An impact evaluation of conservation investments targeting long-distance migratory species.

We evaluated the impact of a philanthropic program investing in the conservation of sites along the Pacific Americas Flyway, which spans >16,000 km of coastline and is used by millions of shorebirds. Using a quasi-experimental, mixed methods approach, we estimated what would have happened to shorebird populations at 17 wintering sites without the sustained and additional investment they received. We modeled shorebird populations across the entire flyway and at sites with and without investment. Combining shorebird abundance estimates with a land-cover classification model, we used the synthetic control method to create counterfactuals for shorebird trends at the treatment sites. We found no evidence of an overall effect across three outcome variables. Species- and site-level treatment effects were heterogeneous, with a few cases showing evidence of a positive effect, including a site with a high level of overall investment. Results suggest six shorebirds declined across the entire flyway, including at many Latin American sites. However, the percentage of flyway populations present at the sites remained stable, and the percentage at the treatment sites was higher (i.e., investment sites) than at control sites. Multiple mechanisms behind our results are possible, including that investments have yet to mitigate impacts and negative impacts at other sites are driving declines at the treatment sites. A limitation of our evaluation is the sole focus on shorebird abundance and the lack of data that prohibits the inclusion of other outcome variables. Monitoring infrastructure is now in place to design a more robust and a priori shorebird evaluation framework across the entire flyway. With this framework, it will prove easier to prioritize limited dollars to result in the most positive conservation outcomes.

Evaluación del impacto de la inversión para la conservación enfocada en especies migratorias de largo recorrido Resumen Evaluamos el impacto de un programa filantrópico que invierte en la conservación de sitios a lo largo de la Ruta Migratoria Pacífico-Américas, la cual abarca >16,000 km de la línea costera y millones de aves playeras la usan. Estimamos con una estrategia cuasiexperimental y de métodos mixtos lo que habría pasado con las poblaciones de estas aves en 17 sitios invernales sin la inversión adicional y continua que recibieron. Modelamos estas poblaciones en toda la ruta y en sitios con y sin inversión. Combinamos las estimaciones de aves playeras con el modelo de clasificación de la cobertura del suelo y usamos el método de control sintético para crear contrafactuales para las tendencias de las aves playeras en sitios de tratamiento. No encontramos evidencia alguna de un efecto generalizado en las tres variables de los resultados. Los efectos del tratamiento de especies y de sitio fueron heterogéneos, con unos cuantos casos que mostraron evidencia de un efecto positivo, incluido un sitio con un nivel elevado de inversión general. Los resultados sugieren que seis especies de aves playeras declinaron a lo largo de toda la ruta, incluyendo en varios sitios de América Latina. Sin embargo, el porcentaje de poblaciones de la ruta presentes en los sitios permaneció estable y el porcentaje en los sitios de tratamiento (sitios de inversión) fue más elevado que en los sitios control. Muchos mecanismos son posibles detrás de nuestros resultados, incluidas las inversiones que todavía no han mitigado impactos y los impactos negativos en otros sitios que están causando las declinaciones en los sitios de tratamiento. Una limitación en nuestra evaluación es el enfoque único en la abundancia de aves playeras y la falta de datos que impiden la inclusión de otras variables de los resultados. El monitoreo de la infraestructura ahora está en una posición en la que puede diseñar un marco de evaluación más robusto y a priori de las aves playeras a lo largo de toda la ruta. Con este marco, será más fácil priorizar los dólares limitados para que los resultados de conservación sean lo más positivos posible.

Consequences of seafood mislabeling for marine populations and fisheries management.

