Conservation Legislation Research Articles

Current Status and Issues of Forest Management and Conservation Legislation. ～To Maintain Multiple Functions of Forests Sustainably～

Current Status and Issues of Forest Management and Conservation Legislation. ～To Maintain Multiple Functions of Forests Sustainably～

Basic stages of history of the underground gethsemane garden monastery in the context of monument protection

This research examines and identifies the main stages of the history of an underground monastery in the Gethsemane Garden, from the appearance of the object to the status of a cultural heritage monument. The author draws conclusions about the legal norms enshrined in the regulations that form a system of requirements for procedural actions that turn a cultural heritage object into a monument. The article describes the legal acts that regulate the field of cultural heritage protection and directly influence the process of institutionalization of cultural heritage objects. The process of institutionalization of a monument selected as an example is considered against the background of the history of the object itself in the context of important historical events and historiography of its study. Turning cultural heritage into a monument that is governed by regulations in modern conservation legislation is a complex process. Examples of completing formal procedures and obtaining cultural heritage status are monuments. That is why the author, on the example of cultural heritage – monuments of history, architecture of the underground monastery in the tract «Gethsemane Garden» describes the process of institutionalization of such objects. The institutionalization of cultural heritage means the process of defining and consolidating legal norms, rules, statuses, bringing them into a system capable of acting in the direction of satisfying the need of modern society for the preservation of cultural heritage objects.

Employing Green Roofs to Support Endangered Plant Species: The Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub in Australia

The purpose and context for the study relates to urban growth. Australian cities are experiencing particularly rapid urbanization, taking the form of land clearing to accommodate outward expansion as well as developing to higher densities in existing urban areas. Both forms of development degrade native biodiversity, resulting in loss of vegetation with the possibility that the remnant indigenous plants will become locally extinct. One endangered ecological community in Sydney, the Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub (ESBS), still survives along some sections of Sydney’s heavily urbanized coastline. At the time of European settlement, the ESBS covered approximately 5300 ha, but it is now a highly fragmented 146 ha across 24 sites with some sites under imminent threat of development. Conservation legislation enacted by the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia has declared the ESBS as critically endangered. Despite recovery plans, in 2016 the NSW Threatened Species Scientific Committee indicated that the community faces an extremely high risk of extinction in Australia in the immediate future. A practical option in the face of declining open space in our cities is to examine the potential of urban rooftops for conserving and propagating threatened or endangered flora. While there is a limited amount of international research on using green roofs for endangered plant protection, there is no information from Australia about how green roofs perform in this geographic region. The approach taken in this research has been firstly, to review the current academic and “grey” literature from a global perspective to identify options for conserving endangered flora on green roofs. We derive an evidence-based research protocol to be used to test the green roof environment in Sydney for propagating the endangered ESBS. We establish the general applicability of green roofs for protecting vanishing flora through the literature review and conclude that our research design will be a suitable framework for the task for monitoring growth and germination performance over the ESBS community’s development cycle, with the longer-term objective of establishing a viable rooftop seed orchard.

Modelling the population size and dynamics of the British grey seal

Abstract Grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) were the first mammals to be protected by an Act of Parliament in the UK and are currently protected under UK, Scottish, and EU conservation legislation. Reporting requirements under each of these statutes requires accurate and timely population estimates. Monitoring is principally conducted by aerial surveys of the breeding colonies; these are used to produce estimates of annual pup production. Translating these data to estimates of adult population size requires information about demographic parameters such as fecundity and sex ratio. An age‐structured population dynamics model is presented, which includes density dependence in pup survival, with separate carrying capacities in each of the four breeding regions considered (North Sea, Inner Hebrides, Outer Hebrides, and Orkney). This model is embedded within a Bayesian state–space modelling framework, allowing the population model to be linked to available data and the use of informative prior distributions on demographic parameters. A computer‐intensive fitting algorithm is presented based on particle filtering methods. The model is fitted to region‐level pup production estimates from 1984 to 2010 and an independent estimate of adult population size, derived from aerial surveys of hauled‐out seals in 2008. The fitted model is used to estimate total population size from 1984 to 2010. The population in the North Sea region has increased at a near‐constant rate; growth in the other three regions began to slow in the mid‐1990s and these populations appear to have reached carrying capacity. The total population size of seals aged 1 year or older in 2010 was estimated to be 116 100 (95% CI 98 400–138 600), an increase of <1% on the previous year. The modelling and fitting methods are widely applicable to other wildlife populations where diverse sources of information are available and inference is required for the underlying population dynamics.

