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25th International Congress for Conservation Biology • Auckland, New Zealand • 5-9 December 2011 legitimacy, and build capacity. Tres Palmas Marine Reserve (TPMR) in western Puerto Rico (PR) is a 204-acre no-take reserve recently established to protect breeding populations of threatened Elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata), whose boundaries were drawn through stakeholder input. The TPMR Management Plan explicitly includes provisions for community participation in the implementation of its goals and objectives. However, our experience has demonstrated that despite concerted efforts to engage the local population in decision-making and conservation activities, community participation has proved elusive since designation. This highlights the need to identify preconditions necessary for active community participation. We suggest several factors, including institutional, financial and interculturalcommunication as key. 2011-12-08 18:30 Absence of inbreeding in an isolated Moose (Alces alces) population over a 50-year period Hayes, KD*, Central Michigan University; Sattler, RA, Central Michigan University; Vucetich, JA, Central Michigan University; Swanson, BJ, Michigan Technological University; Compared to large populations, small isolated populations experience greater loss of genetic variation and increased inbreeding due to reduced interpopulation dispersal, often with detrimental effects. The moose population on Isle Royale, an island located 24 km off the southern coast of Ontario, Canada, likely has existed as an isolated population since moose colonized it in the early 1900s. The moose have also undergone 3 demographic bottlenecks in the last 50 years. We used genetic analysis of 197 moose samples at 9 microsatellite loci to investigate inbreeding on the island from 1960-2005. We found very low levels of inbreeding (Fis=-0.07- 0.04) and no significant increase (P=0.75) over that time period. Relatedness never differed from 0 and did not increase over time. The lack of inbreeding we observed suggests that the Isle Royale moose population is actively avoiding inbreeding or is experiencing dispersal from mainland populations. To study the immigration of moose to the island, the control region of the mtDNA was sequenced for 38 moose spanning the 1960 to 2005 dataset. The likely source population of the Isle Royale moose contains 5 haplotypes. We identified only 1 haplotype which has a frequency of 0.39 in the putative source population. The lack of multiple haplotypes suggests that there is no immigration to the island. Our results suggest that inbreeding avoidance is occurring and inbreeding is not necessarily a byproduct of a small, isolated population. 2011-12-09 11:18 Interventions for Human-elephant Conflict Mitigation: their Use and Effectiveness in Assam, India Hazarika, N*, EcoSystems-India, Guwahati 781028, Assam, India; Zimmermann, A, Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford, Tubney, Abingdon, OX13 5QL; Wilson, S, North of England Zoological Society, Chester Zoo, Chester, CH2 1LH, UK.; Davies, TE, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AJ, Scotland, UK; Crop raiding by elephants constitutes a major component of humanelephant conflict, causing loss of livelihood and retaliation against elephants in Assam, India. To mitigate this conflict, the Assam Haathi Project has developed low cost intervention methods to enable communities to protect their property and crops. These interventions include early-warning methods (e.g. trip wires); deterrents (chilli, spotlights), and barriers (solar power fencing). The project encourages community ownership and has found communities willing to try and invest in innovative intervention methods. The efficacy of interventions adopted by communities was assessed based on a three-year dataset from project sites. This has revealed that stand-alone interventions such as spotlights, chili fences, or electric fences were more effective in preventing crop and property damage by elephants. However, when used in combination with human noise their efficacy was compromised. This assessment has led the project to discourage use of noise when power fences, chilli fences and spotlights are deployed. The study has highlighted that periodic evaluation of usefulness of interventions can help to enhance their effectiveness. 2011-12-07 12:00 Participation and Payments: Evaluating the effect of two conservation programs aimed at alleviating lion killing in Maasailand, Kenya Hazzah, L*, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dorenry, S, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Frank, L, University of California-Berkeley; African lion (Panthera leo) populations are in decline throughout most of Africa, but the problem is particularly acute in southern Kenya, where Maasai people are spearing and poisoning lions at a rate that will ensure near term local extinction. Compensation payments for livestock lost to predators is one approach aimed at balancing the distribution of costs and benefits of large carnivores and to deter local retaliatory killing. Another approach is participatory monitoring, where communities use their own cultural values, knowledge, and perceptions to engage in environmental monitoring. We sampled four contiguous areas that were given various treatments of compensation and/or participatory monitoring to test their effect on lion killing. We relied on seven years of human-induced lion mortality data collected from each site. The number of lions killed is used as a proxy index for local tolerance of carnivores. Compensation payments had a moderate impact on reducing lion killing; however, in times of extreme conflict compensation alone did not significantly improve people’s tolerance of lions. Participatory monitoring had a greater effect on decreasing lion mortality by utilizing key component of Maasai culture, proactive conflict mitigation methods, and by providing an economic opportunity for local people to engage in pro-conservation behavior. Our analysis informs those considering compensation payments or participatory monitoring programs as strategies to enhance local tolerance for large carnivores, particularly in developing countries. 