Over the past decade, seafood mislabeling has been increasingly documented, raising public concern over the identity, safety, and sustainability of seafood. Negative outcomes from seafood mislabeling are suspected to be substantial and pervasive as seafood is the world's most highly traded food commodity. Here we provide empirical systems-level evidence that enabling conditions exist for seafood mislabeling in the United States (US) to lead to negative impacts on marine populations and support consumption of products from poorly managed fisheries. Using trade, production, and mislabeling data, we determine that substituted products are more likely to be imported than the product listed on the label. We also estimate that about 60% of US mislabeled apparent consumption associated with the established pairs involves products that are exclusively wild caught. We use these wild-caught pairs to explore population and management consequences of mislabeling. We find that, compared to the product on the label, substituted products come from fisheries with less healthy stocks and greater impacts of fishing on other species. Additionally, substituted products are from fisheries with less effective management and with management policies less likely to mitigate impacts of fishing on habitats and ecosystems compared with the label product. While we provide systematic evidence of environmental impacts from food fraud, our results also highlight the current challenges with production, trade, and mislabeling data, which increase the uncertainty surrounding seafood mislabeling consequences. More integrated, holistic, and collaborative approaches are needed to understand mislabeling impacts and design interventions to minimize mislabeling.

Science for a wilder Anthropocene: Synthesis and future directions for trophic rewilding research.

Trophic rewilding is an ecological restoration strategy that uses species introductions to restore top-down trophic interactions and associated trophic cascades to promote self-regulating biodiverse ecosystems. Given the importance of large animals in trophic cascades and their widespread losses and resulting trophic downgrading, it often focuses on restoring functional megafaunas. Trophic rewilding is increasingly being implemented for conservation, but remains controversial. Here, we provide a synthesis of its current scientific basis, highlighting trophic cascades as the key conceptual framework, discussing the main lessons learned from ongoing rewilding projects, systematically reviewing the current literature, and highlighting unintentional rewilding and spontaneous wildlife comebacks as underused sources of information. Together, these lines of evidence show that trophic cascades may be restored via species reintroductions and ecological replacements. It is clear, however, that megafauna effects may be affected by poorly understood trophic complexity effects and interactions with landscape settings, human activities, and other factors. Unfortunately, empirical research on trophic rewilding is still rare, fragmented, and geographically biased, with the literature dominated by essays and opinion pieces. We highlight the need for applied programs to include hypothesis testing and science-based monitoring, and outline priorities for future research, notably assessing the role of trophic complexity, interplay with landscape settings, land use, and climate change, as well as developing the global scope for rewilding and tools to optimize benefits and reduce human-wildlife conflicts. Finally, we recommend developing a decision framework for species selection, building on functional and phylogenetic information and with attention to the potential contribution from synthetic biology.

Low performance on mathematical tasks in preschoolers: the importance of domain-general and domain-specific abilities.

BACKGROUND: Different domain-specific and domain-general cognitive precursors play a key role in the development of mathematical abilities. The contribution of these domains to mathematical ability changes during development. Primary school-aged children who show mathematical difficulties form a heterogeneous group, but it is not clear whether this also holds for preschool low achievers (LAs) and how domain-specific and domain-general abilities contribute to mathematical difficulties at a young age. The aim of this study was to explore the cognitive characteristics of a sample of preschool LAs and identify sub-types of LAs. METHODS: 81 children were identified as LAs from 283 preschoolers aged 3 to 5 years old and were assessed on a number of domain-general and domain-specific tasks. RESULTS: Cluster analysis revealed four subgroups of LAs in mathematics: (1) a weak processing sub-type; (2) a general mathematical LAs sub-type; (3) a mixed abilities sub-type; and (4) a visuo-spatial deficit sub-type. Whilst two of the groups showed specific domain-general difficulties, none showed only domain-specific difficulties. CONCLUSIONS: Current findings suggest that preschool LAs constitute a heterogeneous group and stress the importance of domain-general factors for the development of mathematical abilities during the preschool years.

Incentivizing biodiversity conservation in artisanal fishing communities through territorial user rights and business model innovation.

