Suchergebnisse

Landscape change and habitat fragmentation are key factors impacting biodiversity worldwide. These processes have many facets, each of which is usually studied in isolation. The Tumut Fragmentation Study has run for over 11 years and yielded extensive data on changes in both plant and animal populations in areas of native forest and pine plantation. The study is unique in the way that many different factors and processes, influencing a wide range of species groups, have been studied in the one large-scale natural experiment. Writing for academic researchers, professionals and graduate students, David Lindenmayer uses the study and other relevant research to provide an overview of the relationships between landscape change, habitat fragmentation and biodiversity conservation. Key lessons are drawn on throughout the book, on the design and implementation of large-scale ecological studies, biodiversity conservation in fragmented landscapes, and the management of plantation landscapes for enhanced nature conservation

The fate of much of the world's terrestrial biodiversity depends upon our ability to improve the management of forest ecosystems that have already been substantially modified by humans. Monitoring is an essential ingredient in meeting this challenge, allowing us to measure the impact of different human activities on biodiversity and identify more responsible ways of managing the environment. Nevertheless many biodiversity monitoring programs are criticised as being little more than 'tick the box' compliance exercises that waste precious resources and erode the credibility of science in the eyes of decision makers and conservation investors. The purpose of this book is to examine the factors that make biodiversity monitoring programs fail or succeed. The first two sections lay out the context and importance of biodiversity monitoring, and shed light on some of the key challenges that have confounded many efforts to date. The third and main section presents an operational framework for developing monitoring programs that have the potential to make a meaningful contribution to forest management. Discussion covers the scoping, design and implementation stages of a forest biodiversity monitoring program, including defining the purpose, goals and objectives of monitoring, indicator selection, and the process of data collection, analysis and interpretation. Underpinning the book is the belief that biodiversity monitoring should be viewed not as a stand-alone exercise in surveillance but rather as an explicit mechanism for learning about how to improve opportunities for conservation. To be successful in this task, monitoring needs to be grounded in clear goals and objectives, effective in generating reliable assessments of changes in biodiversity and realistic in light of real-world financial, logistical and social constraints.

1. Introduction -- 2. The hollow-using fauna of Australia -- 3. The evolution of hollow use -- 4. Hollow formation -- 5. The inventory of hollows and hollow-bearing trees --6. The selection of hollows by fauna -- 7. Hollow numbers and fauna populations -- 8. Perpetuating hollows -- 9. Pest and introduced species that use hollows -- 10. The role of nest boxes in research and management -- 11. Concluding remarks -- Appendix A. Hollow-dependent species listed as either extinct, endangered, or vulnerable on threatened species legislation throughout Australia -- Appendix B. Characteristics of hollows and alternative nesting sites used by birds from Higgins (1999) -- Appendix C. Scientific names of species referred to in this book.

Global defense spending is $US1753 billion annually or approximately 2.5% of the world GDP. Significant time and resources is spent in training 28 million defense personnel worldwide. Much of this training on land takes place within specifically designated military training areas (MTAs). Globally, the size of the MTA estate is likely to be very large, but just how large is unknown. Our preliminary analyses has identified that MTAs cover at least 1% of the Earth's surface. This figure is believed to be closer to 5-6% as no verifiable data exist for the majority of Africa, South America and Asia. MTAs occur in all major global ecosystems and have the potential to increase the global protected area network by at least 25%. MTAs therefore have an important complementary role to play in global conservation. However public policy makers, the scientific community, government agencies, and nongovernment organizations have largely ignored MTAs as a conservation resource. To realize the potential major contribution to conservation that MTAs can play we propose four key policy changes: (1) better document the environmental values of MTAs, (2) develop integrated MTA land management models, (3) increase dedicated financial resources for the land management of MTAs, and (4) strengthened global leadership to manage MTAs as an environmental resource.

Global defense spending is $US1753 billion annually or approximately 2.5% of the world GDP. Significant time and resources is spent in training 28 million defense personnel worldwide. Much of this training on land takes place within specifically designated military training areas (MTAs). Globally, the size of the MTA estate is likely to be very large, but just how large is unknown. Our preliminary analyses has identified that MTAs cover at least 1% of the Earth's surface. This figure is believed to be closer to 5–6% as no verifiable data exist for the majority of Africa, South America and Asia. MTAs occur in all major global ecosystems and have the potential to increase the global protected area network by at least 25%. MTAs therefore have an important complementary role to play in global conservation. However public policy makers, the scientific community, government agencies, and nongovernment organizations have largely ignored MTAs as a conservation resource. To realize the potential major contribution to conservation that MTAs can play we propose four key policy changes: (1) better document the environmental values of MTAs, (2) develop integrated MTA land management models, (3) increase dedicated financial resources for the land management of MTAs, and (4) strengthened global leadership to manage MTAs as an environmental resource.

Offsets (also known as mitigation banks, compensatory habitat, set-asides) is a policy instrument recently introduced in several States in Australia to permit some land clearing while striving for no net loss in the extent and condition of native vegetation overall. Offsetting is criticized with respect to the amount of gain required to compensate for losses from clearing, the equivalence of losses and gains, the time lag between losses and gains and a poor record of compliance. Despite these criticisms, we conclude that offsetting is a useful policy instrument while governments continue to permit some clearing of native vegetation. However, offsets will only contribute to no net loss if (i) clearing is restricted to vegetation that is simplified enough so that its functions can be restored elsewhere with confidence or clearing is restricted to vegetation that is unlikely to persist and is not practicable to restore irrespective of clearing; (ii) any temporary loss in habitat between clearing and the maturation of an offset, or differences between the habitat lost from clearing and gained through an offset, does not represent significant risk to a species, population or ecosystem process; (iii) there will be gains of sufficient magnitude on the offset site to compensate for losses from clearing; (iv) best practice adaptive management is applied to offsets; (v) offsets are in place for at least the same duration as the impacts from clearing; and (vi) there is adequate compliance. Land clearing with offsets outside these parameters is inconsistent with 'no net loss'.

