2 POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER POSITIONS in GLOBAL CHANGE and CONSERVATION

Two positions available at the Global Change and Conservation group, part of the Centre of Excellence in Metapopulation Research, at the University of Helsinki, Finland. The appointments will be for a fixed term for two years and there will be a trial period of four months in the beginning. Starting independent university researchers can be considered in special cases.

We are looking for ambitious advanced postdocs willing to join a stimulating environment and collaborate with an active team. We would especially welcome candidates with background and expertise that could complement the team most. We work with a broad range of topics related to conservation effectiveness and conservation planning. Climate change research has a strong focus, but we also deal with other important aspects of conservation: conserving evolutionary history; ecosystem functioning and conservation planning; deforestation, causes and consequences; governance and other sociopolitical constraints to conservation (read more about us at http://gcc.it.helsinki.fi). The team hosts a broad range of research activities from methodological and theoretical research to teaching a very applied field course in the tropics. A qualified candidate will have interests in developing conservation theory, developing measures of effectiveness of conservation actions, and/or developing quantitative and spatial conservation planning approaches.

We would welcome candidates with very different profiles, from social scientists to spatial ecologists or biostatisticians. We especially welcome applications from candidates specialized in community ecology (in particular, modelers of metacommunities in space), macroecology, paleontology, and physiology. For one of the posts, we would favor a candidate with a strong spatial statistics background and extensive GIS skills.

For the second post we would have preference for a candidate with a social science

background and with expertise in studying the social aspects of conservation science.

The topic for the research project is open for specification depending on the expertise and interest of the candidate. Nonetheless, the successful candidate will be expected to conduct original research on core problems in biodiversity conservation. The candidate should be willing to integrate his/her own research project to those of the team, and be able to propose and foster common lines of research.

Qualified applicants should possess a minimum of a doctoral degree (Ph.D) and have the background and ability to address or discuss a wide range of disciplines and issues

related to conservation. Selected candidates will not have the obligation, but will have the opportunity to participate in PhD student supervision.

The salary will be based on level 5–6 (3 105–4 221 €/month, Postdoctoral Researcher /

University Researcher) of the demands level chart for teaching and research personnel in the salary system of Finnish universities. In addition, the appointee will be paid a salary component based on personal performance. All standard pension benefits and

occupational health care are provided for university employees.

Applications

Candidates should submit by email (biotiede-mrg@helsinki.fi) the following documentation by December 30th:

- Curriculum vitae

- Brief description of previous work, with 3 selected publications

- Letter of interest, expressing how the candidate thinks his/her background would

fit the team’s research interests

- Names and email addresses of up to three referees

Position Extent: 2 years

Starting date: preferably 1.2.2013

Contact person: Mar Cabeza (cabeza@cc.helsinki.fi)

Information about us:

The team: http://gcc.it.helsinki.fi

The larger research group: www.helsinki.fi/science/metapop

The department: http://www.helsinki.fi/biosciences/

Helsinki, 12th December 2012

University of Helsinki Central Administration

www.helsinki.fi/university

INSTITUTE OF ZOOLOGY - Three Postdoctoral Fellowships

INSTITUTE OF ZOOLOGY

ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON

Three Postdoctoral Fellowships

Starting salary ?33,461 including London Weighting

Applications are invited for up to three postdoctoral research 
fellowships, each available from 1 February 2012. These are four-year 
fixed-term appointments for outstanding early career researchers to 
undertake a programme of independent research within the Institute of 
Zoology?s current research themes (www.zsl.org/science/research). 
Applications are particularly encouraged in the area of conservation 
genomics but applicants wishing to work on other topics relevant to 
the Institute's research will also be considered.

The primary criterion for appointment is scientific excellence, 
although projects with an applied component that links to the 
conservation work of ZSL will also be encouraged as long they also 
fulfil the primary criterion. Successful candidates may also 
occasionally be requested to undertake tasks relating to the wider 
conservation and educational roles of ZSL, as required.

