Yesterday at a team meeting, we took a moment to bid farewell to the Derwent River Seastar, which was found to be extinct after a fairly complex process of laboratory intrigue. This makes it the fourth species in Australia thusly departed this decade, and its timing is poignant – we just submitted our submission to the Senate Enquiry into Australia’s Faunal Extinction Crisis.

The dearly departed Marginaster Littoralis.

Our 2017 seastar cake, made with awareness-raising flour. Might also work as a parma.

Regardless of what conservation decisions are made, none can be said to be objective. From the species we choose to protect, to the ecosystems we choose to study, or the management strategies we endeavour to implement – all these decisions are fundamentally driven by the conservation values held by decision-makers.

Anna Backstrom and others from ICON Science explore this idea in a new paper on the social dimensions of novel ecosystems.

Novel ecosystems are a contentious space for conservationists because they are a consequence of human-induced environmental change. For some, they are a vivid example of what conservationists are fighting to reverse. But often these changes are irreversible. For others, novel ecosystems represent a closure of the nature-human divide and are the new wild.

Management benchmarks for novel ecosystems are difficult to establish. There is an argument that all species would have been new to a system at one point in time, therefore every ecosystem could be considered novel. Choosing what historical trajectory to aim for is not simple. Novel ecosystems are also places where indigenous species have learnt to make use of the non-indigenous. This is seen in habitat gaps filled by exotic plants that are then used by indigenous fauna. Here, a decision is needed about which species to manage for – eradicate the non-indigenous species and lose habitat or maintain the exotics to protect the fauna species.

Resolving management decisions for novel ecosystems requires conservation decision-makers to acknowledge and trade-off between multiple values, which may be environmental, social or economic. We propose a values-based decision approach for determining appropriate management of modified ecosystems and argue that it is only within this ecological decision-making context that there is a defined role for the novel ecosystem concept. Using this approach, novel ecosystems are assessed not as “right” or “wrong”, but by the extent to which they meet desired ecological, social, and economic objectives. 

Citation:

Backstrom A, Garrard GE, Hobbs RJ, Bekessy SA. (Online, 6 February 2018) Grappling with the social dimension of novel ecosystems. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. doi:10.1002/fee.1769.

We have a ‘department’ of ICON Scientists presenting at the upcoming SCBO Conference in New Zealand! Go along to their talks, and tweet them so we at home can follow along!

Presenters

Matthew Selinske: Tues 4 July 1:30pm Symposium ‘Intergenerational stewardship for long-term conservation impact’

Future-proofing privately protected areas through intergenerational stewardship

Georgia Garrard: Tues 4 July 2:30 pm Symposium ‘Intergenerational stewardship for long-term conservation impact’

Intergenerational stewardship goes both ways: Do children influence the conservation attitudes of their parents?

Alex Kusmanoff: Wed 4 July 12pm Session ‘People and Conservation’ 

What to say and what not to say: When talking conservation, some frames speak louder than others

Jeremy Ringma: Wed 4 July 4.45pm Session ‘Wildlife Conservation’ 

Strategic planning of conservation fencing.

Abstracts

Matthew Selinske and Georgia Garrard are both presenting in the Symposium ‘Intergenerational stewardship for long-term conservation impact’

Intergenerational stewardship for long-term conservation impact

Intergenerational stewardship is the transmission of conservation values and knowledge from one generation to the next. Family and peer relationships, often guided by customary institutions, help synchronize stewardship values and impart knowledge to understand and manage biodiversity. The process is critical for the long-term conservation of biodiversity and sustainability, and has been observed in multiple contexts including indigenous land management, private land conservation, urban households and within organisations. Increasing uncertainty in social-ecological systems (population shifts to urban centers, climatic impacts on ecosystems, extinction of experience) may disrupt the maintenance and transmission of intergenerational stewardship. We examine the dynamics of intergenerational stewardship and the mechanisms by which programs can support both its maintenance and transmission. This symposium seeks to: 1) understand how stewardship values develop over time and are transferred to the next generation; 2) examine case studies of intergenerational stewardship across various contexts; and 3) identify mechanisms that support the transmission of stewardship values.

Matthew is presenting:

Future-proofing privately protected areas through intergenerational stewardship

Privately protected areas are increasingly used to secure conservation goals. Our research on covenant programs in south-east Australia finds that the security and conservation effectiveness of PPAs is impacted by the temporal dynamics of these systems including changing ecology, ownership, and capacity. Intergenerational stewardship may play an important role in the continuity and effectiveness of PPA management and protection. We argue that PPA organisations have an important role to play in facilitating intergenerational stewardship.