Hoping the best, expecting the worst: forecasting the potential impacts of climate and land-use change on Iberian plants of conservation concern

ABSTRACTBackground: Worldwide, halting biodiversity loss is still a major challenge. Climate and land-use change (CLUC) are major drivers of species decline, and further expected to drive species’ future ranges. Understanding how these changes may impact species in the future is thus of utmost importance in the context of conservation and monitoring. This is especially critical for species of conservation concern, known to be more prone to extinction under environmental change.Aims: Here we addressed how CLUC may affect future distributions of 64 plant species designated under conservation legislation for Portugal and Spain. Current and future species distributions were modelled and projected under three CLUC scenarios. Range changes were analysed for each species and IUCN category, considering climate versus land-use change models, and the trade-offs between them.Results: Overall, our results depict consistent trends in the distribution of the targeted species under CLUC. The results also highlight potential extinction for some of the targeted species under climate change. However, under land-use change, 10 species are likely to expand their suitable habitat.Conclusions: Our research advances existing knowledge on how climate and land-use change may impact species of conservation concern in the Iberian Peninsula. Such knowledge is essential if further losses of species of conservation concern are to be proactively anticipated. Ultimately, such information can be useful to support data-driven conservation programmes and decision-making in the future.

Phylogeography, classification and conservation of pink zieria (Zieria veronicea; Rutaceae): influence of changes in climate, geology and sea level in south-eastern Australia

We assessed genetic variation in the Australian shrub Zieria veronicea across its current distribution and used environmental niche modelling to predict its distribution at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). The species range, from Kangaroo Island in South Australia to northern Tasmania, includes substantial overland and marine disjunctions of up to ~ 500 km. By inferring historical patterns of connectivity and genetic differentiation from DNA sequences and AFLP data, we aimed to provide new insight into the history of the species-rich sclerophyll vegetation in south-eastern Australia. Genetic differentiation of populations was not correlated with the size of geographic disjunctions. The deepest genetic divergence was between populations on Kangaroo Island and the adjacent mainland, separated by a strait only 13 km wide. Populations in western Victoria and Tasmania, separated by the 300 km of Bass Strait, showed the lowest genetic differentiation. This pattern is consistent with dispersal of Z. veronicea into Tasmania, across the Bassian Plain, possibly as recently as the LGM, in line with inferred distribution at that time. Genetic patterns, soil ages and niche models support Quaternary colonisation of the lower Murray Basin, potentially from eastern South Australia. The history of a large (500 km) disjunction between populations in western and eastern Victoria is unclear; historical connectivity of populations through suitable habitats is assumed, but the timing and location of connections are not clear. Genetic data support the current recognition of two subspecies and their treatment as distinct entities under conservation legislation.

Transformation Processes in Environmental Protection Systems (A Case study of Regions of Western Siberia)

This article outlines an original approach to analyzing the development of the system of spatial nature conservation, and the system itself is shown as a distinctive phenomenon of natural, socio-cultural and economic genesis. Emphasis is placed on institutional, structural and material changes within systems characterized by a set of factors, actors, trajectories and vectors. The factors include the conditions that ensure the availability of resources for the emergence and existence of protected ecosystems. They also determine the current state and trends of the nature protection system determining the current status and tendencies for change of the nature conservation system. Especially protected natural areas, their networks and environmental legislations were used as active agents of the transformations. It is suggested that the elementary changes should be described by means of trajectories which are generalized into transformation vectors, which indicate the possible changes in nature conservation systems. Application of these authors’ hypothesis is illustrated by the example of 540 nature conservation sites, nature conservation systems and legislation of nine regions of Western Siberia. The analysis revealed signs of a crisis situation in the national system of nature conservation. It is established that the regional systems constitute a key element in the structure of the country’s environmental organization, and the direction and synchronicity of the development vectors within and between them determine the prospects for higher-rank environmental networks. It is concluded that there is a need for the synchronization of regional legislative processes in line with the traditional national foundations of the national traditions of reserve management and studies.