Territorial user rights for fisheries are being promoted to enhance the sustainability of small-scale fisheries. Using Chile as a case study, we designed a market-based program aimed at improving fishers' livelihoods while incentivizing the establishment and enforcement of no-take areas within areas managed with territorial user right regimes. Building on explicit enabling conditions (i.e., high levels of governance, participation, and empowerment), we used a place-based, human-centered approach to design a program that will have the necessary support and buy-in from local fishers to result in landscape-scale biodiversity benefits. Transactional infrastructure must be complex enough to capture the biodiversity benefits being created, but simple enough so that the program can be scaled up and is attractive to potential financiers. Biodiversity benefits created must be commoditized, and desired behavioral changes must be verified within a transactional context. Demand must be generated for fisher-created biodiversity benefits in order to attract financing and to scale the market model. Important design decisions around these 3 components-supply, transactional infrastructure, and demand-must be made based on local social-ecological conditions. Our market model, which is being piloted in Chile, is a flexible foundation on which to base scalable opportunities to operationalize a scheme that incentivizes local, verifiable biodiversity benefits via conservation behaviors by fishers that could likely result in significant marine conservation gains and novel cross-sector alliances.

Los derechos de uso territorial en las pesquerías están siendo promovidos para mejorar la sustentabilidad de las pesquerías a pequeña escala. Utilizando a Chile como estudio de caso, diseñamos un programa con base en el mercado para mejorar el sustento de los pescadores a la vez que se incentiva el establecimiento y la aplicación de áreas de reserva sin pesca dentro de áreas manejadas por regímenes de derechos de uso territorial. Usamos una estrategia de diseño antropocéntrico basada en condiciones explícitas del lugar (es decir, altos niveles de gobernanza, participación y empoderamiento) para diseñar un programa que tenga el apoyo y la aceptación necesarios por parte de los pescadores locales y que resulte en beneficios para la biodiversidad a escala de paisaje. La infraestructura transaccional debe ser lo suficientemente compleja para capturar estos beneficios durante su creación, pero lo suficientemente simple para que el programa pueda subir de escala y sea atractivo para los financiadores potenciales. Los beneficios creados deben ser un bien transable, y los cambios conductuales deseados deben verificarse dentro de un contexto transaccional. La demanda debe generarse para los beneficios de biodiversidad creados para así poder atraer financiamiento y mantener a escala el modelo de mercado. Se deben tomar decisiones importantes de diseño alrededor de tres componentes - suministro, infraestructura transaccional y demanda- con base en las condiciones socio-ecológicas locales. Nuestro modelo de mercado, que está en etapa de prueba piloto en Chile, es un cimiento flexible sobre el cual se pueden basar oportunidades expandibles para volver operacional un esquema que incentiva los beneficios locales y verificables para la biodiversidad por medio de comportamientos de conservación de los pescadores. El modelo podría resultar en ganancias significativas de conservación marina y alianzas novedosas a través de differentes sectores.

Increasing participation in incentive programs for biodiversity conservation.

Engaging private landowners in conservation activities for imperiled species is critical to maintaining and enhancing biodiversity. Market-based approaches can incentivize conservation behaviors on private lands by shifting the benefit-cost ratio of engaging in activities that result in net conservation benefits for target species. In the United States and elsewhere, voluntary conservation agreements with financial incentives are becoming an increasingly common strategy. While the influence of program design and delivery of voluntary conservation programs is often overlooked, these aspects are critical to achieving the necessary participation to attain landscape-scale outcomes. Using a sample of family-forest landowners in the southeast United States, we show how preferences for participation in a conservation program to protect an at-risk species, the gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus), are related to program structure, delivery, and perceived efficacy. Landowners were most sensitive to programs that are highly controlling, require permanent conservation easements, and put landowners at risk for future regulation. Programs designed with greater levels of compensation and that support landowners' autonomy to make land management decisions can increase participation and increase landowner acceptance of program components that are generally unfavorable, like long-term contracts and permanent easements. There is an inherent trade-off between maximizing participation and maximizing the conservation benefits when designing a conservation incentive program. For conservation programs targeting private lands to achieve landscape-level benefits, they must attract a critical level of participation that creates a connected mosaic of conservation benefits. Yet, programs with attributes that strive to maximize conservation benefits within a single agreement (and reduce risks of failure) are likely to have lower participation, and thus lower landscape benefits. Achieving levels of landowner participation in conservation agreement programs that deliver lasting, landscape-level benefits requires careful attention not only to how the program structure influences potential conservation benefits, but also how it influences landowners and their potential to participate.

