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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2002

The role of trade-offs in biodiversity conservation planning: linking local management, regional planning and global conservation efforts.

Biodiversity conservation planning requires trade-offs, given the realities of limited resources and the competing demands of society. If net benefits for society are important, biodiversity assessment cannot occur without other sectoral factors "on the table". In trade-offs approaches, the biodiversity value of a given area is expressed in terms of the species or other components of biodiversity that it has that are additional to the components protected elsewhere. That "marginal gain" is called the complementarity value of the area. A recent whole-country planning study for Papua New Guinea illustrates the importance of complementarity-based trade-offs in determining priority areas for biodiversity conservation, and for designing economic instruments such as biodiversity levies and offsets. Two international biodiversity programs provide important new opportunities for biodiversity trade-offs taking complementarity into account. Both the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the Critical Ecosystems or "hotspots" programs can benefit from an explicit framework that incorporates trade-offs, in which a balance is achieved not only by land-use allocation among areas, but also by the crediting of partial protection of biodiversity provided by sympathetic management within areas. For both international programs, our trade-offs framework can provide a natural linkage between local, regional and global planning levels.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Land market feedbacks can undermine biodiversity conservation.

The full or partial purchase of land has become a cornerstone of efforts to conserve biodiversity in countries with strong private property rights. Methods used to target areas for acquisition typically ignore land market dynamics. We show how conservation purchases affect land prices and generate feedbacks that can undermine conservation goals, either by displacing development toward biologically valuable areas or by accelerating its pace. The impact of these market feedbacks on the effectiveness of conservation depends on the ecological value of land outside nature reserves. Traditional, noneconomic approaches to site prioritization should perform adequately in places where land outside reserves supports little biodiversity. However, these approaches will perform poorly in locations where the countryside surrounding reserves is important for species' persistence. Conservation investments can sometimes even be counterproductive, condemning more species than they save. Conservation is most likely to be compromised in the absence of accurate information on species distributions, which provides a strong argument for improving inventories of biodiversity. Accounting for land market dynamics in conservation planning is crucial for making smart investment decisions.

Conservation of Natural Resources↗
PubMed1998

Biodiversity conservation: does phylogeny matter?

To conserve biodiversity, it is necessary not only to maximize the number of taxa that are saved today, but also to guarantee the maintenance of high levels of biological diversity in the future. A recent analysis argues that, to achieve this, consideration of phylogeny is essential.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Global biodiversity conservation priorities.

The location of and threats to biodiversity are distributed unevenly, so prioritization is essential to minimize biodiversity loss. To address this need, biodiversity conservation organizations have proposed nine templates of global priorities over the past decade. Here, we review the concepts, methods, results, impacts, and challenges of these prioritizations of conservation practice within the theoretical irreplaceability/vulnerability framework of systematic conservation planning. Most of the templates prioritize highly irreplaceable regions; some are reactive (prioritizing high vulnerability), and others are proactive (prioritizing low vulnerability). We hope this synthesis improves understanding of these prioritization approaches and that it results in more efficient allocation of geographically flexible conservation funding.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Is community-based ecotourism a good use of biodiversity conservation funds?

Community-based ecotourism (CBET) has become a popular tool for biodiversity conservation, based on the principle that biodiversity must pay for itself by generating economic benefits, particularly for local people. There are many examples of projects that produce revenues for local communities and improve local attitudes towards conservation, but the contribution of CBET to conservation and local economic development is limited by factors such as the small areas and few people involved, limited earnings, weak linkages between biodiversity gains and commercial success, and the competitive and specialized nature of the tourism industry. Many CBET projects cited as success stories actually involve little change in existing local land and resource-use practices, provide only a modest supplement to local livelihoods, and remain dependent on external support for long periods, if not indefinitely. Investment in CBET might be justified in cases where such small changes and benefits can yield significant conservation and social benefits, although it must still be recognized as requiring a long term funding commitment. Here, I aim to identify conditions under which CBET is, and is not, likely to be effective, efficient and sustainable compared with alternative approaches for conserving biodiversity. I also highlight the need for better data and more rigorous analysis of both conservation and economic impacts.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2003

Sampling Broad Habitat change to assess biodiversity conservation action in Northern Ireland.