Candidates must be within 5 years of completing a Ph.D. on the closing 
date for applications, and should be able to demonstrate their 
potential to develop a successful independent research programme (with 
associated funding) in the appropriate field. Applications should 
include a covering letter (stating preferred research theme within the 
Institute), curriculum vitae, an outline of the research they would 
develop over the course of the Fellowship (maximum 1 side of A4, Arial 
11 point font), and the names and full contact details of three 
referees (including the candidate's Ph.D. supervisor). For informal 
enquiries, contact the senior researcher identified within each 
specified area on the website, or the Director of the Institute of 
Zoology (tim.blackburn@ioz.ac.uk).

Applications should be sent to: Human Resources, Zoological Society of 
London, Regent?s Park, London, NW1 4RY, where further details are 
available (tel. +44 (0)20 7449 6253; e-mail hr@zsl.org).

Closing date: November 20th 2011

Interview with Werner Schroeder, Head of Africa Working Group, Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU)

Werner Schroeder’s passion for international bird conservation stems from many travels to biodiverse areas in Africa. From 1983-1988 he studied biology and since then worked as an environmental consultant to a municipality close to Bielefeld, Germany. Since 1992 Werner Schroeder has been working in an honorary capacity as the Head of the Africa Working Group of NABU, the German BirdLife partner. Mainly focusing on Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa, his work involves the coordination of support to local BirdLife International partners and the joint implementation of conservation programmes, including ecotourism, environmental education, alternative income generating activities and integrated conservation and development projects.


Relevance of biogeography to your work

Antje Ahrends. Is biogeography – “the study of the geography of life” – a relevant discipline to your work for NABU, the German BirdLife partner? Do you think it is relevant to practical conservation planning in general?
Werner Schroeder. I think that in general biogeography is of great relevance to conservation, in particular with respect to providing knowledge about the distribution of conservation target species across and within priority areas. NABU is basing its work on existing conservation models, primarily on the Important and Endemic Bird Area scheme developed by BirdLife International and to a lesser extent Conservation International’s biodiversity hotspots and WWF’s Global 200. These schemes are easily accessible and provide us with data relevant to conservation. If biogeographers have any further suggestions as to how to prioritise our work these are welcome. There certainly is a lack of communication.

AA. Do you read biogeographic journals, or otherwise receive information on new findings in the field of biogeography? What are your main sources for this?
WS. I read Oryx and Bird Conservation International on a regular basis but no biogeographic journals. Having said this, I am certainly interested in biogeographic research papers if they provide information on the species that we are trying to conserve. As such, a recently published study predicting the habitat suitability of the endemic Mountain Nyala in Ethiopia was of great interest to us. I can see that there is a divide between academia and practical conservation. Working in conservation I just do not have the time to get to grips with all the specifics of and engage in academic discussions.

AA. Does NABU collaborate with biogeographic research institutions?
WS. The NABU Africa Working Group does not collaborate with any biogeograhic research institutions.


The general practicality of incorporating new biogeographic findings in conservation work

AA. Most species are difficult to monitor due to the lack of data. Do you believe that quantitative biogeographic methods (e.g. species distribution modelling) are useful to fill in these gaps, for example for the design of reserve networks or to establish the vulnerability of species to environmental change? Or do you think that given that these methods are inherently uncertain, it is difficult, if not risky, to allow them to guide conservation planning?
WS. Distribution modelling techniques and related methods would certainly be useful to inform conservation planning. However, it is important that the models are empirically tested and ground truthed to the greatest possible extent in order to know whether their assumptions and predictions are realistic. Furthermore, it would be useful if these methods would be reasonably easily accessible for non-specialists. BirdLife International African Partnership is recently working on o two year's project "Conservation in the face of climate change together with RSPB (UK) and Durhan University (UK) to develop a practical framework by using models to assess the possible impact of climate change on bird distribution. This information will be used to check whether IBAs in Africa will still meet their purpose for bird conservation.