Using expert opinion surveys to rank threats to endangered species: a case study with sea turtles.

Little is known about how specific anthropogenic hazards affect the biology of organisms. Quantifying the effect of regional hazards is particularly challenging for species such as sea turtles because they are migratory, difficult to study, long lived, and face multiple anthropogenic threats. Expert elicitation, a technique used to synthesize opinions of experts while assessing uncertainty around those views, has been in use for several decades in the social science and risk assessment sectors. We conducted an internet-based survey to quantify expert opinion on the relative magnitude of anthropogenic hazards to sea turtle populations at the regional level. Fisheries bycatch and coastal development were most often ranked as the top hazards to sea turtle species in a geographic region. Nest predation and direct take followed as the second and third greatest threats, respectively. Survey results suggest most experts believe sea turtles are threatened by multiple factors, including substantial at-sea threats such as fisheries bycatch. Resources invested by the sea turtle community, however, appear biased toward terrestrial-based impacts. Results from the survey are useful for conservation planning because they provide estimates of relative impacts of hazards on sea turtles and a measure of consensus on the magnitude of those impacts among researchers and practitioners. Our survey results also revealed patterns of expert bias, which we controlled for in our analysis. Respondents with no experience with respect to a sea turtle species tended to rank hazards affecting that sea turtle species higher than respondents with experience. A more-striking pattern was with hazard-based expertise: the more experience a respondent had with a specific hazard, the higher the respondent scored the impact of that hazard on sea turtle populations. Bias-controlled expert opinion surveys focused on threatened species and their hazards can help guide and expedite species recovery plans.

Estimating illegal fishing from enforcement officers.

While illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a premier issue facing ocean sustainability, characterizing it is challenging due to its clandestine nature. Current approaches can be resource intensive and sometimes controversial. Using Chile as an example, we present a structured process leveraging existing capacity, fisheries officers, that provides a monitoring tool to produce transparent and stand-alone estimates on the level, structure, and characteristics of illegal fishing. We provide a national illegal fishing baseline for Chile, estimating illegal activity for 20 fisheries, representing ~ 70% of annual national landings. For four fisheries, we also estimate the relative importance of illegal activities across sectors, stakeholders, and infrastructure. While providing new information, our results also confirm previous evidence on the general patterns of illegality. Our approach provides an opportunity for government agencies to formalize their institutional knowledge, while accounting for potential biases and reducing fragmentation of knowledge that can prevent effective enforcement. Estimating illegal activity directly from fisheries enforcement officers is complementary to existing approaches, providing a cost-effective, rapid, and rigorous method to measure, monitor, and inform solutions to reduce IUU fishing.

High-impact conservation: invasive mammal eradications from the islands of western México.

Islands harbor a disproportionate amount of the earth's biodiversity, but a significant portion has been lost due in large part to the impacts of invasive mammals. Fortunately, invasive mammals can be routinely removed from islands, providing a powerful tool to prevent extinctions and restore ecosystems. Given that invasive mammals are still present on more than 80% of the world's major islands groups and remain a premier threat to the earth's biodiversity, it is important to disseminate replicable, scaleable models to eradicate invasive mammals from islands. We report on a successful model from western México during the past decade. A collaborative effort between nongovernmental organizations, academic biologists, Mexican government agencies, and local individuals has resulted in major restoration efforts in three island archipelagos. Forty-two populations of invasive mammals have been eradicated from 26 islands. For a cost of USD 21,615 per colony and USD 49,370 per taxon, 201 seabird colonies and 88 endemic terrestrial taxa have been protected, respectively. These conservation successes are a result of an operational model with three main components: i) a tri-national collaboration that integrates research, prioritization, financing, public education, policy work, capacity building, conservation action, monitoring, and evaluation; ii) proactive and dedicated natural resource management agencies; and iii) effective partnerships with academic researchers in Mexico and the United States. What is now needed is a detailed plan to eradicate invasive mammals from the remaining islands in the region that integrates the needed additional financing, capacity, technical advances, and policy issues. Island conservation in western Mexico provides an effective approach that can be readily applied to other archipelagos where conservation efforts have been limited.

