Biodiversity in Central Romania: pictures from the camera traps

By Ine Dorresteijn

The previous discussion on our blog was about where to target conservation efforts in Romania. Biodiversity is amazing in Eastern Europe; however, it seems hard to prioritize certain places for conservation efforts because species appear to be everywhere. Indeed species seem appear to be everywhere, and with this blog-post I would just like to show you a bit more about the biodiversity in Transylvania.

Just as an example, a few days ago we saw a bear, deer, blindworm, different species of lizards, grass snakes, different frogs and toads, and of course many species of butterflies and beetles. Doing fieldwork in this region is very rewarding and we see many different species every day.

Photo by Marlene Roellig

I consider myself lucky as I get to discover the main land uses of the region. Last year I mainly did my fieldwork on the pastures, meadows and arable fields, whereas this year I get to spend most of my time in the forests. Besides the fact that the forests are very beautiful with many mature trees, it is also exciting as there is always the chance to encounter a carnivore! Therefore, the feeling I have by walking through a Romanian forest is totally different compared to a German or Dutch forest.

This year we are using camera traps in the forests to survey mammal distribution. We are mainly interested in the importance of large carnivores (wolves and bears) on the ecosystem. Last week we got the pictures back from the first 30 sites. Just from those 30 sites alone we got around 850 pictures with identifiable animals on them. Unfortunately we did not yet get any wolves, but we did get pictures of 21 individual bears spread across 14 sites. Besides bears we also got pictures of roe and red deer, red fox, stone marten, wild boar, badger, rodents, domesticated animals and wild cats! I am especially excited about the wild cats as they do not seem to be rare in this region at all. We have pictures of 23 cats in 12 sites. In comparison, in the Netherlands it was big news last month when they observed the first wild cat (on camera traps) after centuries of its absence. We have now set out cameras for the next 30 sites, and I am very excited about the next things we will discover on our traps. Below are a few pictures from the Transylvanian forests.

Where to target conservation efforts in Central Romania?

By Joern Fischer

A major branch in conservation biology deals with the question of where to put conservation efforts. No matter what kind of spatial prioritisation one undertakes (formal or informal) — ultimately some places get more conservation attention than others. In Central Romania, we find there is a large set of connected Natura 2000 sites. But despite formal protection, it should be clear that not all locations (even within the “proctected areas”) will be receive equal treatment. So, some kind of prioritisation will take place, whether we like it or not. Will hay meadows get a lot of attention? Or forests? Or communally managed pastures? (Of course it would be good to create a somewhat holistic vision for the region; my point is simply that conservation happens in some places more than others, no matter what we do.)

With respect to the question of “where to put one’s efforts”, Central Romania has puzzled me a few times. There is a strange problem with respect to spatial prioritisation here … it’s simply not obvious where is most important! For example, we hear the corncrake in many places. It’s a rare species in Western Europe but seems to be just about everywhere in Central Romania.

The corncrake … quite common in Central Romania

And the corncrake isn’t the only species. The yellow-bellied toad is also everywhere (well, just about) according to a recent paper, we see rare butterflies everywhere (so it seems), and bear encounters are quite common, too. With a situation like that, how do we prioritise? How can Eastern Europe use some kind of foresight planning to avoid repeating the mistakes that Western Europe made long ago?

Are our (conceptual, statistical, or mental) models too poor, and in fact, species are not “everywhere”? Can (or should) we simply assume that the kinds of places that are now core habitat for species in Western Europe (where they have already declined) will be the most important? Where are the most important places for species which currently appear to be everywhere? Or is this a threshold phenomenon, where right now, everything is everywhere, and then it will — quite suddenly — become fragmented and there will be sudden major declines of multiple species? If that’s the case, where will the most important patches for a given species be in the future?

I’m not really sure, but somehow we have to get a grip of this, so that Eastern Europe won’t just follow Western Europe in terms of major biodiversity declines caused by haphazard development. The question of “where” is something that I have found puzzling for a while when moving around our study area in Romania… if you have any thoughts, you’re welcome to share them.