Barbet, Kenya. Picture by Werner Schroeder

AA. Existing prioritisation schemes such as biodiversity hotspots, Global 200, or Important and Endemic Bird Areas necessarily suffer from data inadequacies, and also reflect the interests and values of the NGOs that generated them. Is there a need for objective reviews of the merits of these schemes, and alternative scenarios? Or do you think these schemes are so institutionalised that reviews would confuse decision makers, compromise public and financial support for conservation and therefore ultimately be counter-productive?
WS. There already have been studies on the overlap between the different schemes. I understand that a coarse agreement has been found, suggesting that where diversity is high in one taxonomic group it is likely to be high in other taxonomic groups too. However, I am certainly of the opinion that we should humbly revise our conservation prioritisation schemes when new data or methods suggest that we have been going wrong. I do not think that conservationists will lose face by doing so, and there is certainly no reason to quarrel over this. On the contrary, it is helpful to have these corrections. On the other hand, it is of course important not to come across as implausible to the public and politicians. We need to present them with data that is as sound as however possible. Given the rapid loss of species and habitats it is absolutely necessary that we all work together in this. We are already entirely and with increasing speed on the loser side and we cannot effort to engage in unhelpful quarrels. Allowing our decisions to be influenced by concurrence between organisations or the run for high profile publications is unethical.
At NABU we base our work on the prioritisation scheme suggested by BirdLife International. The rationale for doing so is that (1) it is probably not helpful if everybody developed their own prioritisation scheme, and (2) for me as a conservation practitioner time is too scarce to engage in the all the specifics of this often rather academic debate. Having said this, it would be useful if datasets on species and their distributions and alternative suggestions for prioritisations would be made available and easily accessible (!) to the conservation community in order for us to review our focal areas on a regular basis.

AA. Do you think that idealistic prioritisation schemes have much relevance on the ground (other than attracting funding)? I.e. is it useful to have these benchmarks although they are (1) necessarily based on incomplete data and (2) generally do not take into account political or socioeconomic constraints?
WS. The Important Bird Area (IBA) scheme by BirdLife International does also take socio-economic aspects into account. In over 190 IBAs so called “Site Support Groups” (SSGs) have been formed by members of the adjacent local communities who have economic and other benefits from the conservation of their sites. The collection of socio-economic and biological data is routinely done for all these sites by trained SSG members, and the data collected is far more extensive than could ever be provided by biologists or the government. To your question: albeit idealistic, I think it is important to have a prioritisation as a form of orientation. Particularly in Endemic Bird Areas it is very important to immediately establish contact to people on the ground, to identify potential socio-economic issues conflicting with the sites’ conservation and to find a solution. If in the end it turned out that an area was not as important to biodiversity conservation as previously thought, it would not be the end of the world if this area was sustainably managed, would it? To me, this seems to be a rather theoretical debate. Every area that harbours biological diversity harbours also ecosystem services and is important. Also, realistically, 99% of the areas that now seem “less important” will have lost their importance due to anthropogenic influences. I would not hesitate to communicate this to the public. In order to prevent the opposite scenario – that an important area has been overlooked by the prioritisation exercises – it is important that conservation and biogeographers work hand in hand. In fact, I would wish for a closer collaboration with biogeographers in our Africa work and herewith like to invite biogeographers to visit/study our project areas.

AA. The nature of scientific research is to continuously challenge existing paradigms, and as a consequence there frequently is a lot of disagreement and a rapid-turnover of paradigms. For instance, a predictive model for species distributions that was deemed the state of the art a few years ago might already be regarded as flawed today! Does this scientific rationale make it difficult to include biogeographic findings in conservation practice given that conservation generally needs longer term strategies and commitments?
WS. I do not think at all that this is a problem. It is helpful to have disagreements that further the debate and our work should be flexible enough to incorporate reviews and corrections.

Crablover, Kenya. Picture by Werner Schroeder

Communication between biogeographers and conservation practitioners

AA. Do you think that biogeographers communicate the applicability of their research findings to conservationists adequately? And vice versa, do conservationists adequately communicate their information needs to biogeographers?
WS. I think that there is too little communication between biogeographers and conservationists. Before agreeing to participate in this interview, I was not even sure what exactly falls within the scope of biogeography . The word “geography” sounds purely geographic orientated and not relevant to species conservation. I did not see the immediate relevance of biogeography to conservation.