And Georgia is presenting:

Intergenerational stewardship goes both ways: Do children influence the conservation attitudes of their parents?

Intergenerational stewardship goes both ways: Do children influence the conservation attitudes of their parents. Extinction of experience is thought to be a major barrier to environmental stewardship, especially in cities. We found that primary school children who were immersed in a local native grassland as part of an environmental education program showed positive attitudes towards the grassland and developed a sense of care for it. Here, we explore whether these positive attitudes affected the attitudes and engagement of their parents.

Alex is presenting in the session ‘People and Conservation’:

What to say and what not to say: When talking conservation, some frames speak louder than others

How we frame conservation is crucial for building support. Different frames work better for different audiences, but triage is always bad.

Jeremy is presenting in the session ‘Wildlife Conservation’: 

Strategic planning of conservation fencing

In the past 20 years fencing has been increasingly used as a tool in conservation providing an expensive but highly secure mechanism for separating biodiversity from threatening agents. Throughout Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii, conservation fences are so numerous they can be thought of as part of a network. In these cases, systematic conservation planning can be used to prioritize new fencing projects using complementarity principles in a manner similar to protected area networks. We compare different approaches to prioritising conservation fencing based using examples from Australia and Hawaii. Approaches to fence network prioritization differ based on threat types and the need to translocate threatened species into fences versus protecting in situ biodiversity. In each case, systematic approaches improved species protection at rates many times greater than the current uncoordinated, ad-hoc approach to the allocation of new fencing projects.

An ensemble* of iConScientists will be presenting at EcoTas this year!

Speakers, Titles & Times

Luis Mata: Mon 12.30 Urban Ecology(1)
Bringing nature back into cities.

Florence Damiens: Tues 5.15 Putting Ecology to Work
What have we been offsetting? Understanding the evolution of  biodiversity offset policies in France and Australia.

Ascelin Gordon: Tues 5.00 Putting Ecology to Work 
The challenge of no net loss: a framework for evaluating biodiversity offset policies.

Holly Kirk: Tues 5.00 Freshwater and Marine Ecology  
Structural equation models for understanding decision making in movement ecology: A seabird case study.

Georgia Garrad : Weds 11.15 Communicating Ecology  
We need to talk about talking about triage OR The way we say stuff matters.

Lindall Kidd: Weds 12.45 Communicating Ecology 
Messaging matters: maximizing impact in conservation campaigns.

Emily Gregg: Weds 12.50 Communicating Ecology  
What are the barriers to community buy-in of threatened species conservation in Australia?

Freya Thomas: Weds 4.00 Effectiveness Monitoring  
A field ecologist’s adventures in the virtual world: using simulations to design data collection.

Abstracts 

Monday – 

Luis Mata

Bringing nature back into cities

Nature in cities provides a remarkable range of benefits to humans and other species. The experience of nature in cities has positive effects on people’s physiological and psychological health, and the health and wellbeing of urban residents has been correlated with the amount, proximity and access to urban nature. Importantly, nature is fundamental to engage people with local Indigenous knowledge, and plays a key role in supporting biodiversity in urban landscapes, including threatened species. For these reasons, there is growing global enthusiasm for bringing nature back into cities and associated interest from planning, landscape and health practitioners seeking to incorporate nature into the design of cities.

Here we provide a perspective on recent developments revolving around the idea of bringing nature back into cities, highlighting the need to move beyond rewilding and reintroduction strategies that do not consider crucial cultural dimensions such as Indigenous ontologies and the challenges and opportunities of brokering local Indigenous knowledge. We introduce a decision-making framework to assess the ecological, social, cultural and economic suitability of species to be brought back into cities, and present examples that demonstrate how key variables (e.g. species charisma, dispersal potential, cultural significance) can be parameterised. We conclude by discussing the types of actions available to decision-makers who wish to ‘bring back nature’, including nature-based solutions, metanetworks, biodiverse-greening, biodiversity sensitive urban design and safeguarding ‘Iconic’ species in schools, as well as the theoretical and methodological advances needed to move forward the ‘bringing nature back into cities’ research and practitioner agenda.