2011-12-09 12:15 Simple decision analyses for metapopulation viability of an endangered Australian amphibian Heard, GW*, School of Botany, University of Melbourne; McCarthy, MA, School of Botany, University of Melbourne; Parris, KM, School of Botany, University of Melbourne; Scroggie, MP, Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment ; Metapopulation models can provide clear direction to threatened species management, yet these tools have rarely been applied to real-world problems. Obstacles have included the abstract nature of some metapopulation models, the limited capacity of these models to incorporate parameter uncertainty, and the need for custom computer programs to apply them. In this study, we used freely-available software to develop a Bayesian metapopulation model for the endangered Growling Grass Frog, and coupled the model with multicriteria decision analyses to critique management options for this species. The model includes estimates of the effect of environmental variables on extinction and colonisation rates, and propagates uncertainty in these estimates through to predictions of metapopulation persistence under differing management scenarios. Multicriteria decision analyses integrate this uncertainty, using a simple outranking method to identify which scenario gives the highest chance of metapopulation persistence across the range of parameter estimates. We used the approach to identify optimal wetland creation schemes for Growling Grass Frogs around Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Encouragingly, we were able to clearly discriminate between proposed options in several cases, providing important direction to managers. Given appropriate data, our approach represents a robust, intuitive and straightforward means of critiquing management options for metapopulations. 2011-12-07 10:45 The ‘genetic rescue’ of inbred populations using translocations Heber, S.*, University of Canterbury, Christchurch; Briskie, J.V., University of Canterbury, Christchurch; Anthropogenic influences such as habitat loss and fragmentation, the introduction of exotic predators, and excessive hunting have forced many species through population bottlenecks. Decreased effective population size during a bottleneck can lead to increased inbreeding and the loss of genetic diversity, which both adversely affect population viability. Conservationists are thus faced with the problem of protecting a number of fragmented and inbred populations. The translocation of outbred individuals into bottlenecked populations has been shown to mitigate the negative effects of inbreeding and to restore genetic variability. However, this method depends 66
25th International Congress for Conservation Biology • Auckland, New Zealand • 5-9 December 2011 on the availability of suitable outbred donor populations, whereas for many endangered species there are no outbred populations left to act as such a donor. To test whether genetic rescue can be achieved by merely exchanging individuals between different inbred populations in the absence of outbred donor populations, we conducted experimental translocations between two isolated, inbred populations of the New Zealand robin. Differences in fitness traits such as reproductive success, parasite and disease loads, immunocompetence, and gamete quality were compared between “hybrid” offspring (crosses of the two populations) and inbred control offspring to determine the effect of the translocations. Our results suggest that translocations between inbred populations may be valuable in the genetic rescue of species showing severe inbreeding depression. For endangered species that survive only in small, inbred populations, this may be the only method to rescue a population from the brink of extinction. 2011-12-07 17:30 Invasive Species on the Menu: Reciprocal Predation and the Co-Persistence of Native and Non-Native Species Henkanaththegedara, Sujan M., North Dakota State University; Stockwell, Craig A.*, North Dakota State University; Understanding mechanisms that allow co-persistence of natives with nonnatives may provide important insights on how best to manage highly altered systems. We report a case of reciprocal predation as a possible mechanism to facilitate co-persistence of endangered Mohave tui chub (Siphateles bicolor mohavensis) with invasive western mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis). We established experimental sympatric and allopatric populations of Mohave tui chub and western mosquitofish to evaluate reciprocal trophic interactions between these two fish species. Mosquitofish had a significant negative effect on Mohave tui chub recruitment (W=142; P
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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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