Patch-scale culls of an overabundant bird defeated by immediate recolonization.

Overabundant native animals cause a variety of human-wildlife conflicts that can require management to reduce their social, environmental, or economic impacts. Culling is an intuitively attractive management response to overabundance, but poor monitoring of results and costs means that evidence for successful outcomes is often lacking. Furthermore, many culls worldwide have been ineffective or counterproductive due to ecological release mechanisms or compensatory responses by the overabundant species. We completed a controlled, replicated, costed, and rigorously monitored experimental cull of the endemic Australian honeyeater, the Noisy Miner (Manorina melanocephala). Aggressive exclusion of birds from remnant woodland patches by overabundant Noisy Miners is listed as a Key Threatening Process under Australian conservation legislation due to its impacts on threatened birds. The problem is particularly prevalent in the highly modified agricultural landscapes of eastern Australia. The species impacts avian assemblages at low densities (0.6-0.8birds/ha) and at a subcontinental scale (>1million km2 ). Some ecologists recommend culling as the only management response capable of timely reversal of declines of threatened small woodland birds. We monitored Noisy Miner abundance before and for 12 months after a culling program and found that immediate recolonization from the surrounding landscape negated the impact of the cull. We hypothesize that this is due to a vacuum effect; whereby, birds resident in more marginal habitat around treatment patches move into the vacant territory post-cull. Modeled mean abundance of Noisy Miners declined by 22% in treatment sites compared to an increase of 4% in control sites in the post-cull period. Abundance in all sites, however, remained three to five times higher than published ecological impact thresholds. Return on investment analysis indicated no relationship between culling effort and reduction in Noisy Miner abundance. We conclude that culling at a patch scale is not an efficient method of reducing Noisy Miner abundance to levels unlikely to impact threatened woodland birds in the highly modified study landscape, despite estimated costs 18 times lower than another potential management response of revegetation. Our study highlights the importance of building empirical evidence before intuitively attractive but not necessarily ecologically effective management responses are applied more widely.

Applying a simplified energy-budget model to explore the effects of temperature and food availability on the life history of green sturgeon (Acipenser medirostris)

In highly regulated systems, like large dammed rivers, conservation legislation requires that systems are managed, in part, to avoid adverse impacts on endangered species. However, multiple endangered species can occur in the same system, and management actions that benefit one species may be detrimental to another species. The current water management strategies in the Sacramento River basin are an example of this conflict. Cold-water releases from Shasta Reservoir during the summer and fall months are aimed at protecting Sacramento River winter-run Chinook (SRWRC) salmon by providing suitable incubation temperatures for their eggs. However, the effects of these regulated water temperature releases on another threatened species, green sturgeon, are less well understood. In this study, we applied a simplified dynamic energy budget (DEB) model (aka DEBkiss) to explore the effect of food limitation and water temperature on the growth rates of green sturgeon. This model captures these effects and able to predict the growth of green sturgeon at different food levels and temperature conditions. We then linked the DEB model with a physically‐based water temperature model. We applied the DEB - water temperature linked model for green sturgeon along with a temperature-dependent egg to fry survival model for SRWRC salmon to quantify the consequences of managing water temperatures to improve salmon eggs survival on the growth rate of green sturgeon. We found that mean temperature-dependent egg-to-fry survival of salmon increased across a modeled environmental gradient from critically dry to wet water year types, while the fractional growth rate of juvenile green sturgeon showed the opposite trend, and decreased as water years transitioned from dry to wet conditions. We also found a non-linear negative correlation between temperature-dependent mean growth rate of green sturgeon and mean temperature-dependent egg-to-fry survival of salmon, which indicated there is a river temperature related trade-off between early growth rate of green sturgeon and embryonic stage survival of salmon. However, the relatively small gains in the growth rate of green sturgeon achieved in years when temperature criteria for SRWRC salmon eggs were not met came at the cost of large reduction in temperature-dependent egg-to-fry survival of salmon. Thus, we concluded the current Sacramento River water-temperature management for the eggs of the endangered SRWRC salmon eggs have a relatively small impact on the growth rate of green sturgeon.

