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Deciding where we should carry out
connectivity conservation
Pia Lentini, Research Fellow, QAECO group, School of Botany
qaeco.com @pelentini @qaecology
[email protected]
“The Long
Paddock”
“disposal through sale may be an appropriate
outcome for a restricted number and area of TSRs”
Biodiversity conservation
• Not cultivated
• No inputs
• No set-stocking
• Large remnants
• Old remnants
• Hollows
• Support threatened veg.
• Provide habitat for threatened
spp
Cultural heritage
• Indig. Song lines, trading paths
• Significant sites and objects
• European heritage
Support for rural communities
• Fire and flood refuge
• Droving
• Tourism
• Apiaries/pollination
Other values for Australian society
• Recreation
• Scientific research
• Carbon sinks
• Seed source
Cereal crop
Exotic pastures
Native pastures
Lucerne/clover pasture
Canola crop
Results
• ~6,000 birds, 81 species, 45 woodland
specialists
Image: Dejan Stojanovic
Lentini, P. E., Fischer, J., Gibbons, P., Hanspach, J.
and Martin, T. G. (2011) Value of large-scale linear
networks for bird conservation: a case study from
Travelling Stock Routes, Australia. Agriculture,
Ecosystems and Environment, 141, 302-309.
Stock route richness
Results: Woodland birds
TSR
Condition index
Logs
Peeling bark
Native ground cover
Litter
Hollows
Shrubs
Results: Woodland birds
PAD
Shrubs
Results: Woodland birds
Shrubs
What this meant for management
• Structural complexity was more
important for woodland bird communities
than stock route size
• Narrow stock routes may act as a source
of avian visitors to farmland
• Native pastures and low-input systems provide supplementary habitat for
woodland birds, so incentives to maintain these areas should be
considered
• Low-input systems also allow for trees regeneration, and scattered
paddock trees
That’s all very nice. Where has
that gotten you?
Aren’t you supposed to be
talking to us about connectivity?
Aust. DSEWPAC (2012).
National Wildlife Corridors Plan.
Taylor et al. (1993) defined landscape
connectivity as:
‘‘the degree to which the
landscape facilitates or impedes
movement among resource
patches’’
Connectivity – Why does it matter?
1) Recolonisation
Metapopulations persist because local extinctions are offset by recolonisation
10
100
30
Connectivity – Why does it matter?
aA
aa
BB
cc
Cc
f↑
f↓
2) Gene flow
Between distinct populations prevents inbreeding depression
Aa
AA
bb
Bb
CC
cC
f↑
f↓
Connectivity – Why does it matter?
100
100
Altitude
3) Climate change
Species may need to shift their distributions as the climate warms
People have really been
paying attention
Connectivity
Biophysical
environment
Species’
mobility
Species’ habitat
requirements
Text book principles
Cain et al (eds 2008) Ecology. Sinauer Associates.
Conservation planning
How we decide where to put conservation reserves, or where to carry out
certain conservation actions
Principles of conservation planning:
• C: Comprehensive – need to have good examples of each species/
community/ecosystem
• A: Adequate – need to protect enough of each species/community/
ecosystem so they’re viable (connectivity part of this)
• R: Representative – need to capture natural variability of
species/communities/ecosystems across their distributions
• C: Complementarity – sites need to complement each other: if it’s
adequately protected elsewhere already, protect something
underrepresented instead
• E: Efficient – resources are limited, so we need to do this in the cheapest
way possible
A quick exercise – which patches would you conserve?
a) Each species once
9
6
4
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1
3
3
A quick exercise – which patches would you conserve?
b) Each species once – account for cost
1 - $5
2 - $10
3 - $2
4 - $34
5 - $50
6 - $12
7 - $28
8 - $19
9 - $45
A quick exercise – which patches would you conserve?
c) Each species once – habitat quality
1 - $5
2 - $10
3 - $2
($500)
4 - $34
5 - $50
6 - $12
7 - $28
8 - $19
9 - $45
A quick exercise – which patches would you conserve?
d) Each species once - connectivity
 Want to minimise the edge (boundary)
1 - $5
2 - $10
3 - $2
4 - $34
5 - $50
6 - $12
= 720m
7 - $28
8 - $19
= 520m
9 - $45
80m
100m
A quick exercise – which patches would you conserve?
d) Each species once - connectivity
 IF connectivity is REALLY important
1 - $5
2 - $510
$10
3 - $2
4 - $34
5 - $50
6 - $12
7 - $28
8 - $19
9 - $45
= 720m
1080m
($83)
($565)
A quick exercise – which patches would you conserve?
6ha
4ha
d) Each species – minimum area
 Landscapes aren’t neat squares!
1 - $5
1ha
2 - $10
1.75ha
3 - $2
3.25ha
4 - $34
0.75ha
5 - $50
1.5ha
6 - $12
3ha
7 - $28
1.75ha
8 - $19
2ha
9 - $45
5ha
10ha
10ha
7ha
3ha
What a headache!
• Many/all of these factors need to be considered in planning
• Planning problems often involve thousands of potential
‘planning units’
• Just because you have a ‘solution’, that doesn’t mean that
stakeholders are going to cooperate
• Thankfully, a wide range of conservation planning tools have
been developed to help us!