Your help needed in distributing this: it’s important

By Joern Fischer

I just received the following email. It relates to a consensus statement by scientists about the need for urgent, bold action for sustainability. Please read the message below, follow the link, and HELP DISTRIBUTE this. It is headed, and has been endorsed, by some of the best ecologists in the world. Thank you!

———————–

Dear Colleagues:

We are writing to express our deepest gratitude for your signature on the Scientists’ Consensus on Maintaining Humanity’s Life Support Systems in the 21st Century.  The statement was launched May 23, 2013, with a joint presentation by participating scientists and California Governor Jerry Brown, leader of the world’s ninth largest economy, and with an announcement in Nature on May 30, 2013 (in the Correspondence section, attached).  Representative news links about the initial launch are pasted in at the end of this e-mail.

As of May 21st, the statement had been signed by more than 520 prominent scientists (=YOU) from 44 countries that cover most of the world, including dozens of members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and equivalent scientific bodies from other countries. 

 

Our next goals are to deliver the statement to President Obama, all members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate, and all state governors, and ultimately to leaders throughout the world in both government and business. 

 

For the consensus statement to have an impact, it will need strong endorsement by thousands of scientists and at least tens of thousands of members of the general public.  Since the launch on May 23 when we opened signing to everyone, we have received hundreds of new signatures per day, and have added citizens of more than 10 additional countries.  The response has been remarkable!   We will carry on with our work, but you can continue to help as well.  

 

Please help to get the word out to family, friends, business leaders, politicians, other scientists.  The document is now open for all global citizens to sign. 

 

1) The statement is available to download and sign at  
http://mahb.stanford.edu/endorse-the-message-to-world-leaders/

 

2) Please continue to widely broadcast the statement and the opportunity to sign it on your social media networks, such as e-mail, twitter, and Facebook.

 

Thank you for your help.

 

Elizabeth A. Hadly* 

*on behalf of the Consensus authors: Anthony D. Barnosky, James H. Brown, Gretchen C. Daily, Rodolfo Dirzo, Anne H. Ehrlich, Paul R. Ehrlich, Jussi T. Eronen, Mikael Fortelius, Elizabeth A. Hadly, Estella B. Leopold, Harold A. Mooney, John Peterson Myers, Rosamond L. Naylor, Stephen Palumbi, Nils Chr. Stenseth, & Marvalee H. Wake

———————————————————————————————–

THE ONE-PAGE SUMMARY OF THE CONSENSUS STATEMENT

(Download the full statement from: 
http://mahb.stanford.edu/consensus-statement-from-global-scientists/

 

ESSENTIAL POINTS FOR POLICY MAKERS
Scientists’ Consensus on Maintaining Humanity’s Life Support Systems in the 21st Century

Earth is rapidly approaching a tipping point. Human impacts are causing alarming levels of harm
to our planet. As scientists who study the interaction of people with the rest of the biosphere using a wide range of approaches, we agree that the evidence that humans are damaging their ecological life-support systems is overwhelming.

We further agree that, based on the best scientific information available, human quality of life will suffer substantial degradation by the year 2050 if we continue on our current path.

Science unequivocally demonstrates the human impacts of key concern:

•Climate disruption­–more, faster climate change than since humans first became a species.

•Extinctions–­not since the dinosaurs went extinct have so many species and populations died out so fast, both on land and in the oceans.

•Wholesale loss of diverse ecosystems–­we have plowed, paved, or otherwise transformed more than 40% of Earth’s ice-free land, and no place on land or in the sea is free of our direct or indirect influences.

•Pollution–­environmental contaminants in the air, water and land are at record levels and increasing, seriously harming people and wildlife in unforeseen ways.

•Human population growth and consumption patterns­–seven billion people alive today will likely grow to 9.5 billion by 2050, and the pressures of heavy material consumption among the middle class and wealthy may well intensify.

By the time today’s children reach middle age, it is extremely likely that Earth’s life-support systems, critical for human prosperity and existence, will be irretrievably damaged by the magnitude, global extent, and combination of these human-caused environmental stressors, unless we take concrete, immediate actions to ensure a sustainable, high-quality future.

