Wildlife conservation

Ecosystem

Interactions between living and non-living components

Community

Interacting species

Habitat

Physical area and resource that support a species

Biome

Region characterized by temperature and precipitation

Biodiversity

• ecosystem - # of ecosystems/communities in an area

• species - # of species and relative abundance

• genetic - within a species, among individuals in a population and among populations

• Diversity fosters stability

Food web

emphasis on how energy flows and is exchanged among biota

Extinction

• The permanent loss of species to the world

• Extinct in the wild (EW) - the species only remains alive in captivity

• Locally extinct (extirpated) - no longer found in an area it once inhabited but found elsewhere

• Ecologically extinct - numbers so low that a species is functionally extinct

Extirpation

No longer found in an area it once inhabited but found elsewhere

Endangered

prob of extinction >20% in the next 20 years or 5 generations

Endemic/endemism

Describes species that are restricted to a particular geographic location

Mass extinction

• At least 75% of species go extinct within less than 2 million years

• 5 so far

Background/baseline extinction

• Extinction per million species/year (E/MSY)

• Estimated to be 0.1 E/MSY

• Current rates are 100-1000x faster

Ecosystem services

• The benefits people obtain from ecosystems

  • A way of framing the mutually beneficial relationship between people and the environ in a capitalist framework

• IPBES - ecosystem services org

• Types

  • Supporting

    • Foundational to the others

    • Nutrient cycling, water cycling, soil formation, photosynthesis

  • Regulating

    • Benefit provided by ecosystem processes that maintain environ conditions favorable to life 

    • Air quality, water runoff, erosion, pollination

  • Cultural

    • Non-material

    • Ethical values, existence values, recreation, and ecotourism

  • Provisioning

    • Material goods

    • Food, fiber, biomass, fuel, freshwater, medicines

Capitalism

A economic system based on the production and distribution of capital as wealth by private entities

Colonialism

• The assumed access by settlers + colonial projects to indigenous land for settlers and their goals

• Genocide, access, and entitlement to land

Parachute science

• when a research team arrive at a foreign research site, collect data independently of local scientists and residents (often without permission), and leave

• Form of green colonialism

Green colonialism

• Taking or using land and resources for environmental agendas without adequate permission from local or indigenous landowners/resource users

• Western science and colonialist objectives assume mastery/power over nature 

• examples

  • Environmental protection, parachute science, energy generation, renewable natural resource, management objective, green products 

Carbon credits

• incentivize either reduced emissions and/or financing for forest protection/restoration to “offset” emissions

• Green colonialism

Biodiversity offset funds

• Money put into a trust by companies to offset their resource extraction

• Required to secure global financing

• Big source of conservation money

Traditional ecological knowledge

• Cumulative body of knowledge, practice and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission

• experiential knowledge from living closely or as part of an ecosystem

• multi-gen and based on oral tradition

• Examples

  • Sacred groves and areas are protected through religious practice and social rules

  • Tradition practices lead to high biodiversity

    • Higher species richness

    • Cultivation of diversity of crops and trees together

  • Agroforestry

    • Forest patches at different successional stages

    • Creation of patches, gaps, and mosaics

    • Creation of boundaries between ecological zones and new edges by disturbance

Threats to biodiversity

• Changes in land and sea use

• Overexploitation

• Pollution

• Climate change

• Invasive species and disease

Trophic pyramid vs food web

Where a species is in the hierarchy of energy flow vs emphasis on how energy flows and is exchanged among biota

Conservation vs preservation

• Conservation

  • active management

  • Maintaining biodiversity but allowing sustainable use of natural resources

• Preservation

  • passive

  • protecting an area by restricting or banning human exploitation

Life history traits

r vs. K selected species

• r

  • variable N

  • minimal parental

  • Young repro maturity

  • High juv mortality

• K

  • Constant N

  • Extensive parental

  • Old repro maturity

  • Low juv mortality

Role of values - utilitarian vs intrinsic

• Utilitarian

  • Conservationist

  • Gifford Pinchot

• Intrinsic

  • preservationist

  • Often impractical

  • John Muir

Key moments that trigger major phases of conservation movement

• 1916 - National parks service created

• 1940s - Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic

• 1960s

  • Cuyahoga river catches on fire

  • Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring

• 1970s

  • EPA, NOAA

  • Clean Air Act

  • Clean Water Act

  • Endangered Species Act

  • 1st international conference on conservation biology

Major phases/ eras of the conservation movement

• 1960-70s

  • Nature for itself

• 1980-1990s

  • Nature despite people

• 2000s

  • Nature for people

• Beyond

  • People and nature

Evolution of approaches to conservation

• 1960-70s

  • Nature for itself

• 1980-1990s

  • Nature despite people

• 2000s

  • Nature for people

• Beyond

  • People and nature

Primary goals of modern conservation (how they have shifted from early western conservation)

