Suchergebnisse

Monitoring and evaluation are crucial components of informed decision making, but there is still a general lack of evaluation of the effectiveness of different conservation policies and practices. Also, many existing monitoring schemes can be inefficient use of resources. We have studied the effects and side-effects of legal protection of the Siberian flying squirrel Pteromys volans in Finland, and re-evaluated the methods and results of the monitoring scheme for the species. This presentation combines the results of four different studies. Protection of the so called 'breeding sites or resting places' for the species has faced resistance. We explored reasons for negative attitudes by comparing the responses of persons with and without direct experience on protection. Forest owners have been mostly satisfied with the logging restrictions, but about half of the area occupied by the species in Finland could be owned by persons who would prefer not to have it on their lands. The issue is politicized: the species has become an example of top-down protection, resisted by forest owners out of principle. We estimated the proportion of 'breeding sites or resting places' that have been considered in forest management and found that only 3% of all the potential sites that would have been located on logging areas could have been recognized (1). This, and negative attitudes toward the species, indicate severe problems with compliance of legislation. We also studied 100 sites delimited by environmental authority. Our results show that the narrow definition of the prohibition to 'deteriorate or destruct' the sites does not safeguard the ecological functionality of them (1). The national monitoring scheme reported 22.7% decline of occupancy during 2006-2015. If the proportional change in occupancy would correspond 1:1 with the proportional change in population size, the decline in population size would have been <30%. Based on this assumption the status of the species was down-listed from 'Vulnerable' to 'Near Threatened'. We estimated a) the relationship between observed decline in occupancy and the true changes in the population size, and b) the possible causes of the change by: i) evaluating the sampling method, building both ii) a survival/colonization model with relevant habitat data, and iii) an individual-based simulator to test the relation between observed occupancy and actual number of individuals. Our simulation shows that population can decline faster than occupancy. We should rethink the way the species is protected and how its status is evaluated. Protection of only known nest sites will not be effective in Finland. The raw occupancy data should be interpreted according to more realistic occupancy-abundance relationship. 1. Jokinen, M., Mäkeläinen, S. & Ovaskainen, O., 2015. 'Strict' yet ineffective: legal protection of breeding sites and resting places fails with the Siberian flying squirrel. Anim Cons 18: 167-175. ; peerReviewed

Species protection legislation has been used as one of the main approaches in conservation – yet in many cases we know only little about the effectiveness and side-effects of such regulation. Noncompliance can limit effectiveness of legislative protection, and deliberate harmful actions by landowners have sometimes been reported as a response to restrictions. We studied attitudes of 186 Finnish forest owners toward the protection of Siberian flying squirrel Pteromys volans – a species which is protected according to the European Union Habitats Directive and is a well-known example for species protection in Finland. We explored the attitudes and claims of harming protected species by comparing the responses of persons with and without direct experience of legal protection by structural equation modelling. We found that experience did not explain forest owners' attitudes toward having the species in their forest. Claims of harming protected species were connected to policy attitudes and should be interpreted as a political phenomenon: they reflect political discourse on conservation policy and are a part of debate between stakeholders. Accidental and reckless noncompliance seem more important phenomena than intentional harming, especially as the chance in Finnish Nature conservation likely Act likely affects information of nest sites on logging areas. Other instruments than legislative protection of known nest sites might be more effective in protecting the flying squirrel population. ; published version ; peerReviewed

Species distribution models (SDMs) can be used to predict species occurrence and to seek insight into the factors behind observed spatial patterns in occurrence, and thus can be a valuable tool in species conservation. In this study, we used MaxEnt software to explain the occurrence of a protected forest-dwelling species, the Siberian flying squirrel. We produce occurrence maps covering the main distribution area for the species in the European Union. Using an exceptionally extensive presence-absence dataset collected with a standardized method, we evaluated the relative role of predation pressure, climate, and amount of habitat affecting flying squirrel occurrence. We found that regional variation in mean winter temperature had relatively large predictive power for flying squirrel occurrence. In addition, the regional abundance of flying squirrels was partly explained by differences in predation pressure. The results also support the conclusion that areas with older forests and nearby agricultural areas are optimal for the species. Our study shows that multiple factors affect the species' occurrence in large spatial scales. We also conclude that climate is having a large effect on species occurrence, and thus the changing climate has to be taken into account in conservation planning. Our results help conservation managers in targeting surveys and protection measures on various spatial scales, and decision makers in focusing on the factors that drive the species' occurrence. Our results also indicate that we would need additional tools and measures in the EU for achieving a favourable conservation status of those species that occur in commercial forests. ; Peer reviewed

Species protection legislation has been used as one of the main approaches in conservation - yet in many cases we know only little about the effectiveness and side-effects of such regulation. Noncompliance can limit effectiveness of legislative protection, and deliberate harmful actions by landowners have sometimes been reported as a response to restrictions. We studied attitudes of 186 Finnish forest owners toward the protection of Siberian flying squirrel Pteromys volans - a species which is protected according to the European Union Habitats Directive and is a well-known example for species protection in Finland. We explored the attitudes and claims of harming protected species by comparing the responses of persons with and without direct experience of legal protection by structural equation modelling. We found that experience did not explain forest owners' attitudes toward having the species in their forest. Claims of harming protected species were connected to policy attitudes and should be interpreted as a political phenomenon: they reflect political discourse on conservation policy and are a part of debate between stakeholders. Accidental and reckless noncompliance seem more important phenomena than intentional harming, especially as the chance in Finnish Nature conservation likely Act likely affects information of nest sites on logging areas. Other instruments than legislative protection of known nest sites might be more effective in protecting the flying squirrel population. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. ; Peer reviewed