Fisheries conservation and management: finding consensus in the midst of competing paradigms

[Extract] The state of the world's fisheries has been a prominent and controversial scientific and social issue over the past 20 years (Banobi, Branch & Hilborn, 2011). Influential research has suggested that we have preferentially 'fished down' top ocean predators before targeting their prey (Pauly et al., 1998) and that, as a consequence, these marine predators have declined by 90% (Myers & Worm, 2003). Even worse, it has been argued that current trends will lead to the global collapse of all fisheries by 2048 (Worm et al., 2006). These paradigms have been challenged by recent findings. The original basis for fishing down marine food webs (Pauly et al., 1998) was based on trophic levels – the average position within food webs, where microscopic algae are at trophic level one, herbivores at trophic level two and predators at trophic level three or higher. Pauly et al. (1998) found a precipitous decline in the average trophic level of commercial catches. However, recent analyses of catches and unbiased data from scientific surveys and stock assessments show that mean trophic levels are increasing rather than decreasing, and that this indicator does not reliably track changes in marine ecosystem health (Branch et al., 2010). In any case, in most ecosystems where average trophic level has declined, such trends are due not to waning top-predator catches ('fishing down'), but to increasing catches of low-trophic-level species, or 'fishing through' (Essington, Beaudreau & Wiedenmann, 2006). Where collapses have occurred, they are up to twice as frequent in small, short-lived species low on the food web than in long-lived predators (Pinsky et al., 2011)

What the 'food security' agenda means for animal conservation in terrestrial ecosystems

[Extract] The goal of the 'food security' agenda – to provide the world's population with a sustainable and secure supply of safe, nutritious, affordable and high-quality food (Research Councils United Kingdom, 2011) – comes with considerable challenges. To feed the expanding human population, numbered over 7 billion and growing (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2011), it is anticipated that by 2030, crop production must increase by 43% and meat production by 124% (Food and Agriculture Organisation, 2009). Growing demand is expected to result in escalating food prices as transport and storage costs increase, potentially reducing access to food among the world's poor. Given the past relationship between lack of access to affordable food and political instability (Brinkman & Hendrix, 2011), food security is given a high priority on global and national political agendas

Funding nature conservation: who pays?

[Extract] At the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Nagoya in October 2010, the world's governments signed up to an encouragingly ambitious set of conservation targets. These included protecting 17% of the world's land surface and 10% of the oceans by 2020. The meeting also achieved its three inter- linked goals: the adoption of a new 10-year Strategic Plan (CBD, 2011); a Resource Mobilization Strategy to increase development assistance in support of biodiversity; and a new international protocol on access to and sharing of the benefits from the use of the planet's genetic resources. To achieve these goals, governments must substantially increase their contributions towards biodiversity conservation. With the current global financial crisis, this will be a huge challenge. Many poorer countries have already indicated a lack of resources to implement the CBD targets (see below). In addition, many governments are already committed to raising $100 billion (USD) per year for climate change by 2020, and may not be able to afford additional investment that supports biodiversity conservation. In response to the existing financial challenges, budgetary decisions on how to pay via the Resource Mobilization Strategy were deferred until 2012. Efforts are currently under way by the CBD Secretariat to document current expenditures on biodiversity conservation worldwide, and to cost out what it would take to implement the Strategic Plan

Raptor Interactions with Wind Energy: Case Studies from Around the World

The global potential for wind power generation is vast, and the number of installations is increasing rapidly. We review case studies from around the world of the effects on raptors of wind-energy development. Collision mortality, displacement, and habitat loss have the potential to cause population-level effects, especially for species that are rare or endangered. The impact on raptors has much to do with their behavior, so careful siting of wind-energy developments to avoid areas suited to raptor breeding, foraging, or migration would reduce these effects. At established wind farms that already conflict with raptors, reduction of fatalities may be feasible by curtailment of turbines as raptors approach, and offset through mitigation of other human causes of mortality such as electrocution and poisoning, provided the relative effects can be quantified. Measurement of raptor mortality at wind farms is the subject of intense effort and study, especially where mitigation is required by law, with novel statistical approaches recently made available to improve the notoriously difficult-to-estimate mortality rates of rare and hard-to-detect species. Global standards for wind farm placement, monitoring, and effects mitigation would be a valuable contribution to raptor conservation worldwide.Peer Reviewe

Diurnal timing of nonmigratory movement by birds: the importance of foraging spatial scales

Timing of activity can reveal an organism’s efforts to optimize foraging either by minimizing energy loss through passive movement or by maximizing energetic gain through foraging. Here, we assess whether signals of either of these strategies are detectable in the timing of activity of daily, local movements by birds. We compare the similarities of timing of movement activity among species using six temporal variables: start of activity relative to sunrise, end of activity relative to sunset, relative speed at midday, number of movement bouts, bout duration, and proportion of active daytime hours. We test for the influence of flight mode and foraging habitat on the timing of movement activity across avian guilds. We used 64570 days of GPS movement data collected between 2002 and 2019 for local (non-migratory) movements of 991 birds from 49 species, representing 14 orders. Dissimilarity among daily activity patterns was best explained by flight mode. Terrestrial soaring birds began activity later and stopped activity earlier than pelagic soaring or flapping birds. Broad-scale foraging habitat explained less of the clustering patterns because of divergent timing of active periods of pelagic surface and diving foragers. Among pelagic birds, surface foragers were active throughout the day while diving foragers matched their active hours more closely to daylight hours. Pelagic surface foragers also had the greatest daily foraging distances, which was consistent with their daytime activity patterns. This study demonstrates that flight mode and foraging habitat influence temporal patterns of daily movement activity of birds. Methods Data were compiled from previously collected GPS movement datasets. We include days with 8+ h of data, and exclude migrations > 500 km long. For colonial nesting pelagic birds, we compare only days with known foraging trips. Dataset here includes the six temporal variables used in our study, measured at the hourly and daily scale. Usage Notes Mallon et al. 2020. Diurnal timing of nonmigratory movement by birds: the importance of foraging spatial scales. Journal of Avian Biology The dryad repository contents include the following data: 1. Final dataset used in analysis: mallon2020_trait_data.csv 2. Original hourly data measures of several temporal variables: mallon2020_hr_data.csv 3. Original daily data measures of several temporal variables: mallon2020_day_data.csv 4. Final morphological data used in analysis: mallon2020_morpho_data.csv Data columns of note: active.hr = if individual is active or inactive, based on threshold defined in Mallon et al. 2020 mspeed = mean speed during active hours n.hrs = number of location hours per day dsunrise.min = first activity, relative to sunrise dsunset.max = last activity, relative to sunset midday.speed = hourly speed nearest to solar noon prop.diel = proportion of active hours between sunrise and sunset n.periods.activity = number of movement bouts activity.dur = mean duration of movement bouts r2n = maximum net squared displacement from the beginning of the day (m) mean.r2n = mean net squared displacement from the beginning of the day (m) median.r2n = median net squared displacement from the beginning of the day (m