As members of the scientific community actively involved in assessing the biological and societal impacts of global change, we are sounding this alarm to the world. For humanity’s continued health and prosperity, we all–­individuals, businesses, political leaders, religious leaders, scientists, and people in every walk of life­must work hard to solve these five global problems,
starting today: 

1. Climate Disruption 

2. Extinctions 

3. Loss of Ecosystem Diversity 

4. Pollution 

5. Human Population Growth and Resource Consumption.

(As of May 21, 2013, the full statement was signed by 521 global change experts from 44 countries. Those signatures
were obtained within a month of completion of the statement, by direct email requests from the authors and their close colleagues to a targeted group of well-regarded global change scientists.   The signers include 2 Nobel Laureates, 33 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences,  42 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and several members of scientific academies in other countries.)

 

REPRESENTATIVE NEWS LINKS FOR INITIAL LAUNCH OF THE STATEMENT

http://www.allgov.com/news/us-and-the-world/520-scientists-issue-statement-with-solutions-to-global-life-support-problems-130526?news=850120

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2013/05/23/worlds-top-scientists-california-nations-must-act-now-on-environment/

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/may/environment-consensus-statement-052313.html

  

*************************************************************************************

Elizabeth A. Hadly
Paul S. & Billie Achilles Chair of Environmental Biology
Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-5020
ph:  650-725-2655

http://hadlylab.stanford.edu/
 

Twitter: @LizHadly

Novelty is over-rated

By Joern Fischer

I’d like to draw people’s attention to a new letter in TREE, by Göran Arnqvist, entitled “Editorial rejects? Novelty, schnovelty!”.

Among other things, this is the coolest title ever, and so for that reason alone, you should read it. On a slightly more serious note, the letter suggests that “novelty” is an unhelpful criterion for whether an editor decides to send a paper for review or not. I wholeheartedly agree.

Arnqvist suggests several reasons, including that perceived novelty is a matter of experience and perspective, that it may foster little scientific micro-niches that are new but lack so-what, and that a focus on novelty encourages overselling and poor discussion of how something fits in with existing knowledge. Most science is incremental, Arnqvist argues.

I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment. I would add that novelty is simply unhelpful at a time when most socially useful knowledge occurs at the intersection of knowledge domains. What we need is making links (say, new links, if you like) between existing bits of knowledge, rather than truly “novel” (what’s wrong with the word “new” by the way??) bits of knowledge. Putting existing knowledge together in useful ways is often of more value to the world than finding out something that is genuinely new but useless.

I come at this from a very sustainability-oriented angle of course, which not all ecologists do (or have to). I think “usefulness” is an important criterion for research, though not one I would want to base editorial rejections on either — because it, too, is subjective.

Anyway, take-home message from my perspective: novelty, schnovelty indeed. Let’s focus on doing useful, good science and embed this within existing knowledge, rather than sell new bits of “novel” stuff that nobody really needs.

Last thought: congratulations to TREE rocking the boat with commentaries on peerage of science, academia’s obsession with quantity, and now this one — here’s a leading journal going a very different direction from Nature, Science etc!

Chytrid fungus in Romania?

by Joern Fischer

Not much is known about chytrid fungus in eastern Europe, as shown in a recent paper by Olson and colleagues. The fungus has decimated many amphibian populations around the world. What’s its role in Romania?

Tree kangaroos and crowd-funding: follow-up

Guest post by Euan Ritchie

Funding is getting harder and harder to find right? And, the future doesn’t look great, well, at least in Australia (
http://www.nature.com/news/fears-grow-over-australian-science-funding-1.12934
). But, before you get depressed and start contemplating another career there IS a way we can find funding to undertake important research. It doesn’t rely on governments or funding bodies, it relies on you, me, anyone! It’s called crowd funding. I’m sure this concept may not be new to everyone and it’s been written about elsewhere before (
http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347(12)00298-4
), but I wanted to briefly reflect on my own experience of crowd funding (bearing in mind I’m only three days in of a 45 day campaign), having just begun my first project (www.pozible.com/tenkile) and what I believe are some of its benefits, acknowledging there are downsides too.