Laws, Parks, Reserves, and Local Peoples: A Brief Historical Analysis of Conservation Legislation in Mozambique

This article uses a short historical study of Mozambican conservation legislation to show how local knowledges have been systematically disenfranchised from legislation since colonial period through a discourse analysis of conservation legal documents including constitutions. This study shows that the country has favoured modernity as a framework to deal with nature conservation which clashed in complex ways with local modes of living. Hence the article uses James Scott's concept of 'high-modern ideology' to trace continuities and changes in local knowledges and people marginalisation because of conservation legislation since the colonial period to the present. The article shows that, more market-based approaches to nature conservation are currently being promoted by the state and international donors and organisations; this in turn could lead to local communities treating nature as a commodity.

Systematic legislation for nature conservation with national parks as the main body

Systematic legislation for nature conservation with national parks as the main body

UC ANR research and education influences landscape water conservation and public policy

UC has been heavily involved in research and extension efforts impacting landscape water conservation legislation for over 30 years. In 1981, UC implemented the California Irrigation Management Information System, a network of weather stations that provides data for local estimates of plant water needs. Those estimates led to UC being able to advise the California Legislature on policies for maximum applied water allowances for residential and large landscaping projects. The allowances have been reduced significantly with UC guidance, and UC has helped landscapers to meet the increasingly restrictive requirements. Best practices that reduce water losses have been developed in collaboration with equipment manufacturers and landscaping specialists, and explained to end users. In addition, UC has developed the WUCOLS database, which classifies over 3,500 plants by their water needs. UC's involvement in landscape water conservation continues on many fronts, developing science and contributing to policy.

Houses of Uist: memory and dwelling in the Outer Hebrides

AbstractThis article constitutes an ethnographic exploration of the salience of houses – both ruined and lived in – on the Outer Hebridean island of South Uist. While I describe houses as both sites of memory and sites of dwelling, my argument is that the latter – dwelling – encompasses and subsumes the former – memory. This argument is situated in a historical and political context where, despite over 4,000 years of human habitation, dwelling cannot be taken for granted. Current pressures of depopulation, unemployment, poverty, and ever‐tighter conservation legislation are perceived as continuous with the tragedies of the Clearances and beyond. The ethical and political claim for Uist as a place of human dwelling is made, both implicitly and explicitly, through a continuity of human occupation indexed by the material presence of houses.

Past hybridisation and introgression erased traces of mitochondrial lineages evolution in the Neotropical silver catfish Rhamdia quelen (Siluriformes: Heptapteridae)

The Neotropical species complex Rhamdia quelen is composed of at least six mitochondrial lineages. Three of these occur in sympatry in several regional basins, which encompass La Plata basin, Patos-Merin basin system and the coastal lagoons draining to SW Atlantic Ocean. Based on both mitochondrial cytochrome b gene and 10 nuclear microsatellite loci markers, this study aims to investigate the genetic diversity pattern and the reproductive isolation among R. quelen mitochondrial lineages. Past hybridisation and introgression were evidenced among at least two mitochondrial lineages. The ancestral structure recovered in this study was divided into two groups, which could have diverged in the last marine regression. The recent population structure of R. quelen species complex is mostly recovered following the geographic distribution pattern. We delimited seven management units, three inhabiting riverine environments and four associated to different coastal lagoons. Lagoon populations, unlike the riverine ones, would have diverged in a scenario with null or restricted gene flow and small size population, possibly related to bottleneck events. Population genetic structure should be considered for conservation legislation, fishery management and aquaculture regulation. Additionally, the present genetic structure could aggravate the impact of specimen translocation and escapees from aquaculture farms.

Genetic Diversity and Conservation Units: Dealing With the Species-Population Continuum in the Age of Genomics

