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The Connectivity Analysis Toolkit is a software interface that provides conservation planners with tools for both linkage mapping and landscape-level ‘centrality’ analysis.

We have just released Version 1.3.1 with the following changes:
Updated LEMON to version 1.3.
Turned off arc mixing in network flow functions to resolve potential division by zero error.
Updated NetworkX to version 1.8.1.
Updated Hexsim-based functions to Hexsim version 2.5.3.

The free software can be downloaded here.

The Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) is a global community of conservation professionals with over 4,000 members (resource managers, educators, government and private conservation workers, informed members of the public, and students) dedicated to advancing the science and practice of conserving the Earth’s biological diversity. SCB seeks a North American Policy Director to fill two critical roles: (1) to help prepare and implement the policy process guided by SCB’s strategic plan; and (2) to empower the membership by providing them with the information and skills necessary to influence the policy process themselves. This is a new position. The North American Policy Director is responsible for coordinating all of SCB’s policy activities in the U.S. and Canada. This position requires significant abilities and experience in communications, a broad understanding of SCB’s mission and philosophies, sensitivity to maintaining an objective role for SCB scientists in the policy arena, collaboration with other professional societies and scientists, and a clear vision for SCB’s role in influencing conservation policy and compelling ideas on how to achieve it. For more information see this announcement or this pdf.

The Connectivity Analysis Toolkit is a software interface that provides conservation planners with tools for both linkage mapping and landscape-level ‘centrality’ analysis.

We have just released Version 1.3 with the following changes:
Updated python and python packages, including NetworkX to version 1.8dev.
Updated Hexsim-based functions to Hexsim version 2.5.1, which improves conversion of .asc input files to hxn files.
Added support for locales (e.g., areas in Europe) that use a comma instead of a period as decimal separator.

The free software can be downloaded here.

The Society for Conservation Biology recently completed a major overhaul of the SCB website.

The new website provides a wealth of information on recent issues in conservation policy. You can access regular updates on conservation policy news by subscribing to the Policy RSS feed.

Other sections of the website provide information on SCB’s regional sections and working groups. The most popular section of the website is the board listing job openings in the field of conservation biology.

A new study published in Science by Brosi and Biber compares species listed under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) in response to citizen petitions versus initiatives from within the agencies (FWS and NMFS). The authors asked whether citizen involvement, as some claim, diverts scarce conservation resources to species which are at lower risk than those identified by the agencies. The authors found, on the contrary, that species listed in response to citizen petitions were at least as threatened as those proposed by the agencies. These findings support the wisdom of the drafters of the ESA, who included the ability of citizens to petition for species’ listing to help ensure that species are not overlooked in the listing process due to political concerns or other reasons.

As the New York Times notes, “These impressive statistical results also help restate — and re-ratify — the reason the authors of the Endangered Species Act included the public in the first place. There are a lot more of us than there are Fish and Wildlife Service scientists. And the petitioning public isn’t merely an amorphous cross section of Americans. It includes scientists, local specialists, committed conservationists and passionate defenders of nature, who, in many cases, can keep a closer eye on the ground than the Fish and Wildlife Service.”

Science Daily also noted “The public brings diffuse and specialized expertise to the table, from devoted nature enthusiasts to scientists who have spent their whole careers studying one particular animal, insect or plant. Public involvement can also help counter the political pressure inherent in large development projects. The FWS, however, is unlikely to approve the listing of a species that is not truly threatened or endangered, so some petitions are filtered out. “You could compare it to the trend of crowdsourcing that the Internet has spawned,” Brosi says. “It’s sort of like crowdsourcing what species need to be protected.”

A new paper by Levi and Wilmers in the journal Ecology uses a 30-year time series of wolf, coyote, and fox relative abundance from the state of Minnesota, USA, to show that wolves suppress coyote populations, which in turn releases foxes from top-down control by coyotes. The authors conclude “Mesopredator release theory has often considered the consequence of top predator removal in a three species interaction chain (i.e., coyote–fox–prey) where the coyote was considered the top predator (Ritchie and Johnson 2009). However, the historical interaction chain before the extirpation of wolves had four links. In a four-link system, the top predator releases the smaller predator. The implication is that a world where prey species are heavily predated by abundant small predators (mesopredator release) may be similar to the historical ecosystem.” The study’s findings suggest that “among-guild interaction chains with even numbers of species will result in the smallest competitor being suppressed while among-guild interaction chains with odd numbers of species will result in the smallest competitor being released.” These findings have important implications for efforts to predict the consequences of removal or restoration of top predators.
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Conservation biologists have long debated whether and how it is appropriate for scientists to influence policy decisions. A pair of essays in the journal Conservation Biology (one published, another in press) asks whether it’s appropriate for scientists to review and critique recovery goals for endangered species. Wilhere (2012) argues that because recovery criteria are inherently normative (values driven), scientists are engaging in “inadvertent advocacy” when they criticize such criteria. In a response, myself and coauthors agree with Wilhere that recovery criteria represent an interaction of science and values, but provide a different view on the appropriate role of individual scientists and scientific societies in reviewing recovery criteria and recovery plans. This debate is central to recovery planning for many species, and we suggest a way forward for the agencies to more clearly separate the normative and scientific elements of recovery criteria. We call on the agencies to develop an explicit decision framework that would provide the flexibility needed to address the unique biological circumstances faced by different species but would limit the abuse of discretion that has allowed political interference to drive many listing and recovery decisions.
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A new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change finds evidence that declining snowfall in the southwestern US indirectly influences plants and associated birds by allowing greater over-winter herbivory by elk. Abundances of deciduous trees and associated songbirds have declined with decreasing snowfall over 22 years of study in montane Arizona. The researchers experimentally tested the hypothesis that declining snowfall indirectly influences plants and associated birds by allowing greater over-winter herbivory by elk, by excluding elk from one of two paired snowmelt drainages and replicating this paired experiment across three distant canyons. Over six years, the exclosures reversed multi-decade declines in plant and bird populations by experimentally inhibiting heavy winter herbivory associated with declining snowfall. Predation rates on songbird nests decreased in exclosures, despite higher abundances of nest predators, demonstrating the over-riding importance of habitat quality to avian recruitment.
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