 “Tenkile or Scott’s tree kangaroo” (source: Tenkile Conservation Alliance)

Perhaps the biggest difference I’ve noticed already is the instant feedback you get about your ideas, and this is reflected both in a monetary sense (people funding you or not), but also by people’s comments. You know very early on how important the public thinks your work is, not just a small number of people on a grant review panel. There is no hiding, people either like what you’re doing or they don’t, but perhaps this is how a lot of science should be funded? The community decides what is of most value to them and how much support it deserves (

) . The other terrific aspect of the process is that the public is with you from day one, so they are more invested (some financially, but many emotionally as well) in your research. This can only be a good thing for everyone in terms of communicating just what scientists do and why research is so important. I’ve already had a long list of people wanting to come and help us in Papua New Guinea. Perhaps this is not surprising though.

“Torricelli Mountains” (source: Tenkile Conservation Alliance)

Another major upside of undertaking a crowd-funding project is developing promotional videos and engaging with the media in all its forms. In my case, I was fortunate enough to work with a talented young filmmaker, Reuben Warren (
http://framereactor.com/site/
). It was a wonderful process that brought together the arts and sciences, and we ended up with a video that I believe captures the message and importantly emotion in our project (

). If there’s one thing science needs a whole lot more of, it’s passion and emotion. In a world where scientific papers keep increasing (
http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(12)00125-5
), in some cases exponentially, but the environment tracks in the opposite direction for the most part, such partnerships may help us to sell our messages better and connect with society.

The last benefit I’d like to mention is profile building. Since starting the project, I’ve been retweeted and shared countless times and importantly, encouraged by people from all over the world and from all walks of like. I’m very grateful for this support and recognize that this project has opened up new opportunities to me, well beyond just gaining the support we need for our project.

“The future of conservation” (source: Tenkile Conservation Alliance)

So in short, if you’ve been thinking about crowd funding for a while but aren’t sure it’s for you, like I had, give it go!

A crowd-funding project on tree kangaroos

By Joern Fischer

A colleague and collaborator of mine — Euan Ritchie — just launched his first crowd funding campaign, on rare mammals in Papua New Guinea. Knowing Euan personally, I trust whatever he manages to get started in PNG will be very good science, and firmly focused on being of real-world use. It’s for this reason that I’m happy to help distribute Euan’s call for funding.

Find out more in the video below and on his project website. More on crowd funding in general in this previous post.

New paper: Interdisciplinary sustainability science in the Amazon

New recommendation as submitted to Faculty of 1000 Prime:

Joern Fischer and Jan Hanspach

A social and ecological assessment of tropical land uses at multiple scales: the Sustainable Amazon Network.

Gardner TA, Ferreira J, Barlow J, Lees AC, …, Viana C, Weinhold D, Zanetti R, Zuanon J., Philos Trans R Soc Lond, B, Biol Sci 2013; 368(1619):20120166

This week, a special issue about ‘Ecology, economy, and management of an agroindustrial frontier landscape in the southeast Amazon’ was published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Amazonia harbours the largest tropical rainforest in the world, and is valued for its contribution to global climate regulation, as well as its unique and rich biodiversity. It also provides a home and livelihoods to millions of people and provides timber and agricultural products for global markets. As is well known, human impact in Amazonia is causing the ongoing loss of its natural capital. Finding ways towards more sustainable land use is therefore a key issue. 

In this paper, Toby Gardner and colleagues describe a major effort in promoting sustainable land use in the context of an initiative called the “Sustainable Amazon Network”. At multiple scales, this initiative seeks to understand the regional ecological system, as well as the social system and interactions between the two. The current paper does not present specific findings, but rather gives an overview of the initiative. We believe that putting together an initiative such as this deserves recognition in the peer community. We wholeheartedly support the authors’ statement that “building effective multi-sector and interdisciplinary research programmes at large spatial scales remains one of the most difficult challenges facing sustainability science”. 