Current approaches to biodiversity conservation are largely based on geographic areas, ecosystems, ecological communities and species, with less attention ongenetic diversity and the evolutionary continuum from populations to species. Conservation management generally rests on discrete categories, such as identified species, and, for threated taxa, intraspecific units. Species, in particular, provide a common measure of biodiversity yet in both theory and nature, speciation is typically a protracted process progressing from connected populations to unambiguous species with variable rates of phenotypic, ecological and genetic divergence. Thus, most recognised species are not genetically uniform and are sometimes highly structured into historically isolated populations worthy of consideration as intraspecific units that represent unique genetic diversity for conservation. Genome screens offer unprecedented resolution of structure across taxonomic boundaries in species complexes, and have the potential to oversplit species if not interpreted conservatively. This highlights the blurred line between populations and species, and can confound simple dichotomies of ‘species’ versus ‘not species’. At the same time, like plants, there is increasing evidence than even distantly related animal species can hybridize and exchange genes. A review of conservation legislation reveals that legal definitions of ‘species’ are quite flexible and can accommodate a range of infra-specific taxa and divergent populations, as well as taxonomically recognised species. For example, the legislative definition of a species around the world can include: species, subspecies, varieties, and geographically and/or genetically distinct populations. In principle, this flexibility allows for protection of genetic diversity and maintenance of evolutionary processes at a broad range of infra-specific levels. However, evolutionary biologists often fail to adequately justify and then translate their evidence for genetically defined units into categories suited to assessment under local legislation. We recommend that (i). genomic data should be interpreted conservatively when formally naming species, (ii). concomitantly, there should be stronger impetus and a more uniform approach to identifying clearly justified intraspecific units, (iii). guidelines be developed for recognising and labelling intraspecific data that align with best scientific practice, and (iv). that the more nuanced view of species and speciation emerging from genomic analyses is communicated more effectively by scientists to decision makers.

Shifted baselines and the policy placebo effect in conservation

AbstractCoastal ecosystems have been degraded by human activity over centuries, with loss of memory about past states resulting in shifted baselines. More recently conservation efforts have resulted in localized recoveries of species and ecosystems. Given the dynamism of ecosystem degradation and recovery, understanding how communities perceive long-term and recent changes is important for developing and implementing conservation measures. We interviewed stakeholders on three Caribbean islands and identified a shifted baseline with respect to the extent and degree of long-term declines in marine animal populations; stakeholders with more experience identified more species as depleted and key species as less abundant than those with less experience. Notably, the average respondent with < 15 years of experience listed no species as depleted despite clear evidence of declines. We also identified a phenomenon we call the policy placebo effect, in which interviewees perceived some animal populations as recently recovering following passage of new conservation legislation but in the absence of evidence for actual recovery. Although shifted baselines have a negative effect on conservation as they can lower recovery goals, the outcomes of a policy placebo effect are unclear. If the public prematurely perceives recovery, motivation for continued conservation could decline. Alternatively, perception of rapid success could lead communities to set more ambitious conservation goals.

Using species traits to guide conservation actions under climate change

Few assessments of species vulnerability to climate change used to inform conservation management consider the intrinsic traits that shape species’ capacity to respond to climate change. This omission is problematic as it may result in management actions that are not optimised for the long-term persistence of species as climates shift. We present a tool for explicitly linking data on plant species’ life history traits and range characteristics to appropriate management actions that maximise their capacity to respond to climate change. We deliberately target data on easily measured and widely available traits (e.g. dispersal syndrome, height, longevity) and range characteristics (e.g. range size, climatic/soil niche breadth), to allow for rapid comparison across many species. We test this framework on 1237 plants, categorising species on the basis of their potential climate change risk as related to four factors affecting their response capacity: reproduction, movement capability, abiotic niche specialisation and spatial coverage. Based on these four factors, species were allocated risk scores, and these were used to test the hypothesis that the current protection status under national legislation and related management actions capture species response capacity to climate change. Our results indicate that 20% of the plant species analysed (242 species) are likely to have a low capacity to respond to climate change based on the traits assessed, and are therefore at high risk. Of the 242 high risk species, only 10% (24 species) are currently listed for protection under conservation legislation. Importantly, many management plans for these listed species fail to address the capacity of species to respond to climate change with appropriate actions: 70% of approved management plans do not include crucial actions which may improve species’ ability to adapt to climate change. We illustrate how the use of easily attainable traits associated with ecological and evolutionary responses to changing environmental conditions can inform conservation actions for plant species globally.

More than Just Story Telling: A Review of Biodiversity Conservation and Utilisation from Precolonial to Postcolonial Zimbabwe.