A habitat monitoring programme, the Northern Ireland Countryside Survey, carried out by the University of Ulster for the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland, is described. It was based on a random sample of quarter kilometer grid squares, stratified by multivariate land classification. Estimates of change in habitat area between 1987-1992 and 1998 are presented and used to assess policy-related priorities for biodiversity conservation action in widespread habitats in Northern Ireland (NI). The basis of the assessment is Broad Habitats, a classification developed as part of the United Kingdom (UK) Biodiversity Action Plan. Improved Grassland, Neutral Grassland and Bog Broad Habitats occupy the largest area of NI, which holds a large proportion of the UK Neutral Grassland and Fen Marsh and Swamp Broad Habitat resource. The greatest net area increases with time were in Improved Grassland (33%), Coniferous Woodland (12%) and Broadleaved, Mixed and Yew Woodland (9%). The greatest net area decreases were in Neutral Grassland (-32%), Arable and Horticulture (-25%), Fen, Marsh and Swamp (-19%), Bog (-8%) and Calcareous Grassland (-7%). These changes are a function of agriculture, public and private forestry, building construction and peat cutting for fuel. The Key biodiversity issue is seminatural Broad Habitat loss, in particular, Neutral Grassland and Fen, Marsh and Swamp, highlighting the lack of effective action for protecting biodiversity in the countryside as a whole. The extent to which current land use is shown to be driving change, indicates that biodiversity conservation action through implementing landscape-scale agri-environment measures could deliver major biodiversity gains. The reliable information on recent changes, provided by the Northern Ireland Countryside Survey, has been used to guide conservation planning. Future re-survey will allow the effectiveness of the conservation strategy as it applies to the countryside as a whole, to be determined. As decisions on land use increasingly have a strong European dimension, concerted action for protecting biodiversity in the countryside as a whole is needed. This would be promoted by a structured sampling approach, based on standard habitat mapping procedures.

Agriculture↗
PubMed2005

Biodiversity conservation and the extinction of experience.

Biodiversity loss is a matter of great concern among conservation scientists, but the wherewithal to reverse this trend is generally lacking. One reason is that nearly half of the world's people live in urban areas and are increasingly disconnected from nature. If there is to be broad-based public support for biodiversity conservation, the places where people live and work should be designed so as to provide opportunities for meaningful interactions with the natural world. Doing so has the potential not only to engender support for protecting native species, but also to enhance human well-being. Accomplishing these goals will necessitate conservation scientists forging new collaborations with design professionals, health practitioners and social scientists, as well as encouraging the participation of the general public.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2006

Maximizing phylogenetic diversity in biodiversity conservation: Greedy solutions to the Noah's Ark problem.

The Noah's Ark Problem (NAP) is a comprehensive cost-effectiveness methodology for biodiversity conservation that was introduced by Weitzman (1998) and utilizes the phylogenetic tree containing the taxa of interest to assess biodiversity. Given a set of taxa, each of which has a particular survival probability that can be increased at some cost, the NAP seeks to allocate limited funds to conserving these taxa so that the future expected biodiversity is maximized. Finding optimal solutions using this framework is a computationally difficult problem to which a simple and efficient "greedy" algorithm has been proposed in the literature and applied to conservation problems. We show that, although algorithms of this type cannot produce optimal solutions for the general NAP, there are two restricted scenarios of the NAP for which a greedy algorithm is guaranteed to produce optimal solutions. The first scenario requires the taxa to have equal conservation cost; the second scenario requires an ultrametric tree. The NAP assumes a linear relationship between the funding allocated to conservation of a taxon and the increased survival probability of that taxon. This relationship is briefly investigated and one variation is suggested that can also be solved using a greedy algorithm.

Algorithms↗
PubMed2003

Wilderness and biodiversity conservation.

Human pressure threatens many species and ecosystems, so conservation efforts necessarily prioritize saving them. However, conservation should clearly be proactive wherever possible. In this article, we assess the biodiversity conservation value, and specifically the irreplaceability in terms of species endemism, of those of the planet's ecosystems that remain intact. We find that 24 wilderness areas, all > or = 1 million hectares, are > or = 70% intact and have human densities of less than or equal to five people per km2. This wilderness covers 44% of all land but is inhabited by only 3% of people. Given this sparse population, wilderness conservation is cost-effective, especially if ecosystem service value is incorporated. Soberingly, however, most wilderness is not speciose: only 18% of plants and 10% of terrestrial vertebrates are endemic to individual wildernesses, the majority restricted to Amazonia, Congo, New Guinea, the Miombo-Mopane woodlands, and the North American deserts. Global conservation strategy must target these five wildernesses while continuing to prioritize threatened biodiversity hotspots.

