Update

Letters

Planning forwards: biodiversity research and monitoring systems for better management

Regulatory monitoring of the Dutch part of the southern North Sea does not provide sufficient information to understand the observed changes in the physical, chemical and ecological environment. As a result, the Dutch North Sea policy and management is not appropriately supported by data. The monitoring lacks explicit objectives for integrated management and knowledge enhancement about system functioning. Ecological processes are not included in the programs. There is neither integration of monitoring of physical, chemical and biological parameters, nor is there integration of regulatory monitoring, project monitoring and applied in-depth research. In the meantime, the effects of climate change, the upscaling of renewable energy, and plans for intensifying offshore aquaculture make appropriate monitoring even more urgent. The Dutch North Sea management is therefore faced with the challenge of adapting the current monitoring without compromising continuity. This can be done by making monitoring hypothesis-driven, setting up an integrated monitoring strategy based on regulatory and project-based monitoring, combining structure and process measurements, applying new smart automated techniques, increased use of modelling and remote sensing, and conducting in-depth measurement campaigns. As the North Sea is bordered by several countries, such a renewed effort should be done in coordination with these countries.

Local ecological knowledge (LEK) can provide cost-effective baseline ecological data across large geographical areas, and is increasingly seen as an important source of information for rare and cryptic species. However, to date, its use as a practical tool for prioritising conservation action is limited. Pangolins are the world’s most heavily trafficked wild mammals and all species are in decline. The Philippine pangolin (Manis culionensis) is Critically Endangered but conservation efforts are hindered by a lack of knowledge on where populations still exist and where in situ action should be prioritised. We conducted the first range-wide systematic survey for the species using household interviews (n = 1296) to provide new data on pangolin distribution, status and threats, and to assess the use of LEK for highlighting priority areas for conservation. LEK about pangolins was high (87% of respondents recognised pangolins and provided further information), with evidence of pangolin occurrence in 17 of the 18 municipalities surveyed. The majority (70%) of respondents had seen a pangolin, but most (72%) perceived pangolins to be ‘rare’ or ‘very rare’, and local use of pangolins was reported across the species’ range. Spatial differences in sighting frequencies, perceived abundance and reported population trends were observed, providing an important baseline to identify priority sites for targeted research and community-based pangolin conservation.

The global climate is changing faster than previously anticipated. Although scientists expect cumulatively deleterious impacts to birds and other wildlife, effects on individual species are likely more complex. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has monitored >100 songbirds across 37,600 km² of Northern California conifer forests for close to two decades to facilitate informed, science-based conservation planning. The study area represents 42% of all conifer forests in the state. Autonomous sound recorders were used to survey birds at 1065 randomly distributed sites from 2002 to 2016. The richness of Neotropical migrants declined below 1515 m (90% CI: 1150–1950 m) elevation whereas it increased above this threshold after controlling for changes in tree cover due to forestry and wildfire. This finding suggests an overall upward shift in Neotropical migrant distributions in response to an annual 0.037 °C (90% CI: 0.029–0.045 °C) increase in mean daily May temperature during the timespan. Residents and altitudinal migrants may be less vulnerable to increasing temperatures, conversely, as evidence of elevational shifting was much weaker or non-existent for them. Yet for individual species, there were both declines and increases in occupancy. Rapid and mixed population trends, in combination with elevational range shifts, suggest that songbirds vary widely in their capacity to adapt to climate change and other stressors. Conservation of structurally-complex and fire resilient forests above ~1500 m elevation is paramount in helping to buffer songbirds against rising temperatures. The expansion of biodiversity monitoring across large taxonomic, spatial, and temporal extents is vital to effective conservation planning.

Monitoring is one of the key tools employed to help understand the condition of the natural environment and inform the development of appropriate management actions. While international conventions encourage the use of standardised methods, the link between the information monitoring provides and local management needs is frequently overlooked. This problem is further exacerbated when monitoring is employed in areas where there are divergent interests among stakeholders in land use and management. Such problems are found in the management of wild deer across Scotland, where monitoring, in the form of habitat impact assessments, have been introduced as an innovation in sustainable deer management. However, the uptake of habitat impact assessments has been limited. We used deer management in Scotland as a case study to explore whether reinventing habitat impact assessments, and hosting the system on a familiar digital platform (a mobile phone) could help to remove perceived barriers to the implementation of assessments. Using the diffusion of innovations as a theoretical framework three sets of workshops were conducted with participants representing different stakeholder interests. While the proposed digital system did address perceived barriers to the conduct of habitat monitoring, in addition it revealed underlying concerns on the use and purpose of habitat monitoring as a tool in land management. Such concerns indicate friction between scientific and management perspectives, which need to be considered and addressed if monitoring is to become more widely acceptable as a tool to inform the management of natural resources.

Ways of reducing the drivers of global biodiversity loss and degradation of ecosystem services are needed more than ever before. Policy options must be based on the best evidence of the role of multiple driving forces. Increasingly, a significant part of the evidence base comes from attributing signals of biological change detected in large-scale analytical surveys to a range of possible causal factors. We highlight a number of subtle difficulties that can beset the challenge of detecting such correlative relationships. These are as follows: (1) The Modifiable Area Unit Problem. (2) Incomplete explanatory variable data. (3) Lack of control over the replication and crossing of driving variables. In most cases these problems can be avoided by more careful specification of the scientific question and application of relatively new analytical techniques. Ignoring them can lead to mis-specification of hypothesised driver–state–impact relationships and flawed conclusions as to the most important causes of change.

Public demand to conserve biodiversity has resulted in increased monitoring efforts for a vast number of species. Faced with reporting on the large amounts of information generated by biodiversity monitoring, there is a desire to have state variables that simplify this complexity. Intactness indices describe the deviation of the state of biodiversity from a specified reference condition. An effective intactness index should not only statistically describe changes in biodiversity when change occurs but also resonate with people in a way that they have a clear picture of the type of change that has occurred. We used an online survey to evaluate whether public perception of cumulative impacts as viewed through images of disturbed boreal landscapes was correlated with actual indices of avian biodiversity intactness. We found people accurately ranked landscapes with the most human disturbance relative to an undisturbed reference state. The variable the best predicted perceived intactness was the proportion of mature forest cover remaining. Dissection by roads and fragmentation effects by forestry, agriculture, and urbanization explained less but a significant amount of variation. Biocentric individuals and non-hunters viewed landscapes as generally being less intact. Absolute intactness scores from field data deviated from perceived intactness. Landscapes with little human disturbance (i.e. a single road) were perceived to have lower intactness than what was actually observed in bird communities and landscapes with no forest were perceived as being more impacted than they were. Intactness indices can enhance understanding of biodiversity change but caution must be exercised to ensure a clear understanding of what the absolute value of indices represent.