Threatened Species: 44 (Issues Today)

But not everyone is happy about the meeting. They have set up a petition calling for the pope to withdraw the invitation for him to speak on Monday.

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• La maledizione dei Lawrence #2 (A piccole dosi) (Italian Edition);
• Over half of world's wild primate species face extinction, report reveals.
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He remained uncompromising on population control: You do not want almost 12 billion living unsustainably on Earth by the end of the century — with the result that civilisation will collapse and there are only a few hundred survivors. A world population of around a billion would have an overall pro-life effect, Ehrlich argued. This could be supported for many millennia and sustain many more human lives in the long term compared with our current uncontrolled growth and prospect of sudden collapse. This point was backed by another conference organiser, biologist Professor Peter Raven, of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Yet we rely on the living world to sustain ourselves. It is very frightening. The extinctions we face pose an even greater threat to civilisation than climate change — for the simple reason they are irreversible. UN statistics suggest that the global population will increase from the current 7. And as Dasgupta noted, most of these extra billions will appear in Africa, where the fertility rate is still twice that of the rest of the world. What do you think is going to happen when the arid regions spread, and a hundred million Africans try to swim across the Mediterranean?

The crucial point is to put the problem of biological extinctions in a social context, he said. Another result that contradicted our expectations concerned the effectiveness of multispecies versus single-species recovery plans. This policy transition makes intuitive sense when listed species co-occur in a geographic area, are taxonomically related, or face similar threats, because a multispecies or ecosystem-based recovery plan can coordinate and integrate recovery efforts efficiently.

These results do not necessarily mean that multispecies and ecosystem plans are inherently ineffective. The effectiveness of these plans may be limited because less time and money is spent per species.

If this in turn reduces the linkage between recovery goals and the biology of individual species, one would expect species to fare less well. Thus, as multispecies and ecosystem plans are developed, careful attention must be paid to ensure that efficiency is not achieved at the expense of thoroughness or explicit science.

In addition to testing hypotheses regarding plan effectiveness, we evaluated how consistently recovery actions were monitored. Other studies of endangered species management plans concluded that monitoring protocols are often not clearly described or designed James , Kareiva et al. Recovery plans typically propose from one to a dozen different management actions. We asked what fraction of management actions was to be monitored to determine whether the actions had desired effects.

For each of 24 categories of management action, the questionnaire asked whether or not the effects of the management actions were to be monitored. For our analyses, we lumped the 24 management action categories into five broader classes. If any management actions within a class were to be monitored, we considered the whole class of actions to be monitored. Given uncertainty about the effectiveness of many different management actions and the clarion call by scientists and policymakers alike for adaptive management Smallwood et al.

One cannot possibly know whether management is working and whether it needs to be adaptively altered unless its effects are monitored. From these summaries, we concluded that recovery plans take a long time to write, and that length of time is growing. We calculated the lag time between the date a species was listed under the ESA and the date of recovery plan approval. Plans completed during or before had an average lag time of 3. Another interesting finding was that plans varied enormously in their number of pages range: However, lengthy plans were by no means more likely to be effective.

In fact, plans for species with declining status trends averaged more than 1. One interpretation of this pattern is that species in greatest peril and thus least likely to exhibit an improving status trend may require longer plans to provide sufficiently detailed guidance for management and recovery.

Alternatively, longer plans may simply take longer to write and may, as a consequence of undisciplined writing, include unneeded management actions Schemske et al. Thus, writing a longer plan could be counterproductive because it delays implementation and clouds prioritization of management actions. Clearly the trade-offs between a providing necessary detail to link biology and recovery goals and b producing a succinct document in a timely manner need to be carefully considered case by case during recovery plan development.

Species endangerment occurs for many reasons, but analysis after analysis suggests that human-caused habitat loss is the primary factor putting species at risk of extinction see, e.

Furthermore, both human populations and resource consumption continue to increase, suggesting that pressures on endangered species are likely to get worse, not better, and that successful recovery of species threatened with extinction will become increasingly difficult. Protecting threatened species is a matter of choice.

Conservation biology can identify those choices that should yield the greatest benefits to species at the lowest cost to humans. It does not require any science to conclude that if we reduced the human population and halted human economic development, we could probably recover many species. In the real world, however, we need science for recovery planning because such simple solutions are not available. Instead, we must establish practical, yet biologically valid, recovery plans that reverse downward trends in the populations of endangered species while the world experiences an upward trend in the human population and its collective impacts.