Scaling participation in payments for ecosystem services programs.

Payments for ecosystem services programs have become common tools but most have failed to achieve wide-ranging conservation outcomes. The capacity for scale and impact increases when PES programs are designed through the lens of the potential participants, yet this has received little attention in research or practice. Our work with small-scale marine fisheries integrates the social science of PES programs and provides a framework for designing programs that focus a priori on scaling. In addition to payments, desirable non-monetary program attributes and ecological feedbacks attract a wider range of potential participants into PES programs, including those who have more negative attitudes and lower trust. Designing programs that draw individuals into participating in PES programs is likely the most strategic path to reaching scale. Research should engage in new models of participatory research to understand these dynamics and to design programs that explicitly integrate a broad range of needs, values, and modes of implementation.

Invasive rodent eradication on islands.

Invasive mammals are the greatest threat to island biodiversity and invasive rodents are likely responsible for the greatest number of extinctions and ecosystem changes. Techniques for eradicating rodents from islands were developed over 2 decades ago. Since that time there has been a significant development and application of this conservation tool. We reviewed the literature on invasive rodent eradications to assess its current state and identify actions to make it more effective. Worldwide, 332 successful rodent eradications have been undertaken; we identified 35 failed eradications and 20 campaigns of unknown result. Invasive rodents have been eradicated from 284 islands (47,628 ha). With the exception of two small islands, rodenticides were used in all eradication campaigns. Brodifacoum was used in 71% of campaigns and 91% of the total area treated. The most frequent rodenticide distribution methods (from most to least) are bait stations, hand broadcasting, and aerial broadcasting. Nevertheless, campaigns using aerial broadcast made up 76% of the total area treated. Mortality of native vertebrates due to nontarget poisoning has been documented, but affected species quickly recover to pre-eradication population levels or higher. A variety of methods have been developed to mitigate nontarget impacts, and applied research can further aid in minimizing impacts. Land managers should routinely remove invasive rodents from islands <100 ha that lack vertebrates susceptible to nontarget poisoning. For larger islands and those that require nontarget mitigation, expert consultation and greater planning effort are needed. With the exception of house mice (Mus musculus), island size may no longer be the limiting factor for rodent eradications; rather, social acceptance and funding may be the main challenges. To be successful, large-scale rodent campaigns should be integrated with programs to improve the livelihoods of residents, island biosecurity, and reinvasion response programs.

Achieving biodiversity benefits with offsets: Research gaps, challenges, and needs.

Biodiversity offsets are becoming increasingly common across a portfolio of settings: national policy, voluntary programs, international lending, and corporate business structures. Given the diversity of ecological, political, and socio-economic systems where offsets may be applied, place-based information is likely to be most useful in designing and implementing offset programs, along with guiding principles that assure best practice. We reviewed the research on biodiversity offsets to explore gaps and needs. While the peer-reviewed literature on offsets is growing rapidly, it is heavily dominated by ecological theory, wetland ecosystems, and U.S.-based research. Given that majority of offset policies and programs are occurring in middle- and low-income countries, the research gaps we identified present a number of risks. They also present an opportunity to create regionally based learning platforms focused on pilot projects and institutional capacity building. Scientific research should diversify, both topically and geographically, in order to support the successful design, implementation, and monitoring of biodiversity offset programs.

Pleistocene rewilding: an optimistic agenda for twenty-first century conservation.

