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Tools
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Top 10 Places to Save for Endangered Species in a Warming World
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If your house were on fire, what would you save? Would it be the precious items passed down in your family from genera- tion to generation? Or would you choose the irreplaceable photos that would disappear forever? Where do you even start? What if it wasn’t just your house, but your whole planet that was on fire?That is the scenario we face today. Climate change has arrived. No longer clouds gathering in the distance, the storm is here now—melting our titanic glaciers, drying our mighty rivers and setting our deserts ablaze. What do we save? For the Endangered Species Coalition, the answer is easy: we start with our endangered species. They are already on the brink of extinction, so vulnerable that a stressor such as climate change acts as a bulldozer, steaming full force ahead with the potential to shove them right over the edge of extinction.And where do we begin? We asked our member groups and our scientists, “If we want to save endangered species from climate change, what habitats do we need to protect?” Together, they identified ten ecosystems that are critical to conserve if we are to protect our nation’s endangered species from the ravages of climate change.
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Climate Science Documents
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TOP PREDATORS AS CONSERVATION TOOLS
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We review the ecological rationale behind the potential compatibility between top predators and biodiversity conservation, and examine their effectiveness as surrogate species. Evidence suggests that top predators promote species richness or are spatio-temporally associated with it for six causative or noncausative reasons: resource facilitation, trophic cascades, dependence on ecosystem productivity, sensitivity to dysfunctions, selection of heterogeneous sites and links to multiple ecosystem components. Therefore, predator-centered conservation may deliver certain biodiversity goals. To this aim, predators have been employed in conservation as keystone, umbrella, sentinel, flagship, and indicator species. However, quantitative tests of their surrogate-efficacy have been astonishingly few. Evidence suggests they may function as structuring agents and biodiversity indicators in some ecosystems but not others, and that they perform poorly as umbrella species; more consensus exists for their efficacy as sentinel and flagship species. Conservation biologists need to use apex predators more cautiously, as part of wider, context- dependent mixed strategies.
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Climate Science Documents
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Toro_et_al-2015-Diversity_and_Distributions.pdf
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Climate Science Documents
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TOT_Tag
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Help Images
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TOTs
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Help Images
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Toward a Global Biodiversity Observing System
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Tracking biodiversity change is increasingly important in sustaining ecosystems and ultimately human well-being.
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Climate Science Documents
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Toward an Era of Restoration in Ecology: Successes, Failures, and Opportunities Ahead
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Keywords
resilience, ecosystem restoration, restoration ecology, recovery, degradation, ecosystem services, environmental change, novel ecosystems
Abstract
As an inevitable consequence of increased environmental degradation and anticipated future environmental change, societal demand for ecosystem restoration is rapidly increasing. Here, I evaluate successes and failures in restoration, how science is informing these efforts, and ways to better ad- dress decision-making and policy needs. Despite the multitude of restora- tion projects and wide agreement that evaluation is a key to future progress, comprehensive evaluations are rare. Based on the limited available infor- mation, restoration outcomes vary widely. Cases of complete recovery are frequently characterized by the persistence of species and abiotic processes that permit natural regeneration. Incomplete recovery is often attributed to a mixture of local and landscape constraints, including shifts in species distributions and legacies of past land use. Lastly, strong species feedbacks and regional shifts in species pools and climate can result in little to no recovery. More forward-looking paradigms, such as enhancing ecosystem services and increasing resilience to future change, are exciting new direc- tions that need more assessment. Increased evidence-based evaluation and cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer will better inform a wide range of critical restoration issues such as how to prioritize sites and interventions, include uncertainty in decision making, incorporate temporal and spatial dependen- cies, and standardize outcome assessments. As environmental policy increasingly embraces restoration, the opportunities have never been greater.
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Climate Science Documents
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Tractors and accidents
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From seasonal discing to cutting fire breaks to planting or spraying, a tractor is a staple in bobwhite habitat management. Marion Barnes talks about how to keep this big piece of metal from injuring you.
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Training Resources
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Webinars and Instructional Videos
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Bobwhite Quail Seminar Series
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Tracy Potter-Fins and Bethany Stanbery grow fresh, high quality, certified organic, Montana Homegrown produce and flowers for their community
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Tracy Potter-Fins and Bethany Stanbery grow fresh, high quality, certified organic, Montana Homegrown produce and flowers for their community. While Tracy focusses her efforts on the vegetable side at County Rail Farm, Bethany focusses her efforts on Field Five Flowers, but they both focus most of the love on their 7-month-old daughter, Imogen Stanbery-Fins. (USDA/FPAC photo by Preston Keres).
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