Access to natural resources has changed over the years in Zimbabwe. At least three broad periods of biodiversity conservation, utilisation, and access can be identified in the country, namely, the precolonial, colonial, and postindependence periods. This paper reviews the relationships between human livelihoods and biodiversity conservation in the rural areas of Zimbabwe during these periods and is informed by an extensive review of the relevant literature. A combination of historical narrative, thematic, and content analysis was used in analysing the various documents into meaningful information addressing the objective of the study. Traditional societies in precolonial Zimbabwe had access to abundant natural resources. However, access to these resources was not uncontrolled, but was limited by traditional beliefs, taboos, and customs enforced through community leadership structures. The advent of colonialism in the late 19th century dispossessed indigenous African communities of natural resources through command-type conservation legislation. At independence in 1980, the new majority government sought to redress the natural resource ownership imbalances created during colonialism, culminating in some significant measure of devolution in natural resource management to local communities in the late 1980s, though such devolution has been criticised for being incomplete. An accelerated land reform exercise since the year 2000 has adversely affected biodiversity conservation activities in the country, including the conservation-related livelihood benefits derived from protected areas. The review paper highlights the need for a more complete devolution of natural resource ownership and management down to the grassroots levels in the communal areas, if social and ecological sustainability is to be fully realised in these areas. On the other hand, the disruption of conservation activities in the country due to the ill-planned accelerated land reform exercise that has demarcated land for arable farming in some of the protected areas should be held in check as a matter of urgency.

Phylogenomic history of enigmatic pygmy perches: implications for biogeography, taxonomy and conservation.

Pygmy perches (Percichthyidae) are a group of poorly dispersing freshwater fishes that have a puzzling biogeographic disjunction across southern Australia. Current understanding of pygmy perch phylogenetic relationships suggests past east–west migrations across a vast expanse of now arid habitat in central southern Australia, a region lacking contemporary rivers. Pygmy perches also represent a threatened group with confusing taxonomy and potentially cryptic species diversity. Here, we present the first study of the evolutionary history of pygmy perches based on genome-wide information. Data from 13 991 ddRAD loci and a concatenated sequence of 1 075 734 bp were generated for all currently described and potentially cryptic species. Phylogenetic relationships, biogeographic history and cryptic diversification were inferred using a framework that combines phylogenomics, species delimitation and estimation of divergence times. The genome-wide phylogeny clarified the biogeographic history of pygmy perches, demonstrating multiple east–west events of divergence within the group across the Australian continent. These results also resolved discordance between nuclear and mitochondrial data from a previous study. In addition, we propose three cryptic species within a southwestern species complex. The finding of potentially new species demonstrates that pygmy perches may be even more susceptible to ecological and demographic threats than previously thought. Our results have substantial implications for improving conservation legislation of pygmy perch lineages, especially in southwestern Western Australia.

Biogeographical patterns of endemic diversity and its conservation in Australia's artesian desert springs

AbstractAimSprings in the Australian arid zone are distinct from other waterways because they house a large number of endemic species. We aimed to assess spatial patterns in endemic diversity at a basin‐wide scale and whether environmental features can help to explain them. In doing so, we take the opportunity to summarize the current state of conservation in the system.LocationGreat Artesian Basin (GAB), arid and semiarid regions of eastern AustraliaMethodsWe combine data regarding the location of springs with published GIS layers regarding environmental characteristics and a literature review of all species and subspecies documented in the published literature to be endemic to GAB springs.ResultsWe found evidence of 96 species and subspecies of fishes, molluscs, crustaceans and plants endemic to these springs. The majority of endemic species are invertebrates with geographical distributions limited to a single spring complex (<61 km2). Endemic taxa are concentrated in 75 of the 326 spring complexes. Spring complexes with a large number of springs, high connectivity via drainage basins and low rainfall were more likely to contain endemic taxa, but environmental models were poor predictors of diversity. Only 24% spring complexes with high conservation value are within conservation reserves, and the majority of endemic species are unassessed under the IUCN and Australian conservation legislation, particularly the invertebrates.Main conclusionsDiversity in this system is underestimated given the current rate of species discovery and prevailing data deficiency for many taxa. Historical processes and species‐specific environmental requirements may be more important for explaining why diversity is concentrated in particular complexes. Almost a decade after this system was listed as endangered, most complexes of high conservation value remain outside of conservation reserves, and the endangered species status of many taxa, and particularly the invertebrates, remain unassessed.