One aspect that is particularly interesting in this paper is the section on “Practical lessons and realities from the field”. This section discusses the various challenges and obstacles that come with a major transdisciplinary project, most importantly ‘developing and maintaining engagement with partners’. Although vital, the effort that goes into such large transdisciplinary projects is usually not visible in a standard empirical papers, and is not easily rewarded by existing funding and incentive structures. 

We recommend this paper because we think this is an excellent example how to study social-ecological systems, and we hope that the initiative described can make a difference for the future of the Amazon and its people. 

Disclosures

Joern Fischer published one paper with Toby Gardner in 2009. Fischer, J., Peterson, G.D., Gardner, T., Gordon, L., Fazey, I., Elmqvist, T., Felton, A.,Folke, C., Dovers, S. (2009). Integrating resilience thinking and optimisation for conservation. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 24, 549-554.

New paper: Europe’s extinction crisis

By Joern Fischer

Today I’d like to recommend a new manuscript in PNAS, available here.

Europe’s other debt crisis caused by the long legacy of future extinctions.

Dullinger S, Essl F, Rabitsch W, Erb KH, …, Kühn I, Pergl J, Pysek P, Hulme PE. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2013 Apr 15; PMID: 23589873 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1216303110

This paper illustrates the notion of an extinction debt very elegantly. The authors look at current red lists in Europe, and find that red lists for many species correlate best with past socioeconomic indices, as opposed to present indices. In other words, current red lists are best described by what humans did 50 to 100 years ago rather than what they are doing now. The authors interpret this better fit to indicate that what we are witnessing now in terms of threatened species is the result of our actions a long time ago.

An interesting additional finding is that current expenditure on conservation further improves model fit; but does not fundamentally change the fact that current red lists are best explained by past socioeconomic conditions. 

The authors interpret these findings to indicate that extinction patterns very likely will get worse – because we are now reaping the rewards of our actions one hundred years ago, and current actions are far more detrimental to species.

An important conservation take-home message is that current actions to halt biodiversity loss (a declared policy goal in Europe, for example) probably fall short even further of what is needed than widely agreed on.

I think this is an elegant case study; good for teaching the extinction debt; and an important warning to society regarding likely future extinction patterns.

This study also highlights indirectly (and probably not intentionally) that focusing on species once they are red-listed is too late. We need to think about the threatening processes driving biodiversity decline right now. Currently common species, if they show signs of declining, give more immediate feedback on our actions than if we wait for these species to get red-listed – which may take 50 to 100 years from when their initial decline starts.

Landscape heterogeneity is not just good for birds and bees

By Dave Abson

It struck me that my previous post might possibly make me seem slightly clownish (I guess the balloon modelling did not help?). So here is a little bit of a scientific corrective:

It is now relatively well established that land-use diversity/habitat heterogeneity in agro-ecosystems plays a key role in the conservation of biodiversity, the maintenance of ecological functions and the provision of multiple ecosystem services. There is therefore a compelling argument that societies should encourage diverse agricultural landscapes. However, agricultural landscapes are generally not managed by societies. Farmers, have their own sets of priorities in the management of their land, primary amongst them is the need to maintain a viable and stable income. In a recent paper we explored the relations between agricultural land-use diversity and the level, volatility and resilience of farmed incomes over a period of 44 years in lowland agricultural landscapes in the UK.

Employing portfolio theory (from the finance literature) we found that there was a strong linear trade-off between the expected farmed income and the volatility of that income across landscapes. The stability and economic resilience of farmed incomes increased with increasing land-use diversity. From this we conclude that land-use diversity may have an important role in ensuring resilient agricultural incomes in the face of uncertain future market and environmental conditions, and that this economic resilience can be achieved while maintaining aggregate yield across landscapes. So what’s good for the goose (or assemblage of farmland bird species… see future post) may also be good for the gander (farmer).

The paper is open access and can be downloaded from here.