Urban Ecology
Monday, November 27, 2017
11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Bimbadeen Room

________________________

Tuesday – 

Florence Damiens

What have we been offsetting? Understanding the evolution of biodiversity offset policies in France and Australia

Biodiversity offsetting is generally presented as a biodiversity conservation tool created to compensate for biodiversity losses due to development. While the political origin of biodiversity offsetting and its international success have already been documented, little research has been done to understand how and why the concept of biodiversity offsetting has actually changed through time once materialized in different socio-political contexts; and to link these changes to their ecological consequences. This study participates in filling this knowledge gap. We use a policy analysis approach and qualitative methods (semi-structured interviews with key actors involved in the field of offsetting and document analysis) to understand how and why the definition of offsetting, its objectives and its mechanisms have been changing through time in two key socio-political contexts: Australia (Victoria) and France.

This analysis allows us to investigate how and why the idea of offsetting has been differently interpreted across time in both contexts and to discuss the ecological consequences of these interpretations and their changes. The study provides new insights to understand state, national, international and global trends associated with conservation in general and offsetting in particular. It shows how the way offset policies have been defined and implemented in the studied contexts are intimately related to social representations, institutional legacy as well as political and governance shifts occuring at different scales. Far from being consensual, biodiversity offset policies reflect the power dynamics present in the contexts they are embedded in, leading to uncertain long-tem ecological consequences.

SYMPOSIUM: Putting ecology to work at the land development frontier
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Sugarloaf Room

____________________

Ascelin Gordon

The challenge of no net loss: a framework for evaluating biodiversity offset policies

The decline of biodiversity globally has resulted in many governments, banks and corporations developing policies designed to achieve “no net loss” of biodiversity in the face of development, often utilizing offsets. Evaluating the outcomes of such policies poses significant challenges. This is due to the different time scales involved in generating biodiversity losses and gains, along with a lack of resources to collect evaluation data at appropriate scales. In these cases, the use of ex-ante evaluation—designed to predict the future outcomes of a policy—is the most viable evaluation option, necessitating the use of modelling and simulation approaches. Here we develop a formal approach for evaluating no net loss policies, focusing on the use of biodiversity offsetting. We provide ex-ante evaluations based on simulations to illustrate the following key issues: (i) the importance of defining appropriate counterfactuals for determining the development impact and the additionality of the offset, and the consequences of inappropriate choices of counterfactuals; (iii) the fact there are three scales at which offsetting activities can be evaluated (site, program and landscape), and how the this choice of scale affects the evaluation of policy outcomes; (iii) the implications of different types of offset activities (such as delivering restoration gains or generating avoided losses) for delivering no net loss. We discuss these issues in the context of offset policies in Australia, and the key challenges they imply of achieving no net loss of biodiversity into the future.

SYMPOSIUM: Putting ecology to work at the land development frontier
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Sugarloaf Room

___________________

Holly Kirk

Structural equation models for understanding decision making in movement ecology: A seabird case study

Behavioural decisions made by individual animals can have a critical impact on future breeding success and survival. This is particularly true for long-lived species, such as migratory seabirds. Analyses of multi-year behavioural datasets enable us to understand the interactions between the timing and outcome of different life-history events as a first step towards understanding decision making in these species.

Data were collected from 126 individual Manx shearwaters (Puffinus puffinus) on five breeding colonies over a seven year period. Machine-learning methods were used to identify the timing of key breeding and migratory events from geolocation and saltwater immersion loggers. Interactions between the timing of these events, migratory route and the degree to which behavioural strategies are conserved between individuals were investigated using structural equation modelling. This approach also allowed the inclusion of environmental variables (such as sea-surface temperature, wind direction and speed) in order to understand the contribution of abiotic conditions to the cycle of ecological carry-over effects.

The timing of departure from the overwintering area had a strong carry-over effect on other events. Departure date largely dictated the route taken to the breeding colony and the subsequent body condition on return to the colony. This type of information is crucial for our understanding of how behavioural ecology and the environment can influence individual movement decisions as well as understanding how populations of long-lived species will respond to environmental change.

Marine and Freshwater Ecology
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Cypress #2

___________________

Wednesday – 

Georgia Garrard

We need to talk about talking about triage OR The way we say stuff matters

The words and ideas we use to talk about something (frames) can change the way people respond to it. Some people know this (i.e. politicians, advertisers, marketers) and use it to help their cause. But those of us who hope to look after animals and other living things that are not human (conservation scientists) are still learning to make the most of it. In this study, we looked at how using different ideas (or frames) to talk about a (threatened) animal made people think about how important that animal is and whether its place in the world (i.e. its existence) is more important than building a new mine. We found that the type of person they were changed the way people responded to different words and ideas (frames), but that suggesting that it is alright to give up on the animal (i.e. using a species-triage frame) almost always made people think the animal was less important.