AA. Is an intensified exchange between conservationists and biogeographers necessary, and if so, where do you see potential platforms for this?
WS. It would be very helpful if biogeographers were present at conservation meetings and conferences. I could imagine that such a contribution would be very welcome at BirdLife Regional Partnership meetings or meetings of the German Society for Ornithology. I would welcome a course organised by biogeographers on how to use the software they are developing to look at the probability of species’ occurrence in the face of climate change, and I would be interested in a collaboration to test the accuracy of these models using bird data.

AA. And vice versa - would you be interested to join us at the annual meeting of the IBS?
WS. To be honest, I fear that many of the symposia will be so specific that I would not get a lot out of them. I am more interested in the interdisciplinary work between biogeography and conservation. A pure biogeography meeting would only be useful for me to attend if their was a symposium on the biogeography link to conservation or on particular geographic areas or species that fall within the scope of my work for NABU.


Any further thoughts you would like to share:

WS. I think that it would be extremely helpful if the outputs of species distribution models would be readily available to conservation practitioners on CDs or the internet, for example in order to identify sites with a high probability of occurrence of particular species that we are trying to conserve. I am sure that there is a lot of information out there in the form of peer-reviewed publications, however, as mentioned before I lack the time to go through these in detail and not working in an academic institution I also do not have free access to the majority of the relevant journals.

Interview with Philip Platts, Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher, University of York, UK

Philip is currently studying for a Ph.D. at the York Institute for Tropical Ecosystem Dynamics (KITE). With a background in ecological mathematics, his research is now focused on the understanding of the spatial patterns of forest dynamics in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania and Kenya.




Relevance of biogeography to conservation

Antje Ahrends. Do you think that biogeography has important implications for conservation in practice? Do you agree with Whittaker et al. 2005 (Conservation Biogeography: assessment and prospect. Diversity and Distributions 11: 3-23) that conservation biogeography should be regarded and consolidated as a sub-discipline of conservation science?
Philip Platts. An understanding of biogeography and spatial processes in general is fundamental for effective conservation. As a mathematician by training, I am fortunate to work alongside ecologists, geneticists and economists, as well as those involved in advising on policy. I think that collaboration across disciplines is the way forward, rather than debating the headings under which specific lines of research would best be placed.

AA. Do you read conservation journals, or otherwise receive information on new developments in conservation practice/policy?
PP. My core reading is generally of modelling techniques and applications, though the thread of citations lands me amidst the conservation literature from time to time. When discussing the implications of my modelling work for conservation I read more widely and seek the advice of those with backgrounds in conservation.

AA. Do you think that biogeographers should contribute to conservation in practice, or should research be entirely free of political agendas? Does your research help conservation in practice? Which stakeholder groups are benefiting from your research, and how do you communicate your findings?
PP. I think most would agree that the life sciences should be focussed solely on furthering our understanding of the natural world, without getting caught up in political whims. In practice though, I suspect that research funding and thus publications are to some extent influenced by political trends. At KITE we work in collaboration with East African institutions, and believe that the advancement of African science itself will pay dividends for effective conservation management in the region. We discuss our research with Tanzanian stakeholders, and present our findings both locally in Tanzania, and internationally via journals and conferences.


The general practicality of incorporating new biogeographic findings in conservation work

AA. It is still uncertain to which degree predictive species models are applicable at a local scale. Also, there are necessarily a lot of uncertainties associated with the predictions at all scales. Do you think that the results of these models should nevertheless be communicated to conservation practitioners and potentially influence management decisions? Is there a risk that the validity of these models is over-estimated?
PP. There is a risk, yes. Models, by definition, are not perfect representations of reality, but rather tools for investigating specific aspects of a system. It is up to scientists to communicate their findings clearly and objectively in the literature, but it is the responsibility of conservation practitioners to utilise the clues that models provide responsibly and with the appropriate degree of caution.
AA. Implementing conservation strategies is partly reliant on the support of the public and decision makers. The communication of uncertainty or conflicting messages can be difficult. Do you feel that this aspect of conservation hampers the integration of newer research findings? Do you generally perceive a gap between biogeography science and conservation policy?
PP. I don’t know whether or not this hampers the integration of new research. It shouldn’t. The way in which uncertainty and ongoing scientific debate ought to be communicated for political and/or conservational ends is not something I feel qualified to comment on.

