space, leading to innumerable possibilities of encounters and interactions, and an annual death toll of over 200 elephants and 70 humans. Continued planned and unplanned development resulted in loss and fragmentation of elephant habitat. Confrontational HEC mitigation led to a vicious cycle of increasing HEC, as elephants became more aggressive and tolerated higher levels of conflict. Given the genesis, progression, scale and extent of the issue, mitigating HEC while conserving elephants, requires all stakeholders of HEC, especially those living in areas with elephants, administrative and regulatory authorities, developers and funders, to be also stakeholders in HEC mitigation.

It is no secret that livelihoods in developing countries, including in areas of high biodiversity and endemism, often depend heavily on natural resources. Understanding not only what these livelihoods are, but their dynamism within social-ecological systems, is one of the many keys to truly effective and equitable natural resource management. This project focuses on one of the driving aspects of coastal and marine resource-dependent livelihoods in Zanzibar and Indonesia, namely patron-client systems in small-scale fishing households. Using questionnaires and interviews under the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, we can determine what role these systems play in shaping the character and extent of natural resource dependence. We can also identify where the key drivers of exploitation originate from. In the case of Zanzibar we can see that growing tourism interacts with patron-client systems to push fishermen into unsustainable practises. In Indonesia, patrons are found to be a crucial link between foreign markets and local fishermen, resulting in devastating sequential resource over-exploitation. The lesson for natural resource managers and conservationists is that social networks, household livelihood security and individual actors can play determining roles in local knowledge transfer, values and exploitation patterns in areas of poverty and/or high natural resource dependency.

The Long-wattled Umbrellabird (Cephalopterus penduliger) and the Baudó Guan (Penelope ortoni) are threatened and endemic birds that inhabit forests of the Chocó Biogeographic on the Pacific coast of Colombia and Ecuador. We have scarce knowledge of the distribution and ecology of these species and it has hindered their study and the development of actions for their conservation. By using GIS tools and ecological niche modeling, I determined the potential distribution of these species, their remaining distribution and their conservation status in the Chocó Biogeographic. The predicted distribution for Baudó Guan was 107,199 km2, 27% is considered remaining distribution because it was found in wooded areas, and protected areas only included 8% of it. The predicted distribution for the Umbrellabird was 101,387 km2, 17% was found in wooded areas and 11% of the remaining distribution was within protected areas. I also found that around 70% of the remaining distribution for both species was in areas of medium and high anthropogenic risk, that means within 10 km from main roads and urban areas. The remaining 30% was found in low risk areas, in a distance greater than 10 km from human settle. If the Umbrellabird and the Baudó Guan occur in the predicted areas, we may correctly assess the threats that species are facing in the Pacific coast, and develop conservation actions that correspond with the environmental and social features of different areas.

Extending from northern Mexico to northern Argentina, the range-wide Jaguar Corridor is one of the largest working models for wildlife conservation in the world. One of the most proximate threats to the Jaguar Corridor is the burgeoning palm oil industry, advancing the development of expansive plantations at key linkages in the corridor. My study sites in the Magdalena region of Colombia and north coast of Honduras have the highest conservation priority anywhere within the Jaguar Corridor, in part due to their geographic location and projected palm oil expansion. Jaguars can cross and even use small agricultural patches but extensive acreages of oil palm mono-cropping may present a formidable barrier to movement. My ongoing study uses camera-trap and interview data on jaguars and their prey to evaluate the habitat characteristics and configurations in oil palm plantations that predict jaguar presence and could potentially support their persistence. Study results will guide the implementation of better land use planning and zoning measures, both of which are crucial for improving the connectivity value of oil palm landscapes within the Jaguar Corridor.

Pacific island arcs comprise some of the world's great natural laboratories. Most of the famed scientific influence of these systems is based upon data gathered nearly a century ago on world-renowned expeditions. Despite the impact of early expeditions, numerous upland areas have never been rigorously explored. At the same time, montane areas are under increasing threat from direct and indirect impacts of climate change, timber extraction, and recent upsurge in regional mining activity. Montane areas across the Pacific are characterized by high species endemism and are of primary cultural and ecological importance to myriad island peoples, the original custodians of the richness of Pacific island biodiversity. Contemporary biodiversity expeditions focused on montane endemism can provide scientific, practical, and symbolic opportunity to improve regional conservation efforts for currently under-studied and threatened high-elevation ecosystems. This presentation describes key dimensions of expeditions to survey these islands in the sky as a means to advance biodiversity science and conservation. By combining long-term investment in landholder engagement and governance with scientific training, public outreach, and field natural history, collaborative expeditions are reviving the potency of basic natural history to improve conservation prospects across southwest Pacific islands.

The Peruvian Amazon holds some of the world’s most biologically important forests in terms of endemism and species richness. In 2001 the Peruvian government established an innovative forest governance mechanism called conservation concessions to manage these landscapes. Concessions have proven to be effective at managing what would otherwise be de facto open-access forests. However, these areas exist at the intersection of multiple pressures including the need to conserve biodiversity and system functioning, traditional livelihoods uses, large-scale resource exploration in buffer zones, and illegal mining. As these pressures grow, access to forest resources is increasingly a source of low-level conflict, which simultaneously erodes conservation gains, inhibits economic development, and creates barriers to social cooperation. In this study we piloted the Conflict-Sensitive Conservation methodology in order to map conflict drivers, actors, and system dynamics in Peru’s Los Amigos Conservation Concession. Based on that mapping, we identify a series of social considerations to include in conservation concession management and governance throughout the region to mitigate the drivers of conflict. We likewise collected baseline data on social perceptions of conservation managers, and designed and delivered targeted conflict-prevention trainings to conservation managers. In a longitudinal study design, we will collect future iterations of data to monitor change in the system.

This presentation will provide an overview of the symposium and highlight key questions that will arise throughout the day. First, we will demonstrate how SCB members can participate in this Policy Symposium and in our Policy Program, how they can use SCB’s “Recommendations to the Obama Administration 2.0”, become “Ambassadors of Science” in the climate debate, and take other initiatives to bring the best available science to policy makers globally, nationally and locally. We will describe some of the most powerful but underused elements of international and domestic conservation law, and some of the key terms which, if better defined in light of modern science, could become more effective tools for conservation and for helping to ensure that science drives the decision-making and regulatory processes. We will explore how agencies funding expert participation in the rulemaking process could improve the final agency decisions. We will also propose an approach that can empower proactive conservation and climate policies in the arena of international trade.

In the intermountain west, energy development is a large driving force of landscape change that could be limited by potential listing of a species: the Greater-Sage Grouse. Our goal is to understand how habitat amount, configuration, and quality influence distribution and connectivity of sage-grouse leks in Northern Wyoming. We predicted lek distribution across the study area using 460 leks, 81 pseudo-absences, and important environmental (i.e., topography, percent sagebrush) and anthropogenic (i.e., well density) characteristics. To assess connectivity, we collected DNA samples from 68 sites and estimated genetic distance. We present a lek distribution prediction and population network model based on relating 2012 field data to limiting factors across the landscape. Both amount and configuration of disturbance surrounding leks decreases probability of lek occurrence. Connectivity of sage-grouse leks is positively associated with undisturbed areas of contiguous sagebrush habitat and negatively associated with disturbance. Clumped configuration of development reduces connectivity of leks. The lek distribution and population network model will be used to predict changes in lek occurrence and functional connectivity in the face of different scenarios of landscape change. Our research will provide a scientifically-based decision-making tool for prioritizing development, protection, and restoration that will drive stakeholders to work together for a successful outcome.