1. Document the full range of biological diversity on Earth

2. Investigate human impact on species, genetic variation, and ecosystems

3. Develop a practical approach to prevent the extinction of species, maintain genetic diversity within a species, and protect and restore biological communities and their associate ecosystem functions

Basic tools for identifying genetic diversity

• Allele frequencies

• Measures of heterozygosity

• Inbreeding statistics

Measures of species diversity

• Abundance - total number of individuals

• Richness - number of species

• Relative abundance - abundance of a species relative to the total abundance

• Alpha diversity

• Gamma diversity

• Similarity - similarity of species composition between communities

  • Sorenson’s similarity index

• Evenness - a measure of variation in the abundance of each species relative to total abundance

• Diversity - combines both richness and relative abundance 

Alpha diversity

Number of species in one community

Gamma diversity

Number of in all local communities

Sorenson’s similarity 

= (N * S_B) / (S_1 + … + S_N)

N - Number of communities

S_B - Number of shared species

S_N - number of species in a given community

Doesn’t account for abundance

Global patterns of diversity

• Inversely correlated with latitude

• Correlated with precipitation

• 6 biogeographic regions: Nearctic, Neotropical, Paleoarctic, Oriental, Ethopian, Australasian

Hypotheses of the drivers of biodiversity patterns

• Diversification time

  • More time for diversification in the tropics due to climate stability

• Diversification rate

  • Tropics have the largest land area and more constant temp

  • These decrease extinction rates and increase speciation rates

• Spatial heterogeneity is higher in tropics

  • More plants → more herbivores → more predators

• Predation rate is higher in the tropics

  • More predators → more prey species

• Productivity

  • More energy (temp and precipitation) → more individuals → more species

Goals and purposes if the IUCN red list

• International union for conservation of nature

• To categorize species by how threatened they are to assess conservation needs

• Categories

  • Critically endangered (CE) - prob of extinction >50% in the next 10 years or 3 generations

  • Endangered (EN) - prob of extinction >20% in 20 years or 5 generations

  • Vulnerable (VU) - prob of extinction greater than 10% over a century

  • Least Concern (LC) - widespread abundant taxa

  • Data Deficient (DD) - inadequate info to make direct or indirect assessment of its risk of extinction based on its distribution and/or pop status

  • Not Evaluated (NE) 

  • Threatened - CE, EN, or VU

• Cons

  • 6% of described species have been evaled

  • Designed with vertes in mind

  • major declines = DD

  • survey methods may have high mortality

Biodiversity hotspots and why they are important

• Proposed by Norman Myers

• Large regions containing exceptional concentrations of endemic plants and experiencing high rates of habitat loss

  • At least 1500 endemic species of vascular plant

  • Loss of >70% of original native habitat

• Why

  • Reaction to the reality that conservation funding is limited

  • A way to triage conservation

  • Hotspots can act as indicator ecosystems

Major US policies relevant to wildlife conserve

• 1900 - Lacey Act

  • Banned interstate transport of illegally killed game

  • permit for intro exotic species

• 1916 - Migratory Bird Treaty Act

  • Closed hunting during breeding season

  • Protected ducks, cranes, shorebirds, swans

• 1937 - Pittman-Robertson Act

  • 11% tax on sport guns and ammo

  • 3bil conservation revenue per year

• 1950 - Dingell-Johnson Act 

  • 10% tax on fishing equip

  • Conservation revenue

• 1970 - National Environmental policy Act (NEPA

  • Fed agencies must use all practical means to enhance and protect environ

  • Major actions require an Environ Impact Statement

• 1973 - Endangered Species Act (ESA)

  • Listed species are protected from takes 

    • direct and indirect killing (hab destruction)

  • On fed and private land

  • Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)

Drawbacks of ecosystem services

• puts monetary value on nature

• Makes ecosystems almost a commodity

Examples of negative impacts of western conservation on indigenous communities (readings)

• Parachute science

• Removal from homeland

• genocide

• lack of credit

• degradation of natural resources

Biodiversity offset funds (examples)

• Coca Cola and World Wildlife Fund

• Shell and Costal Conservation Association

Compare contrast western and indigenous knowledge systems

Western

• quantitative data collection

• experimentation

• testing hypotheses

• Weeks to years to decades

• Connection among species and communities

• Niche variation within and among species

• Theory generalizable among species and ecosystems

Indigenous 

• Direct observation and interaction with the ecosystem

• cultural and spiritual knowledge and values

• relationship with the environment

• generations to centuries to 1000s of years

• connection among people and other species

• relationship between environ conditions and health of resources

• Place-based understanding related to human survival

• Qualitative

Both

• Association among ecosystem components

• Tracking of environ conditions by organisms

Characteristics of effective/decolonial conservation approaches

• Collab with locals and indigenous communities

• Proper permissions for data collection

• Returning ownership of land and conservation right

• Involving indigenous groups as stakeholders