The ecomics of ecosystems and biodiversity: scoping the scale

The G8 decided in March 2007 to initiate a “Review on the economics of biodiversity loss”, in the so called Potsdam Initiative: 'In a global study we will initiate the process of analysing the global economic benefit of biological diversity, the costs of the loss of biodiversity and the failure to take protective measures versus the costs of effective conservation. The study is being supported by the European Commission (together with the European Environmental Agency and in cooperation with the German Government. “The objective of the current study is to provide a coherent overview of existing scientific knowledge upon which to base the economics of the Review, and to propose a coherent global programme of scientific work, both for Phase 2 (consolidation) and to enable more robust future iterations of the Review beyond 2010.

The performance of existing networks of conservation areas in representing biodiversity

It is widely held that existing reserve systems are inadequate in representing the diversity of biological features of the regions in which they reside. Evidence for this argument has, however, derived principally from analyses of the efficiency of networks when compared with a minimum set that represents each species at least once. Here, we examine the efficiency of the system of Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) in representing wetland plants in fen sites in the Scottish Borders, a region where reserve networks might be expected a priori to perform reasonably well in this regard. The results support the general contention that networks have been designated in an inefficient manner. However, examined in terms of effectiveness (measured as the gap between the representation target required and the one attained by the existing network), the SSSI system is actually a rather good way of representing diversity. This result is consistent when each of several very different representation targets is evaluated, and suggests that a more balanced approach to evaluating the performance of reserve networks should be employed, and that general statements based on existing analyses should be treated cautiously

Connectivity between countries established by landbirds andraptors migrating along the African–Eurasian flyway

The conservation of long-distance migratory birds requires coordination between the mul-tiple countries connected by the movements of these species. The recent expansion oftracking studies is shedding new light on these movements, but much of this informationis fragmented and inaccessible to conservation practitioners and policy makers. We synthe-sized current knowledge on the connectivity established between countries by landbirdsand raptors migrating along the African–Eurasian flyway. We reviewed tracking studies tocompile migration records for 1229 individual birds, from which we derived 544 migra-tory links, each link corresponding to a species’ connection between a breeding country inEurope and a nonbreeding country in sub-Saharan Africa. We used these migratory linksto analyze trends in knowledge over time and spatial patterns of connectivity per country(across species), per species (across countries), and at the flyway scale (across all countriesand all species). The number of tracking studies available increased steadily since 2010 (par-ticularly for landbirds), but the coverage of existing tracking data was highly incomplete.An average of 7.5% of migratory landbird species and 14.6% of raptor species were trackedper country. More data existed from central and western European countries, and it wasbiased toward larger bodied species. We provide species- and country-level syntheses of themigratory links we identified from the reviewed studies, involving 123 populations of 43species, migrating between 28 European and 43 African countries. Several countries (e.g.,Spain, Poland, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo) are strategic priorities for futuretracking studies to complement existing data, particularly on landbirds. Despite the limi-tations in existing tracking data, our data and results can inform discussions under 2 keypolicy instruments at the flyway scale: the African–Eurasian Migratory Landbirds Action Plan and the Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation of Migratory Birds ofPrey in Africa and Eurasia.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Effectiveness of the global protected area network in representing species diversity

The Fifth World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa, announced in September 2003 that the global network of protected areas now covers 11.5% of the planet's land surface. This surpasses the 10% target proposed a decade earlier, at the Caracas Congress, for 9 out of 14 major terrestrial biomes. Such uniform targets based on percentage of area have become deeply embedded into national and international conservation planning. Although politically expedient, the scientific basis and conservation value of these targets have been questioned. In practice, however, little is known of how to set appropriate targets, or of the extent to which the current global protected area network fulfils its goal of protecting biodiversity. Here, we combine five global data sets on the distribution of species and protected areas to provide the first global gap analysis assessing the effectiveness of protected areas in representing species diversity. We show that the global network is far from complete, and demonstrate the inadequacy of uniform—that is, 'one size fits all'—conservation targets

Conservation targets for viable species assemblages in Canada: are percentage targets appropriate?

Percentage targets for conservation have become a popular tool (advocated in both the scientific literature and the conservation community) for setting minimum goals for the amount of land to be set aside as protected areas. However, there is little literature to support a consistent percentage target that might be widely applied. Moreover, most percentage targets have not taken into account issues of species persistence. A recent study of herbivores in Kruger National Park took into account issues of representation and persistence in setting conservation targets and found that results were consistently about 50% and were unaffected by different permutations of the reserve selection process. Here, we carry out a similar analysis for representation of mammals within sites that are predicted to allow for their persistence, across eight ecologically defined regions in Canada to test whether we see similar consistent patterns emerging. We found that percentage targets varied with the different permutations of the reserve selection algorithms, both within and between the study regions. Thus, we conclude that the use of percentage targets is not an appropriate conservation strategy

The effects of archipelago spatial structure on island diversity and endemism: predictions from a spatially-structured neutral model

International audienceIslands are particularly suited to testing hypotheses about the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underpinning community assembly. Yet the complex spatial arrangements of real island systems have received little attention from both empirical studies and theoretical models. Here, we investigate the extent to which the spatial structure of archipelagos affects species diversity and endemism. We start by proposing a new spatially structured neutral model that explicitly considers archipelago structure, and then investigate its predictions under a diversity of scenarios. Our results suggest that considering the spatial structure of archipelagos is crucial to understanding their diversity and endemism, with structured island systems acting both as museums and cradles of biodiversity. These dynamics of diversification may change the traditionally expected pattern of decrease in species richness with distance from the mainland, even potentially leading to increasing patterns for taxa with high speciation rates in archipelagos off species-poor continental areas. Our results also predict that, within spatially structured archipelagos, metapopulation dynamics and evolutionary processes can generate higher diversity on islands more centrally placed than at the periphery. We derive from our results a set of theoretical predictions, potentially testable with empirical data

La correspondencia de Valencia : diario de noticias : eco imparcial de la opinión y de la prensa: Año XXXVI Número 15812 - 1913 Octubre 11

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