Large vertebrates are strong interactors in food webs, yet they were lost from most ecosystems after the dispersal of modern humans from Africa and Eurasia. We call for restoration of missing ecological functions and evolutionary potential of lost North American megafauna using extant conspecifics and related taxa. We refer to this restoration as Pleistocene rewilding; it is conceived as carefully managed ecosystem manipulations whereby costs and benefits are objectively addressed on a case-by-case and locality-by-locality basis. Pleistocene rewilding would deliberately promote large, long-lived species over pest and weed assemblages, facilitate the persistence and ecological effectiveness of megafauna on a global scale, and broaden the underlying premise of conservation from managing extinction to encompass restoring ecological and evolutionary processes. Pleistocene rewilding can begin immediately with species such as Bolson tortoises and feral horses and continue through the coming decades with elephants and Holarctic lions. Our exemplar taxa would contribute biological, economic, and cultural benefits to North America. Owners of large tracts of private land in the central and western United States could be the first to implement this restoration. Risks of Pleistocene rewilding include the possibility of altered disease ecology and associated human health implications, as well as unexpected ecological and sociopolitical consequences of reintroductions. Establishment of programs to monitor suites of species interactions and their consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem health will be a significant challenge. Secure fencing would be a major economic cost, and social challenges will include acceptance of predation as an overriding natural process and the incorporation of pre-Columbian ecological frameworks into conservation strategies.

Coupling stable isotopes with bioenergetics to estimate interspecific interactions.

Interspecific interactions are often difficult to elucidate, particularly with large vertebrates at large spatial scales. Here, we describe a methodology for estimating interspecific interactions by combining stable isotopes with bioenergetics. We illustrate this approach by modeling the population dynamics and species interactions of a suite of vertebrates on Santa Cruz Island, California, USA: two endemic carnivores (the island fox and island spotted skunk), an exotic herbivore (the feral pig), and their shared predator, the Golden Eagle. Sensitivity analyses suggest that our parameter estimates are robust, and natural history observations suggest that our overall approach captures the species interactions in this vertebrate community. Nonetheless, several factors provide challenges to using isotopes to infer species interactions. Knowledge regarding species-specific isotopic fractionation and diet breadth is often lacking, necessitating detailed laboratory studies and natural history information. However, when coupled with other approaches, including bioenergetics, mechanistic models, and natural history, stable isotopes can be powerful tools in illuminating interspecific interactions and community dynamics.

Clinical and economic benefit of general practitioner integration to a symptomatic breast service.

BACKGROUND: Integration of general practitioners (GPs) into a tertiary care team is a model used internationally to assist with provision of patient care. Symptomatic breast clinics have seen significant increases in attendances and consequential staffing issues. We wished to analyze the integration of GPs into a tertiary breast care team and establish whether their inclusion is a cost-effective approach. METHODS: A prospectively maintained database was used to identify 1614 new and 1453 review patients seen in the clinic between September and December 2013. The triple assessment clinical, radiological, and biopsy scores of patients assessed by GPs were compared to those assessed by registrars and to the overall number of patients seen. A cost analysis was performed based on the hourly rates of GPs and registrars. RESULTS: 1614 new patients seen over the 4-month period. GPs reviewed a mean of 153.6 new patients and registrars reviewed a mean of 97.8. Registrars reviewed patients who were allocated higher 'S' scores, with 46 % of patients allocated an S4 and 21 % of patients allocated an S5 score. GPs reviewed a mean of 115.6 return patients and registrars reviewed a mean of 110.1 return patients. The weekly cost of employing 3 GPs for 15 h was €835. This compares favorably to the cost of employing a full-time registrar. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that GPs can play a substantial role in the provision of a symptomatic breast service. In addition, the incorporation of GPs in this setting can prove cost-effective.

Fiberoptic bronchoscopy in nonhospitalized patients.

Fiberoptic bronchoscopy is employed extensively in the examination of patients with pulmonary disease. As demonstrated in this large series, the procedure can be performed safely and efficiently on an outpatient basis, with the use of only topical anesthesia. Discomfort is minimal and readily accepted by most patients. Bronchial biopsies of suspected neoplastic lesions can be performed without difficulty. Outpatient bronchoscopy in an appropriate clinical setting can hasten the medical evaluation without compromising patient care.