AA. Conservation planning needs long-term strategies. Do you perceive a gap between the comparatively rapid development and sophistication of tools such as species distribution models in science and their acceptance in the conservation world?
PP. Probably there is, yes, though I think it’s debatable whether or not this should be considered a bad thing. Techniques for estimating species distributions are developing quickly, and receive their fair share of criticism (and praise). One the one hand, the lag between scientific advances and their acceptance in conservation allows time for their validity to be challenged and defended – an important process that ultimately increases their worth. On the other, conservationists and policymakers must utilise all the knowledge and resources at their disposal if the world’s ecosystems are to be properly conserved and managed.
Model design requires an idea of how the underlying processes function, empirical and experimental data, and of course the guidance of experts in the relevant fields. Criticising simple distribution models for, say, omitting community interactions is sort of missing the point in my view: just because a model can’t tell us everything, that’s not to say it can’t tell us anything.

Interview with Shai Meiri, Research Fellow, NERC Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College London

Shai Meiri is interested in the evolution of body size and its implications, in biogeographical correlates of morphology and in the morphological signatures of speciation and community composition.

Relevance of biogeography to your work
Antje Ahrends. Do you think that biogeography has important implications for conservation in practice?
Shai Meiri. I think it sometime have important implication for conservation, but very often does not, and every case have to be examined in detail.
AA. Do you read conservation journals, or otherwise receive information on new developments in conservation practice/policy?
SM. I admit I seldom do.
AA. Do you think that biogeographers have a responsibility to contribute to conservation in practice, or should research be entirely free of political agendas? Does your research help conservation in practice? Which stakeholder group is benefiting from your research, and how do you communicate your findings?
SM. I think all humanity has a responsibility to conservation, and of course all organismal biologists cannot do wrong if they contribute to conservation science, but responsibility? I’m not sure. If one is doing e.g., basic science than one has no responsibility, unless you are funded by a conservation body. Research should always always always be free of political agenda. Politics is not science. I communicate my findings by publishing them in the scientific media, representing them in conferences, sometime presenting them to the media, and sometime by teaching graduate and undergraduate students.

General practicality of incorporating new biogeographic findings in conservation
AA. It is still uncertain to which degree predictive species distribution models are applicable at a local scale. Also, there are necessarily a lot of uncertainties associated with the predictions at all scales. Do you think that the results of these models should nevertheless be communicated to conservation practitioners and potentially influence management decisions? Is there a risk that the validity of these models is over-estimated?
SM. I think there is a very substantial risk that the models are wrong and overestimated. This is not to say they should not be developed, but the developers and “consumers” should be aware of the potential for error, which I feel can often be substantial.
AA. Implementing conservation strategies is partly reliant on public and decision makers' support. The communication of uncertainty or conflicting messages can be difficult, for example with respect to the merits of existing prioritisation schemes such as hotspots and Global 200. Do you feel that this aspect of conservation hampers the integration of newer research findings? Do you generally perceive a gap between biogeography science and conservation policy?
SM. I confess not to have understood the question fully. I think that if scientists are uncertain this uncertainty must be presented, and never covered-up or ignored.
AA. Conservation planning needs long-term strategies. Do you perceive a gap between the comparatively rapid turn-over of existing paradigms in science and their acceptance in the conservation world?
SM. I don’t know, because I don’t know what “the conservation world” is, or what is meant by paradigms here. The term paradigm is often miss-used. It should refer to the major unifying theories of our science, and this has been Darwinian biology for the last 150 years. What turnover?

