The third morning started with a plenary talk by Hugh Possingham (University of Queensland; The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions). On top of a wealth of interesting reserve design applications with various considerations, there were two things that stuck: a new measure of protected area coverage and his reflection of the role of conservation science in conservation reality.
The new measure is called protection equality and it is a modification of the Gini coefficient that economists use to measure the distribution of, say, income or GDP. This would be a good complement to simple coverage measures, as it would contain information about the representativeness of the protected area network (see Barr et al. 2011). We were interested to find out and think a little bit more about the measure and how it would relate to proportion of species range protected and other measures we are used to. Perhaps in another journal club meeting…
Possingham’s reflections on conservation reality were inspiring. He and his team worked hard for a comprehensive marine protected area network in Australia. According to him, when it comes to implementing conservation on the ground, politicians and campaigners have much more weight than scientists. However, science can play a crucial role. In their case, it did, and it is a very inspiring example of the systematic approach to conservation being applied in real life. Sure, there were some unexpected downturns as well: he always thought that the major opponent in the Australian MPA case would be fishing industry – but at the end of the day, it was fossil fuel industry whose interests stood on the way of an ideal solution. This made me (once again) think about how we should deal with cost in conservation science: try to look for low-cost options (to avoid conflicts of interest) or focus on the sole biodiversity value, and let the society (politicians, campaigners) decide how to deal with the conflicts? Could the campaigners work towards the ideal more effectively, if the conflict was more obvious? Should we even think about such things? Anyway, the cost issue is an evergreen in our journal club. Some of us discuss it also in an article – see Arponen et al. 2010.
Edit 18.9.2012: The slides from Possingham’s presentation, as well as most of the other plenary talks, are available at the ECCB website.
After the plenary, I went to the session discussing protected area planning and design that was a natural continuation from the morning.
Kristian Metcalfe and Robert Smith (University of Kent) discussed another real-world marine protected area planning exercise in the English Channel. Metcalfe focused on alternative management regimes and their impacts on fish stocks and ecosystem function. He was also able to include the indirect impacts, i.e. the redistribution of fishing effort in the area as a consequence of restrictions. This left me thinking: predicting the outcomes of alternative conservation actions (or extractive actions) is hardly included in many environmental impact assessments. They would certainly allow assessing the impacts in a more comprehensive way, given that there is information available. Robert Smith focused on the structure of the MPA network: by varying the minimum size of single protected areas or spacing between areas, he examined the effect of such constraints on the structure of the network. He concluded that the minimum spacing, in particular, had an important impact on the network, and that such constraints should not be applied without carefully considering their impacts.
Maria Bogdanova (Edinburgh Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) and Rory Crawford (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) took a bird perspective to spatial conservation planning. Based on long term monitoring data on bird foraging movements, they discussed the area requirements for seabird conservation. Bogdanova presented the movement data as a tool for identifying sites that are important under a variety of environmental conditions and population fluctuations. Crawford showed that seabirds move greater distances for foraging than previously thought, which has implications for the spatial requirements of these birds. These talks touched upon the concept of adequacy, which we often acknowledge as an important aim but rarely have the information to quantify.
Jussi Laitila (from our very research group, University of Helsinki) discussed the problems of using quantitative representation targets in reserve design algorithms. Representation targets are an attempt to ensure adequacy (typically: which proportion of a species’ range should be protected so that the species would persist), but when they are integrated in the reserve selection algorithms, they can result in less representative or more costly solutions than continuous benefit functions (see Arponen & Moilanen 2011; Di Minin & Moilanen 2012). The ecological basis and uncertainty in setting conservation targets remains a topic for another discussion – however, in my opinion, quantitative targets have at least one advantage. As a policy tool, they make the commitments to conservation transparent and subject to discussion (Is it enough? Are we getting there? How are the resources ensured?) far more effectively than abstract targets such as “striving to significantly slowing down the rate of biodiversity loss”.
Arie Trouwborst (Tilburg Law School) gave the only talk in the afternoon where I was actually able to take notes. I gave my own talk in the same session, and apparently this destroyed my ability to concentrate. Trouwborst gave a good overview of the EU Birds and Habitats Directive in relation to connectivity and the Commission’s interpretation of Favourable Conservation Status. The EU Member States are required to ensure the Favourable Conservation Status also outside the Natura 2000 network, and the Commission’s interpretation is fairly stringent. Based on the cases Trouwborst presented, the directives are a powerful legal tool for biodiversity conservation, also in times of global change – however, this is subject to someone filing a complaint to the Commission about activities that jeopardize the FCS of a species or habitat.