Our analyses suggest several ways in which the science of recovery planning could be improved. First, the opportunities for adaptive management when recovery plans are revised must be seized. Clearly, plans that remain unrevised run the risk of becoming irrelevant as time passes and species' status changes. But it is equally tragic for plans to be revised without capitalizing on improved information and understanding, which should promote more effective recovery planning. Second, the newly promulgated policy endorsing diversification of participants in recovery plan development should be vigorously pursued.

We suspect that involvement of diverse participants encourages greater investment in the planning process and greater commitment to effective implementation, both of which ultimately promote eventual improvements in species' status. Third, recovery criteria must be clearly linked to species biology to ensure that recovery plans are appropriately suited to each species' situation. Plans that simply invoke general platitudes of ecology or conservation biology are not likely to succeed. Finally, the policy encouraging development of multispecies and ecosystem-based recovery plans should be scrutinized to ensure that promised efficiencies do not come at the expense of insightful analysis and strategy.

To achieve both efficiency and effectiveness, we think, requires enough funding and personnel resources for the recovery planning process to ensure that each species in the plan gets adequate attention. Unfortunately, there are no data that enable us to quantify planning expenditures and thereby test this assertion.

Many scientists have commented on the presumptive failings and weaknesses of recovery plans Tear et al. The lesson is clear: Statistical evidence shows that dynamic and explicit science can improve the recovery process. Perhaps more important, it is also clear from our analyses that a much finer resolution of the hypotheses posed would be possible if trend data for species were more quantitative and more reliably accurate.

Using a detailed questionnaire to characterize recovery plans

Recovery planning is a joint process involving federal and state agencies and private stakeholders. To do otherwise is irresponsible. Yet we can find out whether recovery planning efforts are working only if we collect better quantitative data on the population trends of threatened and endangered species.

Recovery plans are themselves experiments in management.

As such, their success needs to be carefully monitored so that we can know when to delist species and learn which management actions work under different circumstances. Ultimately, effective use of science in individual recovery plans offers the greatest potential for successfully—and cost effectively—conserving and recovering threatened and endangered species. The project director was Dee Boersma. A complete list of the more than seminar and workshop participants who reviewed the recovery plans can be found at the Web site www. Without their efforts, this paper could not have been written.

Frequency distributions of status trend categories for species covered by revised versus unrevised recovery plans. Species for which status trends were unknown or extinct were excluded. Figure 1a represents data for all recovery plans in our sample. Figure 1b excludes status trend data for recent recovery plans those approved after Frequency distributions of status trend categories for species whose plans were developed with nonfederal participants versus plans developed only by federal employees.

Endangered species fact file

Figure 2a represents data for early recovery plans those approved during or before Figure 2b represents data for recent recovery plans those approved after Frequency distributions of status trend categories for species whose plans had better versus poorer links to species biology. Figure 3a represents data for early recovery plans those approved during or before Figure 3b represents data for recent recovery plans those approved after We interpreted this as a positive indication that greater attention was paid to biological links in recovery plans for declining species.

Frequency distributions of status trend categories for species covered under single-species versus multispecies recovery plans. Figure 4a represents data for early recovery plans those approved during or before Figure 4b represents data for recent recovery plans those approved after Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Sign In or Create an Account. Close mobile search navigation Article navigation. Using a detailed questionnaire to characterize recovery plans. Recovery plans have not improved with revision. Nonfederal participation in recovery plan development has a positive impact. The value of linking recovery goals to species biology. Multispecies plans are less effective than single-species plans. Management actions are not sufficiently monitored. Plans take too long to complete, and longer plans are not more effective.

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Human impacts and the challenge of improving recovery plans. The effectiveness of recovery plans for endangered species can be improved through incorporation of dynamic, explicit science in the recovery process, such as strongly linking species' biology to recovery criteria P. Revised plans would be more effective than plans that had never been revised. Using a detailed questionnaire to characterize recovery plans The first step in our analysis was to draw a random poststratified sample of recovery plans for the listed species for which the USFWS had primary responsibility as of Recovery plans have not improved with revision One aspect of effective recovery planning is the ability to adjust course in response to new information or changed conditions.

Nonfederal participation in recovery plan development has a positive impact As previously mentioned, in the USFWS and NMFS issued a joint policy officially endorsing diversification of interests and expertise among those participating in recovery plan development USFWS a. The value of linking recovery goals to species biology Recovery plans that are tailored to a species' biology should be more effective. Multispecies plans are less effective than single-species plans Another result that contradicted our expectations concerned the effectiveness of multispecies versus single-species recovery plans.

Management actions are not sufficiently monitored In addition to testing hypotheses regarding plan effectiveness, we evaluated how consistently recovery actions were monitored.