Species recovery in the united states: Increasing the effectiveness of the endangered species act

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has succeeded in shielding hundreds of species from extinction and improving species recovery over time. However, recovery for most species officially protected by the ESA - i.e., listed species-has been harder to achieve than initially envisioned. Threats to species are persistent and pervasive, funding has been insufficient, the distribution of money among listed species is highly uneven, and at least 10 times more species than are actually listed probably qualify for listing. Moreover, many listed species will require ongoing management for the foreseeable future to protect them from persistent threats. Climate change will exacerbate this problem and increase both species risk and management uncertainty, requiring more intensive and controversial management strategies to prevent species from going extinct

Species recovery in the united states: Increasing the effectiveness of the endangered species act

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has succeeded in shielding hundreds of species from extinction and improving species recovery over time. However, recovery for most species officially protected by the ESA - i.e., listed species-has been harder to achieve than initially envisioned. Threats to species are persistent and pervasive, funding has been insufficient, the distribution of money among listed species is highly uneven, and at least 10 times more species than are actually listed probably qualify for listing. Moreover, many listed species will require ongoing management for the foreseeable future to protect them from persistent threats. Climate change will exacerbate this problem and increase both species risk and management uncertainty, requiring more intensive and controversial management strategies to prevent species from going extinct

A standard protocol to report discrete stage-structured demographic information

Funder: Maria Zambrano Next Generation EU FellowshipAbstract Stage‐based demographic methods, such as matrix population models (MPMs), are powerful tools used to address a broad range of fundamental questions in ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation science. Accordingly, MPMs now exist for over 3000 species worldwide. These data are being digitised as an ongoing process and periodically released into two large open‐access online repositories: the COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database and the COMADRE Animal Matrix Database. During the last decade, data archiving and curation of COMPADRE and COMADRE, and subsequent comparative research, have revealed pronounced variation in how MPMs are parameterized and reported. Here, we summarise current issues related to the parameterisation and reporting of MPMs that arise most frequently and outline how they affect MPM construction, analysis, and interpretation. To quantify variation in how MPMs are reported, we present results from a survey identifying key aspects of MPMs that are frequently unreported in manuscripts. We then screen COMPADRE and COMADRE to quantify how often key pieces of information are omitted from manuscripts using MPMs. Over 80% of surveyed researchers (n = 60) state a clear benefit to adopting more standardised methodologies for reporting MPMs. Furthermore, over 85% of the 300 MPMs assessed from COMPADRE and COMADRE omitted one or more elements that are key to their accurate interpretation. Based on these insights, we identify fundamental issues that can arise from MPM construction and communication and provide suggestions to improve clarity, reproducibility and future research utilising MPMs and their required metadata. To fortify reproducibility and empower researchers to take full advantage of their demographic data, we introduce a standardised protocol to present MPMs in publications. This standard is linked to www.compadre‐db.org, so that authors wishing to archive their MPMs can do so prior to submission of publications, following examples from other open‐access repositories such as DRYAD, Figshare and Zenodo. Combining and standardising MPMs parameterized from populations around the globe and across the tree of life opens up powerful research opportunities in evolutionary biology, ecology and conservation research. However, this potential can only be fully realised by adopting standardised methods to ensure reproducibility. </jats:p

New survey explores hidden mega-colonies of Adélie penguins in Antarctica

Despite concerted international effort to track and interpret shifts in the abundance and distribution of Adélie penguins, large populations of Adélie penguins continue to be identified. Here we report on a major hotspot of Adélie penguin abundance discovered in the Danger Islands off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula (AP). We present the first complete census of Pygoscelis spp. penguins in the Danger Islands, estimated from a multi-modal survey consisting of direct ground counts and computer-automated counts of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery. Our survey reveals that the Danger Islands host 751,527 pairs of Adélie penguins, more than the rest of AP region combined, and include the third and fourth largest Adélie penguin colonies in the world. Our results validate the use of Landsat medium-resolution satellite imagery for the detection of new or unknown penguin colonies and highlight the utility of combining satellite imagery with ground and UAV surveys. The Danger Islands appear to have avoided recent declines documented on the Western AP and, because they are large and likely to remain an important hotspot for avian abundance under projected climate change, deserve special consideration in the negotiation and design of Marine Protected Areas in the region