21 st century challenges

1. 21st century challenges • One of the largest problems linked to conservation biology is that of poverty • Limited resources (e.g. energy, timber, space, water) • Again there is the problem of ‘developed countries’ and their standard of living and those other countries wanting to achieve a higher standard

2. 21st century challenges • When conditions are so desperate, it puts conservation issues in the context of a luxury • Unfortunately, poverty leads to poor economic and health conditions, which just feeds the cycle

3. 21st century challenges

4. 21st century challenges • Many of the priority areas for conservation mirror the distribution of humans • Increased numbers and increased pressures will continue to be a problem for future and existing conservation areas

5. 21st century challenges • For example, nearly 70% of buffers surrounding 198 strictly protected areas in tropical forests have lost cover in the last few decades and 25% of these have lost cover within their borders

6. 21st century challenges • Forest cover in and around 3 monarch butterfly reserves

7. 21st century challenges • There are some optimistic signs: • The number of people living on <$1/day has declined • World population growth rates have declined with a decrease in fertility in all areas of the world

8. 21st century challenges

9. 21st century challenges • There is also the recognition that protected areas are good • Currently >12% of the terrestrial surface has some level of protection • Marine preserves are widely recognized as important and valuable and are being created relatively rapidly

10. 21st century challenges • We have made large technological gains and they have strongly influenced many areas including restoration ecology • Better economic policies to help the world’s poor

11. 21st century challenges • One of the greatest challenges is the uncertainty of complex ecosystems and the possibility that our actions will push ecosystems into alternate states from which they may recover only slowly, or not at all

12. 21st century challenges • Consider just 30 years ago we did not understand the evolution of antibiotic resistance in disease organisms, cascade effects in communities, the potential impact of endocrine disruptors

13. 21st century challenges • In additional to all the biological uncertainties, there are numerous political, economic, and social uncertainties that ultimately impact conservation practices • Consider the US and the recent change in the public’s perception of off-shore oil drilling

14. 21st century challengesCreation of tools to aid policy • The Environmental Sustainability Index is a composite index that tracks the relative success of countries in 21 environmental indicators • 1) health of environmental systems • 2) degree of stress on ES • 3) vulnerability of human pop to enviro change • 4) institutional and social capacity to cope with environmental challenges • 5) countries participation in global conservation

15. 21st century challenges • Although the ESI is a general environmental metric, approx 30% of the indicators are strongly related to biodiversity conservation, habitat degradation, or natural resource management

16. 21st century challenges

17. 21st century challengesresearch & decisions • Researchers need to continue to conduct research, but also begin to attempt to understand the ‘subtle’ effects of human influence on biodiversity

18. 21st century challenges • Furthermore, this research should be done in a context that will aid land-managers with practical issues • Researchers may want to consider the needs and/or desires of stakeholders • Also, research may want to conduct research that will support decision making tools

19. 21st century challenges • For example, a comparative study of marine PA’s and traditional fisheries protection strategies showed that large no-take marine PA’s are particularly effective in maintaining large size classes of harvested fish, especially under conditions of enviro uncertainty

20. 21st century challenges • Of course, another component of research is to strengthen all the monitoring and management activities that are NOT conducted in an adaptive management framework (a lot of time, money, and effort)

21. 21st century challenges • There needs to be a balance between local needs and the need to generate broad, general guidelines • 1) conduct large-scale experiments in the context of adaptive management • 2) comparative analyses should aid in understanding which cases are general and which are context specific • 3) engaging stakeholders in cooperative venture of observation and experimentation

22. 21st century challenges • For example, freshwater ecologists and hydrologists worked with managers to evaluate hypotheses concerning many aspects (sandbar formation, sediment load) on the Colorado River

23. 21st century challengesare efforts succeeding? • There are many approaches already used to promote conservation • 1) direct protection • 2) sp and ecosystem management and restoration • 3) Policy, laws, advocacy, and enforcement • 4) education and outreach • 5) economic and social incentives

24. 21st century challengesare efforts succeeding?

25. 21st century challengesare efforts succeeding? • For now the ESA is still a great tool • A review of the ‘recovery plans’ shows we still lack basic science on many endangered species in the US, despite spending disproportional amounts of money on these species • However, the biggest problem is the lack of execution of the plan itself

26. 21st century challengesare efforts succeeding? • Although there was a recent push to generate these recovery plans, most are inadequate in addressing the issues related to population problems because we don’t know the problems associated with many species

27. 21st century challengesare efforts succeeding? • Population trends for US T/E sp

28. 21st century challengesare efforts succeeding? • Unfortunately many of the conservation programs have not been fully implemented due to several factors • For example, only 5% of conservation plans for Red Listed birds have been fully implemented, although an additional 62% are partially implemented (with 6% having strong benefit and 35% some benefit)

29. 21st century challengesare efforts succeeding? • From the Global Amphibian Assessment, 65% of threatened amphibians have at least part of their global population occurring in a protected area, very few other conservation measures are in place • The main obstacle for many of these plans is simply money

30. 21st century challenges • Most countries are not fully funding their conservation needs

31. 21st century challenges • Improving Assessment of Con. Efforts • We do not know as much as we would like to about the actual effectiveness of many of the conservation efforts • Some of the specific challenges include: • 1) Conservation action takes place in a shifting background of further degradation (with gains and losses difficult to assess as well as changes in threats)

32. 21st century challenges • Assessing Conservation Efforts • 2) conservation programs are not always designed for efficient evaluation…thus conservationists have worked to create mechanisms and methods for evaluating he learning from conservation projects • 3) the need to seek funding and then justify their effectiveness (e.g. accountability)…may obscure actual lessons

33. 21st century challenges • Making sustainable choices more attractive • People care, but only if it doesn’t cost them too much (e.g. shade grown coffee costs less than Starbucks) • Traditional medicine and End. Sp. • Governments can set policies that ‘encourage’ better decision making

34. 21st century challenges • Encouraging conservation through incentives • One of the major problems is poor marketing of conservation values • E.g. ecosystem services globally provide an average of $33T/yr vs. GNP $18T/yr • Converting habitat costs $250B/yr and every year thereafter

35. 21st century challenges • Increasing PA’s to include 15% of all regions would cost $45B/yr, but provide $4.5T/yr (a 100:1 return on investment) • Much of the current poverty problems are directly linked to short-term biological/resource exploitation

36. 21st century challenges • There are many economic incentives worldwide to restore, rest, or rehab habitat • E.g. in the US, CRP, brush restoration, CBI • E.g. maintaining natural habitat in Costa Rica

37. 21st century challenges • In the future we may see more trading of carbon credits, land banks, stewardship income • Let’s get the churches involved!!