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25th International Congress for Conservation Biology • Auckland, New Zealand • 5-9 December 2011 dataset from a protected area management agency in Queensland, Australia covering over 100,000 km2 across 1000+ sites to examine this topic. We quantified the effect of stochastic events on management costs and examined the ways in which managers adapted to these challenges. Our results show that natural disasters such as cyclones and well publicised occurrences of human-wildlife conflict such as animal attacks were important drivers of resource allocation across the protected area network. Managers’ main adaptations, given their largely static budgets, were to shift resources away from planned activities towards crisis management. Our results show that there is a mismatch between static protected area budgets and the highly variable demands placed on those budgets. This presents an additional challenge for protected area management agencies over and above those of chronic underfunding. We recommend that more flexible funding arrangements be put in place to allow agencies to respond to stochastic events without sacrificing their usual management activities to the detriment of biodiversity conservation. 2011-12-09 15:30 Disentangling the correlates of African protected area conservation performance CRAIGIE, I. D.*, University of Cambridge; Balmford, A., University of Cambridge; Carbone, C., Institute of Zoology, London; Protected areas (PAs) vary in their ability to maintain their biodiversity through time. The causes of this variation are poorly understood, but disentangling them may yield benefits for PA management and biodiversity conservation. Here we explored what best predicts the population trends of 586 large (>5kg) vertebrate populations in 81 African PAs. Population trends were calculated from population time series collated from published and unpublished sources. We evaluated the effect of a range of explanatory variables including: the characteristics of the PAs (such as their size, surrounding human population density and staffing levels) and the species traits of the vertebrates they contain. We followed an information theoretic approach using linear mixed models to account for non-independence of the variables, and built several different models to address unavoidable gaps in the data. Species trends were less negative in PAs with more staff per unit area, for larger bodied-species, and for more recent time series. The effect of PA size was complex, the results showed that larger PAs performed more poorly than small PAs with the likely cause being fewer staff per unit area in larger PAs. These results show that lack of resources can outweigh the expected benefits of larger PAs and that an increased level of resources is likely to lead to improved conservation performance of African PAs for large vertebrates. 2011-12-07 10:30 Invasive vertebrates on islands: scope of the problem, data needs, and approaches Croll, DA*, Coastal Conservation Action Laboratory, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Santa Cruz; Tershy, BR, Coastal Conservation Action Laboratory, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Santa Cruz; Sixty four percent of all extinct species recorded by the IUCN and 40% of all Critically Endangered species are endemic to the worlds’ ~179,000 marine islands. Because islands are only 5% of earth’s land area, the number of Extinct and Critically Endangered species / ha is an order of magnitude greater on islands than on continents. Invasive vertebrates are the leading cause extinction on islands and the second most important cause of endangerment on islands. Crude estimates suggest that invasive vertebrates occur on ~40% of all islands (~70,000) and, because larger islands are more likely to be invaded, ~80% of all island area (~75 million ha). Eradication of invasive vertebrates from islands can save species from extinction and the number, frequency and size of successful eradications have steadily increased. Still only ~1% of invaded islands have had one or more invasive vertebrates eradicated. To prevent future extinctions, conservation biologists need to: 1. Develop new methods to make eradication faster and less expensive 2. Determine which islands have both vulnerable endemic species and damaging invasive vertebrates 3. Develop prioritization models that integrate an insular species’ risk of extinction, its vulnerability to a given invasive vertebrate and the cost of eradicating that invasive vertebrate from one or more islands 2011-12-06 14:00 Prioritising and Evaluating Biodiversity Projects CULLEN, R*, Lincoln University; WHITE, PA, University of York; Funds available for biodiversity projects are scarce. Choices must therefore be made on how to use limited resources most effectively, and such decisions should be based on clear and measurable objectives for achievement. Biodiversity projects should be evaluated to determine if the use of scarce resources has achieved the objective (effectiveness), and if the projects achieve the objective at lower cost than alternative uses of the resources (cost effectiveness). Project selection and evaluation methods are used patchily by biodiversity project providers and researchers. We provide an introduction to project selection and evaluation; point to the range of selection and evaluation methods available; ask where they are best applied; and focus attention on the need to overcome the hurdles to adoption and continuation of project selection and evaluation methods. 