Animals↗
PubMed1997

Genetic substructuring as a result of barriers to gene flow in urban Rana temporaria (common frog) populations: implications for biodiversity conservation.

The ability to maintain small populations in quasi-natural settings is an issue of considerable importance in biodiversity conservation. The genetic structure of urban common frog (Rana temporaria) populations was determined by allozyme electrophoresis and used to evaluate the effects of restricted intersite migration. Despite the lack of any absolute barrier to movement between ponds, substantial genetic differentiation was found between sites separated by an average of only 2.3 km. Genetic distances between these town ponds correlated positively with geographical distances and were almost twice as great as those found between rural sites separated by an average of 41 km. Measures of genetic diversity and fitness were always lowest in the town, where the degree of subpopulation differentiation (FST = 0.388) was high. Population decline was not evident in the town, but molecular and fitness data indicated the presence of genetic drift and inbreeding depression. The long-term survival of artificially restricted populations, particularly of relatively sedentary species, may require molecular monitoring, if genetic diversity is not to be lost by chance when facets of the species niche prove to be poorly understood.

Alleles↗
PubMed2002

The principle of complementarity in the design of reserve networks to conserve biodiversity: a preliminary history.

Explicit, quantitative procedures for identifying biodiversity priority areas are replacing the often ad hoc procedures used in the past to design networks of reserves to conserve biodiversity. This change facilitates more informed choices by policy makers, and thereby makes possible greater satisfaction of conservation goals with increased efficiency. A key feature of these procedures is the use of the principle of complementarity, which ensures that areas chosen for inclusion in a reserve network complement those already selected. This paper sketches the historical development of the principle of complementarity and its applications in practical policy decisions. In the first section a brief account is given of the circumstances out of which concerns for more explicit systematic methods for the assessment of the conservation value of different areas arose. The second section details the emergence of the principle of complementarity in four independent contexts. The third section consists of case studies of the use of the principle of complementarity to make practical policy decisions in Australasia, Africa, and America. In the last section, an assessment is made of the extent to which the principle of complementarity transformed the practice of conservation biology by introducing new standards of rigor and explicitness.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Biodiversity conservation and the eradication of poverty.

It is widely accepted that biodiversity loss and poverty are linked problems and that conservation and poverty reduction should be tackled together. However, success with integrated strategies is elusive. There is sharp debate about the social impacts of conservation programs and the success of community-based approaches to conservation. Clear conceptual frameworks are needed if policies in these two areas are to be combined. We review the links between poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation and present a conceptual typology of these relationships.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Conserving biodiversity that matters: practitioners' perspectives on brownfield development and urban nature conservation in London.

Policies designed to conserve sites of nature conservation importance are an important aspect of city planning in the UK. London has led the way in putting in place a spatial hierarchy of sites of nature conservation importance designed to protect wildlife habitats from development. Some wasteland habitats associated with derelict and vacant land receive protection in this way but development pressure on these so-called 'brownfield sites' is high and is likely to continue. This paper examines how conservation professionals in the private, public and voluntary sectors are responding to the threats of biodiversity loss and opportunities for habitat creation posed by re-development of brownfield sites. The study draws on in-depth interviews conducted with conservation professionals and the practices employed by ecological advisers employed by developers seeking to re-develop wasteland sites. It finds that practitioners are negotiating their role in the re-development process in different ways. Key issues relate to the role of ecological science in codifying wasteland habitats, uncertainties about how best to evaluate the conservation importance of such sites and the strategies and tactics employed by different practitioners as they seek to mobilise a range of knowledges and practices to secure ecologically sensitive proposals. Scientific knowledge about wasteland habitats has not stabilised in ways that can consistently inform conservation policy and practice. As a result biodiversity issues of wasteland sites are often discounted in the re-development process. Investment in studies of the basic ecology of urban wastelands could provide a firmer scientific foundation on which conservation policies could build. At the same time, many conservation professionals involved in urban re-development are struggling to promote a pro-active approach to secure environmentally sensitive development. The knowledge and co-operation networks being mobilised to support this approach are fluid and unstable, and favourable development outcomes as yet are few. Formalising these networks to achieve more effective engagements with developers and the construction industry could consolidate ecological practices designed to conserve and re-create the biodiversity of wasteland habitats.

