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NEWS TIPS FROM THE December 2004 ISSUE OF CONSERVATION BIOLOGY the Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology
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PDFs of Conservation Biology papers are available to the media; please register for the Society for Conservation Biology's media services at: http://conbio.org/SCB/Information/Media/ For faxes of papers in the current tips, contact Robin Meadows (robin@nasw.org) Images are provided by the researchers; please contact them directly for more information.
ANTITRUST LAWS MAY HINDER FOREST CONSERVATIONForest industry leery of sharing information vital to ecosystem management
A new analysis shows that when it comes to conservation, timber companies are damned if they do and damned if they don't. The problem is that federal antitrust laws inhibit the forest industry from coordinating harvest schedules and sharing information needed for ecosystem-wide planning. "This was an unforeseen deterrent to participating in landscape-level ecosystem management," says Jonathan Thompson and Norman Johnson of Oregon State University, Corvallis, and Mark Anderson of the University of Idaho, Moscow, in the December 2004 Conservation Biology. This work was part of the Coastal Landscape Analysis and Modeling Study (CLAMS), which analyzes the effects of forest policies in Oregon's Coast Range. "CLAMS scientists seek to anticipate problems before they erupt in crisis," says Thompson. Forest industry lands are critical to ecosystem management because they account for more than 67 million acres of forest nationwide - nearly half the size of the National Forest System. While forests would ideally be managed across large areas, this is not easy because the ownership map in a given area often resembles a checkerboard with multiple players. The best thing for ecosystem-wide management would be to coordinate the timing and amounts of timber harvests across the checkerboard. This could, for example, help preserve stream water quality and stands of older forests. But coordinating timber harvests might not be the best thing for the forest industry. Sharing such information could violate federal antitrust laws like the Sherman Act, which prohibits companies from collaborating to restrain trade. The forest industry is careful to comply with antitrust laws because it has a history of violations and expensive settlements. "The industry worries about antitrust liability and is reluctant to share information about their forests," says Thompson. The forest industry is right to be careful because sharing information in the name of ecosystem management is no defense. "Case law shows that achieving public policy goals, even when working with government agencies, is not a sufficient defense against antitrust enforcement actions," say the researchers. Even so, there may be legal ways for timber companies to share information. One approach would be for states to regulate the forest industry, which would protect it from antitrust attack. However, this might cause other problems because forest managers are trained to manage ecosystems, not companies. Another approach would be for public land managers to collect information confidentially from timber companies and lump it together. However, such aggregated information would yield a regional overview rather than the site-specific details that ecosystem management can require. While there are no easy answers, knowing about a problem is the first step to solving it. "Hopefully, our work can help guide ecosystem managers through situations where multiple private forest owners cooperate to reach ecological objectives," says Thompson. This work could also apply to other cases where conservation planning would benefit if information could be shared by competing companies, such as those in agriculture and commercial fisheries. CONTACTS: Jonathan Thompson: 541-758-7759, jonathan.thompson@oregonstate.edu
WEBSITE: Coastal Landscape Analysis and Modeling Study
Thousands of divers report seahorse sightings, data worth $1.3 million
Rather than being just a feel-good activity, conservation volunteering can make a real difference. The first step in protecting biodiversity is figuring out what species live where, but this can be an overwhelming task because time and funds are limited. A new report shows that volunteers can help on both counts: recreational scuba divers monitored seahorses in Italian waters quickly and cheaply. "Volunteers can collect a considerable amount of information over a relatively short period of time and save the public and scientific communities precious financial resources because the divers directly incur part of the costs needed for research projects," says Stefano Goffredo of the University of Bologna in Italy, who reports this work with Corrado Piccinetti of Fano University of Bologna and Francesco Zaccanti of the University of Bologna in the December 2004 Conservation Biology There are 32 species of seahorses worldwide and many have declined drastically due to habitat degradation and overfishing. Some populations have dropped by half in just five years. Seahorses are fished for the aquarium and curio trades, and are used in traditional Southeast Asian and Chinese medicines for respiratory problems and impotence. There are two Mediterranean species of seahorses (Hippocampus hippocampus and Hippocampus ramulosus) and they had not been comprehensively assessed in Italian waters. To see if volunteers can help researchers monitor seahorses, Goffredo and his colleagues established the "Mediterranean Hippocampus Mission". This three-year project entailed using scuba diving schools to recruit and train recreational scuba divers, who learned how to distinguish the two seahorse species (H. ramulosus has a "mane" while H. hippocampus does not) and fill out questionnaires reporting the depth, habitat, number and species of the seahorses they saw. To encourage divers to monitor less popular sites such as those with cloudy waters, the project offered incentives including subscriptions to recreational diving magazines and discounts on room and board. During the three-year project, more than 2,500 volunteers dove for more than 6,000 hours and submitted nearly 9,000 questionnaires, about a tenth of which reported seahorse sightings. Goffredo and his colleagues calculated that it would have taken a professional researcher 20 years and $1.3 million to collect these data. Among other things, the findings show that seahorses are rare in the northwestern Mediterranean, where the seagrass meadows favored by one of the seahorses (H. hippocampus) have been diminished. Threats to the seagrass include an invasive tropical seaweed as well as industrial pollution, port construction and other human disturbances. "The meadows are listed today among the ocean's endangered natural habitats and are mentioned in the Directive on Habitats of the European Union as one of the 'priority natural habitats', whose protection requires the designation of special areas of conservation," says Goffredo The success of the seahorse project led Goffredo and his colleagues to expand their volunteer monitoring effort to include 61 plant and animal species. Their current project is called "Diving for the Environment: Mediterranean Underwater Biodiversity Project" and volunteer scuba divers have submitted nearly 13,000 questionnaires reporting sightings over three years. "We calculated that a professional researcher would have taken 30 years to compile this impressive amount of information and that the sampling missions would have cost over 2 million US$," says Goffredo. CONTACTS: Stefano Goffredo: 011 39 051 2094244, stefano.goffredo@marinesciencegroup.org
