Modeling the recovery of the endangered black-footed ferret in a linked predator-prey-disease system

Since the black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes) was declared extinct in the wild in 1987, several populations have been reestablished from captive stock. In recent decades, outbreaks of sylvatic plague have threatened to undermine ferret recovery efforts by depleting the ferret's obligate prey base (i.e., prairie dogs). In a novel "meta-modeling" approach to population viability analysis, we linked a plague epidemiological model, a prairie dog metapopulation model, and a ferret population model to investigate ferret extinction risk in plague-affected landscapes. Based on results from 500 simulated landscapes with variable metapopulation size, growth rates, and connectivity, we found that ferret populations were most likely to persist within large prairie dog metapopulations (>150 distinct colonies) with low connectivity or permeability to plague. In addition, we detected an emergent cyclic pattern of plague outbreaks that resulted in oscillatory dynamics in prairie dog populations and thereby affected the stability of ferret populations. Using the Conata basin in South Dakota as a real-world case study (the site of a successful and rigorously monitored ferret reintroduction program), we found that black-footed ferrets were unlikely to persist unless either (1) ferrets could access a network of prairie dog colonies beyond the spatial scope of the current population or (2) permeability to plague was reduced via management.

Despite a relatively successful conservation program in the protected areas of the Terai region, poaching remains a major threat to biodiversity in Nepal. Conserving biodiversity in developing countries is a challenge because a large proportion of the rural poor are dependent on forest resources for sustenance. Protected areas restrict use of and access to forests in order to protect wildlife.These restrictions may alienate local communities and create conflict between conservation and human development goals.We hypothesized that increased levels of environmental education (EE) will have a positive impact on the attitudes of local people toward biodiversity conservation. We surveyed 600 randomly selected local people in buffer-zone communities surrounding three different neighboring protected areas in southern Nepal using a questionnaire to asses socio-demographic status and attitude of local communities toward biodiversity conservation. We also interviewed personnel in governmental and non-governmental organizations to determine current status of conservation of commonly poached species such as rhinos, tigers and elephants.We found that locals who participated in environmental education programs had a positive attitude compared to the ones who did not. Socio-demographic factors such as age and gender did not show a significant relationship with conservation attitude.Our findings indicate that EE is a valuable investment for protected areas to achieve long-term success.

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One of the greatest challenges to the successful implementation of conservation management practice is managing the role of multiple stakeholder groups. This presentation describes new strategies for improving stakeholder relationships and participation in management practice based on an example of intractable conflict in the management of the feral pig (Sus scrofa) in the Wet Tropics of Australia. I used a participatory research design that included group meetings, oral histories, and sociograms to investigate the socio-political relevance of pigs to hunters, growers, managers, and traditional landowners. I found all stakeholders considered pig control to be an acceptable management goal however, multiple barriers impeded successful application of management strategies including poor communication, competing social structures, and conflict between equilibrium and ecological resilience oriented practices. Illusory barriers tied to negative stereotypes compounded the conflict. This presentation describes tools to assist in overcoming such challenges. Frame analysis clarifies the values and positions of stakeholders and suggests strategies for reframing conflict. The evaluation of specific criteria for understanding stakeholder social structures provides information about the social context of management issues. The definition of particular guidelines for participation in adaptive management assists managers in determining the amount of participation desired by stakeholders.

Urban ecology is emerging as an integrative science that explores cities, biodiversity and people. Stimulating interdisciplinary research requires the creation of new tools that allows the investigation of people-biodiversity relation. While it has been established that access to green spaces or nature could benefit city-dwellers, the role of species diversity per se remains poorly studied. I developed a user-friendly 3D freeware (Virtual Garden www2.mnhn.fr/cersp/spip.php?rubrique173) that allows people to design their own public/private greenspaces and enables researchers to explore which elements of biodiversity people want, while accounting for other functions that people value in urban greenspaces. In 2011, 732 participants designed their ideal small public garden using Virtual Garden. An average garden contained 5 animals, 8 flowers and 5 woody species. While the distribution of flower and woody species richness appears to be similar to what would be expected by random choice, 30% of people did not place any animal species in their garden and people preferred charismatic animals avoiding non-native species. My result further highlight that the diversity of species placed in the garden was related to the nature people experience in their daily lives. Virtual Garden offers a standardized tool that allows exploring people-biodiversity relation in different environments, cultures and countries, but also an applied tool to consider people's opinions in urban planning.