Communication between biogeographers and conservation practitioners
AA. Do you think that biogeographers communicate the applicability of their research findings to conservationists adequately? And vice versa, do conservationists adequately communicate their information needs to biogeographers?
SM. I am not sure what “adequately” means in this context. I think conservationists do not usually communicate their information needs to biogeographers – and maybe because they don’t perceive biogeographers as having the necessary answers to the questions they ask. I am not sure they are wrong. I think some biogeographers who say their research has implications for conservation may be wide off the mark.
AA. Is an intensified exchange between conservationists and biogeographers necessary, and if so, where do you see potential platforms for this?
SM. I don’t know whether it is really intensified, or necessary. Potential platform? a conference and a journal (I propose the original name “conservation biogeography”) may be good.

Interview with Wendy Foden, Programme Officer – Climate Change, IUCN

Wendy Foden’s passion for conservation stems from her love of wild and remote places. Following the completion of her studies in Biology and Conservation at the universities of the Witwatersrand and Cape Town in South Africa, she travelled and expeditioned through Tanzania, India and China. Wendy then joined the Global Change and Biodiversity Research Group at the South African Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). Here she focused on the impacts of warming on the Southern Africa’s arid ecosystems, and uncovered evidence of a climate driven range shift by the giant tree succulent, Aloe dichotoma. Remaining at SANBI, Wendy then joined the Threatened Species Programme as Programme Manager. In this role, she founded of new projects focusing on the monitoring and conservation assessment of South Africa’s plants, reptiles, arachnids and butterflies. She also played an important role in developing and implementing South Africa’s Biodiversity Act, particularly in sections relating to threatened species.
Wendy now leads the IUCN’s “Species Vulnerability to Climate Change” project. By identifying and collecting data on life history and ecological traits associated with particular vulnerability to climate change, she aims to identify those species that face the greatest risk of climate change driven extinction. The results will be used to compliment the current IUCN Red Data List and to help prioritise conservation efforts.

Relevance of biogeography to your work
Antje Ahrends. Is biogeography – “the study of the geography of life” – a relevant discipline to your work for the IUCN? Do you think it is relevant to practical conservation planning in general?
Wendy Foden. Yes, definitely. A species’ geographical distribution range is one of the fundamental pieces of information needed to assess their threat (Red List) status. In terms of our climate change focus, accurately determining a species’ range is particularly important for defining the climatic characteristics it requires, and projecting the position of these under climate change scenarios for the future (i.e. bioclimatic modelling). We rely heavily on biogeographic research into species distributions and distribution and climate change models.
AA. Do you read biogeographic journals, or otherwise receive information on new findings in the field of biogeography? What are your main sources for this?
WF. While I don’t specifically seek out biogeographic journals, research on climate change impacts on species frequently falls into their domain, particularly on issues such as past and current range shifts. So yes, I do frequently read articles from them.
AA. Does the IUCN collaborate with biogeographic research institutions?
WF. The IUCN receives information on species from a huge network of scientists from around the world, particularly through the Species Survival Commission’s specialist groups. This includes individuals from biogeographic research organisations, as well as those researching biogeographic issues from within their own specific disciplines and institutions.

The general practicality of incorporating new biogeographic findings in conservation work
AA. Do you think that idealistic prioritisation schemes have much relevance on the ground (other than attracting funding)? I.e. is it useful to have these benchmarks although they are (1) necessarily based on incomplete data and (2) generally do not take into account political or socioeconomic constraints?
WF. I believe that, as planners and biologists, we need to be braver. Our role is to provide the most accurate projections possible and highlight what needs to be done to achieve a given objective. If, for example, we’re planning and mapping the areas needed to protect a group of endemic species, then irrespective of the politics or other constraints, these are our very best estimates of the species’ needs for survival. It’s not for us to downplay them. Even inconvenient or “idealistic” results should be presented so the basics are clear – and the inevitable political manoeuvring can proceed thereafter.
AA. The nature of scientific research is to continuously challenge existing paradigms, and as a consequence there frequently is a lot of disagreement and a rapid-turnover of paradigms. For instance, a predictive model for species distributions that was deemed the state of the art a few years ago might already be regarded as flawed today! Does this scientific rationale make it difficult to include biogeographic findings in conservation practice given that conservation generally needs longer term strategies and commitments?
WF. When our job is to predict the future, particularly where there’s no precedent for the situations we’re in and there are millions of variables to consider, I think we’ve got to be ever ready to humbly and frequently correct ourselves. Nonetheless, we need to act now (well, we needed to act quite a while ago on climate change) and we need to use the very best information we can find.