This abstract has been prepared using the Up-Goer Five challenge. Words in brackets are not within the top ten hundred most used words in the English language, but may be useful in helping to provide some conservation context in this example.

SYMPOSIUM: Communicating ecology to a broad audience – novel ideas and approaches
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Wattagan Room

__________________

Emily Gregg

What are the barriers to community buy-in of threatened species conservation in Australia?

Up Goer 5 Challenge Title: What is stopping people from saving animals?

Saving animals is important for both the world and us, and we need normal people to understand this and play their part for everything to work out. But first we need to understand what exactly is stopping people from doing things to help save animals. I looked at possible problems and suggest that they fit into three types: how people look at the world, being far away from the problem, and whether there is a clear thing to do. I believe that using the right words and ideas in our writing can help with all three types of problems. Understanding what is stopping people from helping is important for our work and should help us make better calls about how to write and speak to people about saving animals.

This abstract was prepared using the Up Goer 5 Challenge – using only the top ten hundred most commonly used words in the English language.

SYMPOSIUM: Communicating ecology to a broad audience – novel ideas and approaches
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Wattagan Room

____________________

Lindall Kidd

Messaging matters: maximizing impact in conservation campaigns

Human actions are accelerating extinction rates worldwide and there is a growing awareness that changes in human behaviour are necessary for biodiversity protection. Despite an increased understanding of how messaging influences environmental behavior, strategies guiding conservation messaging are often not evidence-based. To clarify current understanding about the use of messaging in conservation, we conducted a systematic review of research relating to conservation messaging. We examined critical aspects of messaging, including the purpose, action, audience and evaluation. We found that, as expected, interest in this topic has increased recently within the conservation research community. Message framing and marketing were the most commonly used theories, highlighting the growing emphasis that marketing, and the careful framing of messages may play in developing strategic campaigns. However, we also identified a number of research gaps that present exciting opportunities for conservation research. For example, half of the studies investigated did not draw on an established theory or identify a target audience or evaluation strategy: key standards for communications research. We draw on multiple disciplines, including marketing, psychology and communication, with a focus on their application to environmental problems.

SYMPOSIUM: Communicating ecology to a broad audience – novel ideas and approaches
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Wattagan Room

______________________

Freya Thomas

A field ecologist’s adventures in the virtual world: using simulations to design data collection

Ecologists commonly collect field data. How can we know if we are collecting enough? Pilot studies and power analysis help us figure this out. Unfortunately, in practice this can be challenging. Ecologists increasingly use datasets collected over complicated ecological gradients that require complex analyses. Traditional power analyses are often poorly suited to these problems. For example, questions such as ‘what’s a good sample size?’ are often really ‘what’s a good design for a multi-level model?’. I will demonstrate a flexible simulation approach designed to have field realism. I will explain a case study which aimed to use a multi-species non-linear growth model to predict heights of plant species in the Victorian Mallee.

The Mallee is vast and heterogeneous – not all species are in the same place, and some species are harder to find than others. Our simulation revealed that multi-species growth models require relatively intensive data collection for adequate sample sizes – and when practical field constraints (travel time, measuring time, species detection) are not taken into account, the field time needed is underestimated. I hope to provide a convincing argument that using simulations to design field based research or monitoring not only gives insight analogous to that of traditional power analysis but can also be incredibly valuable for estimating field costs and making research decisions. This approach is relevant to researchers but also individuals or organisations responsible for designing field programs with limited and/or transparent budgets.

SYMPOSIUM: Effectiveness Monitoring (Part 2)
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Sugarloaf Room

_______________________

*check out storify for collective nouns used for groups of scientists

After a successful inaugural Victorian Biodiversity Conference earlier this year, a group of motivated students and early career researchers from a wide range of Victorian Universities (RMIT, La Trobe, Monash, Federation, Charles Sturt, Melbourne, Deakin) have begun planning our next conference to be held early February 2018 at La Trobe University, Melbourne (https://www.vicbiocon.com).

Halgania cyanea (Boraginaceae) from the Victorian Mallee

This event aims to be a low cost and accessible conference to promote networking between graduate and postdoctoral researchers, as well as practitioners in government and NGOs working on research related to Victorian biodiversity.

The conference will provide an important and rare opportunity for young researchers to hear from government, industry and non-governmental organisations, as well as foster inter-University interactions through a series of plenaries, invited talks, workshops and networking opportunities.

A bee on a daisy in the Victorian Alps

We are organising!
Get your abstracts ready, and stay tuned for further updates!
Visit our website: https://www.vicbiocon.com