This paper examines the responses of conservation organisations to a crisis environment in Zimbabwe. Since about 2000, Zimbabwe has gone through a political, social and economic crisis that has led to reduced support, and in some cases disengagement, by international and regional conservation organisations. Five response types on a continuum of disengagement, are explored and lessons for wider conservation practice proposed. The lessons include the need to recognise that political discourses often exclude biodiversity conservation and so any conservation decisions based on political expediency runs the risk of shortchanging conservation progress. Further, solid progress in conserving biodiversity requires sustained investment for gains despite changing political circumstances in the biodiversity rich countries. Such investment should include support for institutional development, local engagement and accountability that engenders ownership of local conservation initiatives. The study concludes that conservation organisations must take a long term view of conservation and commitment in order to enhance conservation impact. This kind of engagement must be adaptive in order to generate better results instead of a 'wait and see' attitude or other forms of disengagement as has been seen in Zimbabwe. Conservation organisations have the choice to wait to re-learn this at the risk of continuing biodiversity loss in some of the world's most beautiful but yet unstable spaces.

Basking sharks in Atlantic Canada are listed as a species of Special Concern because little is known about their true conservation status. The Bay of Fundy (BOF) attracts basking sharks between May and December due to high densities of diapausing copepod prey, but concurrently exposes sharks to high levels of vessel traffic. We developed a maximum entropy distribution model using 10 years of boat-based basking shark sightings, collected in the BOF to describe seasonal spatial variation in habitat use and habitat-vessel traffic overlap. Distance to the 200 m contour, sea surface temperature, and chlorophyll a concentration were the most determinant variables in our model. From June to September, suitable habitat was confined to waters >100 m and from October to December a shift to waters >200 m occurred. Predicted habitat and the International Maritime Organization BOF vessel traffic pattern overlapped, ranging from 9.93 % in August to 20 % in October-December. With >1000 vessels using these traffic lanes during shark residency, a significant potential for vessel collisions with basking sharks exists. Over 800 hours of time-depth recorder data revealed that basking sharks in the BoF spent on average 24 % of their time between 0-15 m. Given the spatial overlap with ship traffic, diving patterns and low reproductive capacity of the species, collisions likely pose a significant detriment to basking shark recovery.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service implemented the Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative (MBHI) in 2010 after the Deep Water Horizon oil spill to provide temporary wetland habitat for migrating and wintering waterfowl and other waterbirds along the Gulf of Mexico. MBHI activities included flooding existing farmed wetlands and prior converted croplands. We used weather surveillance radar (NEXRAD) to conduct a region-wide assessment of bird response to MBHI activities. We mapped the spatial and temporal patterns of bird densities with NEXRAD measures taken at the onset of nocturnal flights of wintering waterfowl and migrating shorebirds. In general, birds responded positively to MBHI management; exhibiting greater bird density at sites relative to the previous two years before management was implemented and in comparison to concurrent bird densities at unmanaged agricultural lands during 2010. Temporal fluctuations in radar-based bird densities corresponded with the passage of shorebird migrants and presence of wintering waterfowl. The magnitude of bird density among sites varied according to landscape placement such as amount of flooded hardwood in the vicinity, landscape context such as distance to refuge, and the type and intensity of management (i.e. flooding). Our results provide evidence that MBHI lands provided wetland habitat used by birds along the Gulf of Mexico immediately after the Deep Water Horizon oil spill.

Conservation of biodiversity remains a high priority for maintaining many ecosystem functions, and conservation efforts often focus on protecting vulnerable species. Species population measurements may not be suitable for evaluating the collective benefits and services that emerge from entire ecosystems, particularly those that do not contain rare or charismatic species. Here we combine currently available land cover data with ecosystem taxonomy and landscape ecology principles to evaluate the relative rarity of natural ecosystems in the continental US. Our goal was to develop a measure of ecosystem rarity that can distinguish ecosystems with intrinsically limited extents consistent with historic conditions (i.e. riparian or bog systems) from those that have limited area due to land conversion. We present a relative rarity metric that ranks ecosystems based on current extent, spatial pattern type, and relative uniqueness. This metric shows promise when compared to more complex and expensive methods. The majority (57%) of the area covered by 'rare' ecosystems we identify in the continental US fall within the boundaries of the Nature Conservancy's Conservation Priority Areas, whereas only 28% of our 'rare' ecosystems are currently held in protected status. The ecosystem rarity index we developed captures both fine scale species diversity as well as regional ecosystem services. This type of metric can support efforts such as creating an ecosystem Red List.

The New Zealand scallop (Pecten novaezelandiae Reeve, 1852) is a highly valued endemic species that has been exploited for over 40 years, supporting important commercial, recreational and customary fisheries. Sustainable scallop exploitation faces several problems mainly because recruitment is highly variable and the processes that result in large periodic population fluctuations are not understood. Thus, knowledge of population genetic structure and connectivity is needed to achieve suitable management and conservation plans. As a result of being informative (highly polymorphic) and easy and cheap to develop, microsatellites are currently the most popular and versatile DNA markers for stock assessment and connectivity applications. To better understand the population genetics of P. novaezelandiae, 14 polymorphic microsatellite markers were developed de novo using next-generation sequencing techniques and tested on tissue samples. A total of 315,404 reads were obtained from an eighth-plate run on a 454 GS-FLX instrument and from these reads 448 di-, tri-, tetra- and pentanucleotide short tandem repeats (STRs) with primers were identified. Of the 49 loci screened, 32 (65%) STRs were successfully amplified. The success of management and conservation of marine resources relies on accurate stock identification. These 14 microsatellite markers are currently being used to study genetic connectivity among P. novaezelandiae populations around New Zealand.