Global defense spending is $US1753 billion annually or approximately 2.5% of the world GDP. Significant time and resources is spent in training 28 million defense personnel worldwide. Much of this training on land takes place within specifically designated military training areas (MTAs). Globally, the size of the MTA estate is likely to be very large, but just how large is unknown. Our preliminary analyses has identified that MTAs cover at least 1% of the Earth's surface. This figure is believed to be closer to 5-6% as no verifiable data exist for the majority of Africa, South America and Asia. MTAs occur in all major global ecosystems and have the potential to increase the global protected area network by at least 25%. MTAs therefore have an important complementary role to play in global conservation. However public policy makers, the scientific community, government agencies, and nongovernment organizations have largely ignored MTAs as a conservation resource. To realize the potential major contribution to conservation that MTAs can play we propose four key policy changes: (1) better document the environmental values of MTAs, (2) develop integrated MTA land management models, (3) increase dedicated financial resources for the land management of MTAs, and (4) strengthened global leadership to manage MTAs as an environmental resource.

Because of the urgent need for robust, long-term information on biodiversity loss and environmental change, we have proposed a Long-Term (>10 years) Environmental Monitoring (LTEM) Network for Australia. The LTEM Network would comprise 25 Nodes distributed throughout Australia, be focused on terrestrial, inland aquatic and coastal estuarine ecosystems, and be established to monitor long-term biodiversity loss and ecological change (patterns and trends). The LTEM Network would be question-problem-process-driven and not infrastructure-driven. Thus, the different Nodes in the LTEM Network would explicitly recognize different biota, different environmental problems, different environmental threats and different kinds of management interventions in different ecosystems. We provide a governance structure for the proposed LTEM Network and envisage that it would be characterized by being: (i) lean, yet powerful, agile and adaptive; (ii) both centralized (through a coordinating role by a Federal Government agency), yet decentralized in terms of where the Nodes are located and how they are operated and managed; and (iii) not overly bureaucratic. We also argue that it would be highly cost-effective; our estimated cost for the establishment of an LTEM Network is $28 million per year or less than 0.25% of the total annual governmental expenditure of $12 billion on environmental management in 2003/2004. The LTEM Network would be a critical part of Australia's environmental infrastructure and provide the Nation, for the first time, with a formal, coordinated, long-term Network to gauge status and change of biodiversity and environmental condition. We argue that this would allow the Nation to begin to address seriously many of the major data-related deficiencies that currently exist in the environment and biodiversity conservation sectors in Australia.

Offsets (also known as mitigation banks, compensatory habitat, set-asides) is a policy instrument recently introduced in several States in Australia to permit some land clearing while striving for no net loss in the extent and condition of native vegetation overall. Offsetting is criticized with respect to the amount of gain required to compensate for losses from clearing, the equivalence of losses and gains, the time lag between losses and gains and a poor record of compliance. Despite these criticisms, we conclude that offsetting is a useful policy instrument while governments continue to permit some clearing of native vegetation. However, offsets will only contribute to no net loss if (i) clearing is restricted to vegetation that is simplified enough so that its functions can be restored elsewhere with confidence or clearing is restricted to vegetation that is unlikely to persist and is not practicable to restore irrespective of clearing; (ii) any temporary loss in habitat between clearing and the maturation of an offset, or differences between the habitat lost from clearing and gained through an offset, does not represent significant risk to a species, population or ecosystem process; (iii) there will be gains of sufficient magnitude on the offset site to compensate for losses from clearing; (iv) best practice adaptive management is applied to offsets; (v) offsets are in place for at least the same duration as the impacts from clearing; and (vi) there is adequate compliance. Land clearing with offsets outside these parameters is inconsistent with 'no net loss'.

We provide a broad overview of the underlying philosophy of ecological monitoring. We argue that the major characteristics of effective monitoring programs typically include: (1) Good questions. (2) A conceptual model of an ecosystem or population. (3) Strong partnerships between scientists, policy-makers and managers. (4) Frequent use of data collected. We classify monitoring programs into three categories - (1) Passive monitoring, which is devoid of specified questions or underlying study design and has limited rationale other than curiosity. (2) Mandated monitoring where environmental data are gathered as a stipulated requirement of government legislation or a political directive. The focus is usually to identify trends. (3) Question-driven monitoring, which is guided by a conceptual model and by a rigorous design that will typically result in a priori predictions that can be tested. There are advantages and disadvantages of mandated monitoring programs, which are typically large-scaled, and generally smaller-scaled, question-driven monitoring programs. For example, while question-driven monitoring programs can provide insights into the ecological processes giving rise to emergent environmental patterns, spatial generalization from them is difficult because results may not extrapolate well to other regions, states or to a national level. Conversely, while mandated monitoring can be useful for producing coarse level summaries of temporal changes in a target population or resource condition they may not identify the mechanism influencing a change in an ecosystem or an entity. A key remaining challenge is to develop much improved mandated monitoring programs through more widespread adoption of the features of successful question-driven monitoring programs in efforts to enhance biodiversity conservation and environmental management.