2011-12-07 15:15 Gender and stress affect facilitation intensity in a widespread cushion plant CRANSTON, B*, University of Otago; Callaway, RM, University of Montana; Monks, A, Landcare Research; Dickinson, KJM, University of Otago; Facilitation allows plants to occupy environments otherwise uninhabitable, potentially leading to range expansions, shifts in realised niches, and/ or increased rates of invasion. Gynodioecy provides good opportunities to explore the effects and costs of facilitation because females and hermaphrodites often differ in resource allocation patterns, stress tolerance, and the intensity of facilitation often varies along stress gradients. We investigated the role of gender and stress on the facilitative effects and costs for the gynodioecious alpine plant, Silene acaulis across two elevations (2317 m and 2560 m) in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, USA. Consistent with general theory for abiotic stress and facilitation, the positive effect of Silene on community richness and the abundance was greater at the high elevation site than the low. Furthermore, the proportional increase in cover of beneficiaries was greater at high elevation for female plants, but lower for hermaphrodites. This indicates that the intensity of facilitation increased with stress associated with elevation, but that this increase was greater for females. As the cover of beneficiaries in female Silene cushions increased, Silene flower production and leaf size decreased, indicating a significant cost of facilitation, but this effect was less for hermaphrodites. Intense facilitation by female Silene, coupled with higher costs suggests that females might be more easily displaced by beneficiaries than hermaphrodites. 2011-12-09 15:15 Socioeconomic drivers of sea turtle interactions with artisanal fisheries in the western Indian Ocean islands Cunningham, E*, C3 Madagascar and Indian Ocean Islands Programme; Poonian, CNS, Community Centred Conservation (C3), 17 Northcliffe Drive, London, N20 8JX; Whitty, T, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego; Bycatch is a global threat to sea turtles with artisanal fisheries posing particular challenges in terms of data collection, monitoring and mitigation strategies. Due to the decentralized nature of artisanal fisheries, limited infrastructure for research and monitoring in developing countries, and logistical obstacles to establishing observer programs, collecting data on bycatch through interviews is recognized as a practical method for estimating the magnitude of bycatch in artisanal fisheries We conducted over 1000 rapid assessment surveys of sea turtle bycatch in artisanal fisheries of the Union of the Comoros, Mauritius and Madagascar in the Western Indian Ocean using semi-structured interviews of fishers. Bycatch was found to pose a serious threat to sea turtle populations. It was reported as a routine occurrence by fishers in Madagascar and Comoros in a variety of fishing gears, particularly gillnets in Madagascar and longlines in Comoros and Mauritius. Although turtles were often released alive, mortality was generally high and turtles were often killed and eaten or sold in Comoros and Madagascar. Various local traditions and taboos were also found to influence artisanal fishers’ interactions with sea turtles at all study sites. The heterogeneity of gears used by artisanal fishers, and the potential for sea turtle bycatch in a variety of gear types indicated by this work suggests that mitigating turtle bycatch in artisanal fisheries in the western Indian Ocean requires close collaboration with fishing communities including capacity-building and awareness raising to ensure that management actions are implemented effectively. Addressing 34
25th International Congress for Conservation Biology • Auckland, New Zealand • 5-9 December 2011 the impacts of these fisheries on sea turtles will require examination of the potential for alternative livelihoods and locally- enforced regulations. These results demonstrate the deep human roots of fisheries interactions with sea turtles that must be understood for effective management and conservation. 2011-12-07 14:00 The Influence of Model Structure on Science-Based Advice for Species at Risk Curtis, Janelle*, Pacific Biological Station; Naujokaitis-Lewis, Ilona, University of Toronto; Distribution-based recovery targets are ideally informed with habitat-based spatially-explicit demographic models. In practice, recovery teams used occurrence (18%) or habitat suitability (63%) models to provide advice, while
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Index Benini, Rubens 42 Beniston, M
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Index DeWan, Amielle 14 Dianne Brun
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Index Hilborn, Ray 27 Hill, CM 176
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Index Loutit, R. 116 Louwe Kooijman
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Index Ottewell, K 81 Overton, J 61,
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Index Sequeira, Ana 151 Serebryakov
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Index Winandy, L 181 Winner, J. 112
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