Communication between biogeographers and conservation practitioners AA. Do you think that biogeographers communicate the applicability of their research findings to conservationists adequately? And vice versa, do conservationists adequately communicate their information needs to biogeographers?
WF. An area in which better communication could be mutually very beneficial to conservation and biogeography is in the digitisation, ‘cleaning’ and sharing of species distribution data, as well as sharing new collection localities. In addition to publishing such findings, this is facilitated via online open access resources such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF); via taxon-specific databases such as FishBase, ePIC (Kew Botanical collections database), the Global Amphibian Assessment database; or via appropriate regional databases such as the National Biological Information Infrastructure (USA).
Given the extreme conservation crisis we currently face, I feel that each researcher who withholds species data that could be potentially useful for conservation should ask themselves some serious questions about their ethics. We need to pool our resources if we’re going to have any chance of stemming the looming extinction crisis.

AA. Are there any further thoughts you would like to share:
WF. The IUCN focuses particularly on threatened species which tend to have small distributions and few distribution records either because they’re naturally rare, their ranges have declined greatly or because they are very poorly known. Distribution and climate change models tend to perform poorly for such species, leaving us with least confidence in our projections for the species about which we’re most concerned. This is an area in which we hope the biogeography community will be able to help us.

Interview with Lera Miles, Acting Head, Climate Change and Biodiversity, UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre

Dr Lera Miles has worked on climate change and biodiversity issues since 1997, joining the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre in 2002. Over the past two years, she has concentrated on evaluating the potential positive and negative impacts on biodiversity of climate policy, including biofuel development and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). Recent work includes review of the linkages between protected areas, livelihoods and the REDD discussions. Previously, she has worked on the regional impact of climate change from the Amazon to the Arctic, and on global scale scenario exercises, including as part of the GLOBIO3 global biodiversity modelling consortium.

Relevance of biogeography to your work
Antje Ahrends. I understand that you have a strong background and maintain a keen interest in biogeography. Is this mostly out of personal interest, or is biogeography also highly relevant to your current work in the UNEP-WCMC Climate Change and Biodiversity Programme? If so, how?
Lera Miles. My work at UNEP-WCMC has a strong practical focus, so it is the applied aspects of current research that are most interesting. The Centre’s role of translating biodiversity science into policy relevant information is so wide-ranging that it is useful to keep on top of findings ranging from distribution of and pressures upon carbon in ecosystems through to new methods of modelling climate change impacts on biodiversity. The new research on the relationship between ecosystem service provision and specific measures of biodiversity is particularly interesting for the Centre, as there are still open questions about when biodiversity itself is underpinning ecosystem services.
AA. Do you read biogeographic journals, or otherwise receive information on new findings in the field of biogeography? What are your main sources for this?
LM. I am very grateful for the access to Global Ecology and Biogeography and Journal of Biogeography provided by my IBS membership!
AA. Does UNEP-WCMC collaborate with biogeographic research institutions, or have an interest to do so?
LM. We collaborate with universities depending on the need of current or proposed projects for specific expertise. We perhaps have more interaction with the Cambridge based universities as a result of our location.