WEBSITE: Marine Science Interdisciplinary Research Group
DEFORESTATION LEAVES NO "SURVIVORS"Overturning theory that some species can live on when forest is gone
The global outcry over tropical forest loss notwithstanding, some conservationists argue that there are "survivor" species that thrive in the secondary habitats that replace the original forest. But new research shows that this is wrong: these so-called survivor species are just as threatened as the rest once the original forest is gone. "Secondary habitat use does not confer an added protection against deforestation," say Grant Harris and Stuart Pimm in the December 2004 Conservation Biology. Harris did this work at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and is now at the USDA Forest Service in Anchorage, Alaska; Pimm is at Duke University. Tropical forest loss is the biggest cause of extinction today. However, some animals go on living in forest fragments and secondary habitats such as plantations and gardens, leading to the idea that some species can survive deforestation. If true, this could mean that immediate conservation efforts could be focused on other species. To see if there are such "survivor" species, Harris and Pimm compared the extinction risks of two groups of birds in Brazil's Atlantic Forest: those that live only in original forest and those that can also live in secondary habitats. Of the 688 bird species living in the forest, 199 live nowhere else and the researchers analyzed 176 of these: 127 that depend on forest and 49 that live in forest but also tolerate secondary habitats. The risk of extinction was based on three criteria known to correlate with being threatened: location (montane vs. lowland), local abundance (rare to common) and range size (original and remaining). Brazil has lost more than 90% of its Atlantic Forest and the region has more threatened bird species (60) than anywhere else in the Americas. "If some species can now tolerate and live in deforested landscapes (i.e., be survivors), we expected to find them here," say Harris and Pimm. Did they find any such survivor species? "The answer is sadly 'no'," says Pimm. Instead, the researchers found that deforestation threatens bird species that depend on forest and those that tolerate secondary habitats equally. For example, lowland forest-dependent birds are threatened when they are locally rare and had small original ranges. Likewise, secondary habitat-tolerant birds are threatened by the combination of low abundance and small ranges. This leaves the question of why some animals go on living in secondary habitats after original forest has been cleared. The answer is that most of these species are abundant locally and have ranges that are large enough to include much of the forest that still remains. "These factors cushion them from deforestation's harm," say Harris and Pimm. If more of the original forest in their ranges is cleared, however, the researchers expect the species that tolerate secondary habitats to become just as threatened as those that depend on forest. CONTACTS: Grant Harris: 907-743-9439, gmharris@fs.fed.us
WEBSITE: Stuart Pimm's Research Group
RECREATIONAL CAST-FISHING IMPLICATED IN REEF DAMAGEDiscarded monofilament lines entangle, kill coral colonies
While not as dramatic as dynamite or poison fishing, cast-fishing can be deadly to corals in reefs nonetheless. New research in the Hawaiian Islands shows that reefs off popular cast-fishing sites have up to twice as many damaged and dead coral colonies than those that are not fished. "Seemingly small effects of individual fishers may accumulate over time and cause a significant negative impact on the health and survival of corals within fished zones," say Kazue Asoh, Tomoko Yoshikawa, Randall Kosaki and Elizabeth Marschall in the December 2004 Conservation Biology. Asoh did this work while at Ohio State University, Columbus, and is now at Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, Japan; Yoshikawa did this work while at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and is now at Tokyo Medical and Dental University; Kosaki is at NOAA's Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve; and Marschall is at Ohio State University. While dynamite, cyanide and other destructive ways of catching coral reef fish are infamous for damaging coral, the impact of monofilament fishing lines is little known. "It has been presumed that the effects of individual fishers are small," say Asoh and her colleagues. However, recreational fishermen cut lines that get tangled in coral and discard old lines by casting them into sea, where they can become entangled in coral. As these entangled lines are swept by ocean surges, they abrade corals and so kill polyps. Determining how cast-fishing affects reefs is important because the sport is expanding rapidly in many tropical areas. The researchers assessed cauliflower corals for monofilament fishing line damage at seven shore-cast fishing sites in three Hawaiian islands (Hawaii, Maui and Oahu). Cauliflower coral typically comprises more than 90% of the reefs at popular fishing sites in the main Hawaiian islands. For each sites, the researchers compared both colony damage and fishing line entanglement in zones that were designated fished or unfished. Asoh and her colleagues found that the fished zones had both more coral colony damage and more fishing line entanglement. Fished zones had up to twice as many damaged colonies than unfished zones (40-80% vs. 20-60%, respectively). In addition, fished zones had at least 20 times more colonies that were entangled than unfished zones (roughly 20-40% vs. 0.1-2%, respectively). "These findings suggest that degradation of corals by fishing lines...is widespread among the popular cast-fishing sites in the main Hawaiian Islands," say the researchers. The good news is that it could be fairly easy to protect reefs from cast-fishing. Popular cast-fishing sites are usually small, which means it would be feasible to hire divers to remove entangled lines and to post signs asking fishermen not to cast old lines into the sea. CONTACTS: Kazue Asoh: +81-3-5978-5369, +81-45-716-5475, asoh@hawaii.edu,
asoh@cc.ocha.ac.jp
WEBSITES: Hawai'i Coral Reef Network
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Multi-Agency Education Project
Hawai'i Division of Aquatic Resources
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