Animals↗
PubMed2026

Operationalizing Local Ecological Knowledge for Aquatic Biodiversity Conservation: A Systematic Review and Management Framework.

Effective conservation and management of aquatic biodiversity is severely constrained by the absence of long-term ecological data in small-scale, tropical, and data-poor fisheries, where roughly one-quarter to one-third of freshwater fish species and 37.5% of elasmobranchs are threatened with extinction once Data Deficient species are accounted for. Conventional monitoring and stock-assessment tools are often financially and technically inaccessible in these systems, leaving managers without the evidence needed to prioritize conservation action or implement precautionary governance. Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) is a largely underutilized resource for natural resource management that can provide temporal depth, spatial resolution, and species-specific ecological insights unavailable from scientific records. We conducted a systematic review and bibliometric synthesis of 60 peer-reviewed studies (1997-2025) applying LEK to assess fish conservation status, examining how, where, and through what methods this knowledge has been used. Our analysis identifies four complementary pathways through which LEK informs conservation management: reconstructing multi-decadal population changes, documenting spatial contraction and habitat loss, detecting extreme rarity and local extirpation, and characterizing intrinsic sensitivity to exploitation based on life-history traits. Despite growing methodological rigor, freshwater systems and African fisheries remain critically underrepresented, and formal integration of LEK into fisheries governance and biodiversity assessment remains the exception rather than the rule. We propose a practical three-stage framework to operationalize LEK within existing management and conservation systems. Recognizing fishing communities as legitimate co-producers of ecological knowledge is both scientifically necessary and an equity imperative for achieving global biodiversity commitments under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

Biodiversity↗
PubMed2000

[Yi nationality's sacred groves and biodiversity conservation in Chuxiong, Yunnan].

Sacred groves occur in many ethnic minority areas of Yunnan, China, which have ecologically multiplex functions and effects on biodiversity management and conservation at grassroots level. In this paper, an extensive field survey was carried out to evaluate the role of the sacred groves of the Yi nationality in Chuxiong of Yunnan. Three forest communities (sacred grove, common forest and natural reserve) under different management were sampled, and their plant species diversity was compared. The result shows that the total species, endemic species and Shannon-Wiener index in the sacred grove community were respectively 67, 17 and 2.96, higher than those in natural reserve (44.8 and 2.17) and common forest (34.4 and 2.39). The sacred groves of the Yi nationality in Chuxiong of Yunnan play an important role in local biodiversity conservation and management.

Ecosystem↗
PubMed2001

Diversity, biodiversity, conservation, and sustainability.

The concepts of diversity and biodiversity are analysed regarding their historical emergence, and their intrinsic meaning and differences are discussed. Through a brief synopsis, difficulties usually experienced by statisticians in capturing the dynamics of diversity are analysed and main problems identified. The shift from diversity to the more holistic biodiversity as a working concept is appraised in terms of the novelty involved. Through a number of examples, the way the two concepts capture natural cyclic changes is analysed, and their reciprocal and complementary relations are approached theoretically. The way diversity could develop from the stores of biodiversity as its active expression through selective and evolutionary processes is described. Through the use of a very simple dynamic model, the concepts of diversity and biodiversity are analysed in extremely opposite hypothetical scenarios. Comparisons with natural situations are made and the theoretical implications from the conservation point of view are discussed. These support the opinion that conservation undertaken in restricted and protected areas is not self-sustainable, needing permanent external intervention to regulate internal processes, and in the long run will most probably lead in the direction of obsolescence and extinction. Finally, the relations between diversity, biodiversity, and sustainability are approached. The vagueness of the sustainability concept is discussed. Preservation of biodiversity is then defended as one of the best available indicators to assist us in fixing boundaries which may help to provide a more precise definition of sustainability.

Animals↗