Two ways to approach conservation planning
• Address the ‘minimum set’ problem: if I want to protect
x amount of something, what is the cheapest way to do
it? (Marxan)
• ‘Maximum coverage’ problem is the opposite: I have x
dollars, what can you get me for it? (Zonation)
Connecting Country
“Habitat for Bush Birds” case study
Private land conservation
programs for 20 species of
woodland bird
Four actions being considered:
Revegetation, weeding, fencing
and grazing management
INFFER process had identified
eleven priority zones for action
Where to invest to maximise
habitat quality and connectivity
over the next 50 years?
Step 1: Build a habitat suitability model for each species
Probability of brown treecreeper = Temperature range +
Precipitation of the driest month + Woody vegetation in 500m
buffer + Vegetation condition in 500m buffer + Soil pH+
Vegetation “greeness” + Land use + Topographic wetness
Step 2: Decide how we think each species is going to respond to each
action in each land use type
Action
Site type
AON
BCH
BT
BRT
CB
CST
DF
EYR
FH
HR
JW
LL
PBQ
SK
SR
SW
SP
WBB
WBC
YTH
Grazing management
Fencing
Revegetation: Direct seeding
Weeding
Pasture
with
vegetation
Crop
Modified
Pasture
Pasture
with
vegetation
Crop
Modified
Pasture
Pasture
with
vegetation
Crop
Modified
Pasture
Pasture
with
vegetation
Crop
Modified
Pasture
0
0
0
0
0
1.97
1.709
1.97
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1.97
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1.207
1.378
1.907
1.235
0
1.105
1.83
1.105
1.378
1.207
1.207
1.907
2.9
1.907
1.207
1.235
1.378
1.105
1.378
1.378
0.604
7.853
0.439
5.427
3.854
6.695
13.607
6.032
3.123
34.58
8.184
1.094
21.984
6.449
7.305
4.94
0.861
11.444
5.058
4.064
3.021
20.65
1.677
10.138
2.916
7.412
19.719
11.204
5.539
59.433
9.248
1.37
0
1.579
13.296
2.1
2.766
24.408
6.262
8.157
1.52
19.648
0.902
8.72
1.387
8.74
16.226
5.541
5.742
43.816
11.744
1.691
0
2.09
15.07
1.083
1.784
15.017
6.41
4.758
0
7.853
0
5.427
4.581
6.695
13.607
6.032
3.222
34.58
8.187
1.094
21.984
6.554
7.305
4.94
0
11.444
5.058
4.064
3.021
20.65
1.677
10.138
6.648
7.412
26.57
15.097
6.116
86.924
9.324
1.37
37.719
3.272
13.296
12.025
2.766
36.308
6.262
10.992
1.52
19.648
0.902
9.886
6.527
8.74
29.89
10.207
6.774
79.061
11.896
1.691
42.747
5.588
15.07
8.648
1.784
27.67
6.41
8.765
1.482
1.454
1.42
1.427
1.428
1.447
1.465
1.433
1.388
1.481
1.455
1.462
1.475
1.478
1.443
1.421
1.466
1.46
1.477
1.407
1.49
1.477
1.472
1.456
1.454
1.451
1.478
1.468
1.436
1.487
1.459
1.468
1.484
1.471
1.464
1.47
1.484
1.481
1.48
1.459
1.488
1.476
1.456
1.455
1.447
1.457
1.479
1.456
1.44
1.487
1.466
1.472
1.483
1.476
1.468
1.45
1.479
1.478
1.48
1.451
Step 3: Decide on what the best action in each place is
?
×2
0.2
0.4
$321
ROI = 0.2/321 = 0.00062
$406
0.6/406 = 0.00148
×4
0.2
0.8
0.0012
× 1.5
0.4
0.6
$321
0.6/406 = 0.00062
0.0025
×2
0.4
0.8
$406
0.6/406 = 0.00098
Pretend you’ve already done the best action everywhere
And you know what that cost…
Step 5: Model connectivity
Then, determined priority areas in the landscape for
taxonomic groups using
Uses maps as inputs, employs an algorithm which iteratively
removes cells from the landscape
Does so in an order which minimises the loss of habitat for
the worst-off species at each time step
In this way, the least valuable habitat for all species is
removed first, and the most valuable removed last
Voila!
What we perceive as being the most important bits of the landscape are
going to shift depending on what we’re trying to represent in our
conservation plans
Some take-home messages
• Stock routes are awesome
• Habitat complexity is key – logs, shrubs, leaf litter:
‘mess’ in general
• Big old trees are important for a lot of
farmland fauna
• What constitutes “connectivity” is
different for each species
• It’s not only the quality of a patch is
that matters, but also its “landscape
context” – what is close by and what
it connects
Thanks!
Supervisors and collaborators:
Joern Fischer, Brendan Wintle, Phil Gibbons, Tara Martin, Brad Law, Saul Cunningham, Jan Hanspach, David
Lindenmayer, Michael Drielsma
Field assistants:
Corey Bunnell, Madelaine Castles, Lesley Hook, Lulu Lentini, Mary Long, Anna McConville, Alex Munro,
Beth Noel, Gabbie Openshaw, Thomas O’Reilly, Mark Quinnell, Katherine Russell, Marcus Salton, Karen
Stagoll, Jarom Stanaway, Caragh Threlfall
Property owners:
The Boland, East, Forde, Francis, Fuge, Gibb, Harper, Herbert, Kavanagh, Kelly, Kite, Knight, Knight,
Markwort, Maslin, Matchett, McLachlan, Mitton, Naughton, Porritt, Robinson, Ryan, Sanderson, Smith,
Sweeney, Sykes, Taylor, Thomas, Whyte, Worner, and Yerbury families, and the Darley global breeding
operation.