Citizen science (CS) has been around for a long time, but the validity and reliability of CS data has been questioned by some scientists. To be fully accepted as a valid method for the collection of large-scale datasets, research papers based on CS projects need to appear regularly in mainstream scientific journals. This means finding suitable journals to publish CS-based work and then running the gauntlet of Editors and peer reviewers, some of whom may still cling to outdated visions of questionable data, collected by enthusiastic amateurs with no understanding of scientific processes. New techniques and technologies have long since taken CS out of that realm, but the question remains: where to publish CS papers and what extra challenges might they face?

Planned fire is used extensively in south-east Australia to mitigate wildfire risk. Recently it has also been applied to achieve ecological outcomes, and it is widely agreed that patchy fires of low severity are more conducive to biodiversity conservation. Low severity fire is associated with the presence of faunal refugia, the spatial arrangement of which is often a function of topographic complexity. For example, wet gullies are unlikely to be affected by low severity fire, and it is plausible that they provide refugia for birds. We tested this prediction using a before-after control-impact experiment in a topographically variable area. Generalized linear mixed models were used to examine the influences of fire and topography on two understory insectivorous birds (Superb Fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) and White-browed Scrubwren (Sericornis frontalis)). Both species were present in gullies at the impact area after fire. S. frontalis avoided burnt ridges and became largely confined to gully refugia, reflecting its preference for dense habitat. In contrast, M. cyaneus remained on ridges, but expanded its distribution to gullies. Our data suggest that spatial variation in fire severity associated with topographic complexity enabled both species to persist after planned fire, and demonstrate contrasting responses to disturbance by similar species. Strategic use of topographic features in planned burning operations might help to facilitate ecologically sensitive fire management.

In this paper we consider rethinking human-animal relationships essential for conservation issues. We penetrated these relationships through an analysis and deconstruction of animal social representations and categorizations/statute attribution. We relied for this on the cultural history of cohabitation between humans and pigeons, from domestic to feral forms, tracing and contextualizing the evolution of values attributed to the birds. As a result of our procedure and leaning on social representations theory, which conceptualizes identity as a location within representations, we highlight issues of human identity construction at stake in human-animal relations. We invite to rethink the impact of such human self-definition on environmental stances, as it could constrain further developments or improvements of conservation perspectives.

Collisions with cars are important mortality factor in many species. There are several measures to mitigate road mortality, however they are costly and can not be implemented for the entire road network in a target area. Thus, the knowledge on the sites where road mortality is the highest is required. We used data on butterfly roadkills in three large landscape plots in Poland to identify the road mortality hot spots. Identification of the hot spots was based on spatial proximity of road mortality incident data. The nearest neighbor hierarchical spatial clustering was performed for data from each landscape plot. We mapped habitats within a 500-radius from the centre of each hot spot and in the equal number of random points located in the areas that were not identified as the mortality hot spots. Butterflies at road verges and in surrounding landscape in the hot spots and control areas were counted. We found that road mortality hot spots had higher species richness and abundance of butterflies at road verges and in the surrounding landscape than in control areas. This can be explained by the higher cover of grasslands around the hot spots than in the control areas. Therefore, the hot spot analysis identified not only areas with the largest number of roadkills but also species rich areas of conservation concern that were intersected by roads. Thus, conservation practitioners maythese enable to direct the mitigation measures in a cost-efficient way in these sites.

Little is known about how social network structure influences individual-level outcomes such as attitudes and behaviors; even less is known about the functions of network ties across scales of social organization. This research addresses the question of how cross-scale interactions within social systems lead to human behaviors that have direct ramifications for natural systems. Specifically, we examine the effects of affiliation-based influence and shared information sources (cross-scale ties), as well as species-specific attitudes, on individuals' behavioral intentions toward a threatened salamander located in the Midwestern United States. The analysis suggests the influence of species-specific attitudes on behavioral intentions is not dependent upon information and ideas that are exchanged in formalized membership organizations. However, the analysis also reveals that for some behaviors the influence of species-specific attitudes is dependent upon the types of information sources that individuals utilize. The presence of multiple cross-scale information source linkages appears to be related to more 'socially-acceptable' behaviors such as putting the animal back in the river if it were encountered. The investigation illustrates that social and information networks function and interact at multiple scales; it also highlights how the structural characteristics of social and information networks affect human behavior and conservation outcomes.