The general practicality of incorporating new biogeographic findings in conservation work
AA. Working for UNEP-WCMC, an organisation that provides biodiversity data to policy development and decision making, you will have a particular good insight to the following questions:
The nature of scientific research is to continuously challenge existing paradigms. Does this make it difficult to consider new findings in international conservation policy development given that the decision making process e.g. at conventions is necessarily slow, and that conservation generally needs longer term strategies?
LM. I think that the barrier is as much one of communication and synthesis than a lack of willingness by decision makers to accept new findings. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has done a fantastic job in providing a strong degree of consensus for climate change science, and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment offers something similar for the world’s ecosystems. Without this sort of exercise it is difficult for policy makers to choose between contradictory messages emerging from the research community. One of our aims here at UNEP-WCMC is to provide synthesis of the science on policy relevant questions; of course, this often needs strong partnerships with expert researchers.
AA. Existing prioritisation schemes such biodiversity hotspots, Global 200, or Endemic and Important Bird Areas necessarily suffer from data inadequacies, and also reflect the interests and values of the NGOs that generated them. Is there a need for objective reviews of the merits of these schemes, and alternative scenarios? Or do potentially conflicting messages jeopardise the implementation of conservation strategies, confuse decision makers and compromise public support?
LM. Each conservation organisation has specific, if overlapping aims. It is natural that maps of conservation priorities will reflect the priorities that were used to set them! There are so many different conservation values, that it is difficult to conceive of a single indicator that captures each of these in the same map. But it is interesting that all of these maps have been generated by NGOs – for example, I have not seen a map of conservation priorities based on the goals of a funding agency.
We sometimes derive a crude measure of conservation value by overlaying multiple priority schemes and identifying the number of times that each area is categorised as important (e.g. http://www.unep-wcmc.org/mountains/mountainwatchreport/). This offers a rough idea of consensus around conservation priorities, but if the purpose of the map is to plan conservation investment, it seems to me to be critical to choose or produce a map based on the aims of the initiative in question.
The question of data inadequacies is a more challenging one. Not only are maps based on our imperfect present day knowledge, but they do not tend to reflect the changing pressures on biodiversity. Maps of proposed ecological networks meet more of these goals, aiming to enhance connectivity and thus increase resilience to climate change.
AA. Predictive species modelling, biogeographers argue, can help to identify and fill monitoring and data gaps, or allow the prediction of areas that under future climate scenarios will become important refuges. However, it is still uncertain to which degree these models are applicable at a local scale, and there are necessarily a lot of uncertainties associated with the predictions. How relevant are these models to international conservation policy and strategy development? Are you at UNEP-WCMC working with such biogeographic tools?
LM. I am always dubious about claims to predict the future! We certainly have worked on projections of future changes to biodiversity under different scenarios, such as those in Global Biodiversity Outlook and Global Environment Outlook. Sometimes we have worked with individual species models, such as for Arctic birds; sometimes with the GLOBIO3 model of mean original species abundance. My feeling is that these models are able to indicate the potential range of outcomes, but that there are far too many sources of uncertainty to be able to predict outcomes for individual locations. Yet protected area managers and people working on landscape to national scale conservation plans want to know what to expect over the next fifty years or so. The more that we can communicate a plausible range of outcomes at a scale relevant to these needs, the more useful these approaches will be.

Communication between biogeographers and conservation practitioners
AA. Do you think that biogeographers communicate adequately the applicability of their research findings to conservationists? And vice versa, do conservationists adequately communicate their information needs to biogeographers?
LM. I think that a lot of conservationists would struggle to define ‘biogeography’, even if their work is closely related!

Interview with Stephen Holness, Strategic Conservation Planner, South African National Parks

Stephen Holness is responsible for systematic conservation planning for the South African national park system. His time is split between spatial biodiversity planning to guide reserve expansion, internal land use planning for parks, and conservation planning for broader regions. His background is in physical geography concentrating on geomorphological processes, particularly in relation to biotic-abiotic interactions and climate change. After completing his Phd on landscape processes and climate change in the Subantarctic, Stephen tried lecturing Environmental Science for a few years until it became clear that this was not his calling. He looked for something a bit more applied after this, and was involved for a while in environmental consulting. Then he moved to South African National Parks, and developed the function of spatial biodiversity planning within the organization. This happened at a very exciting time in South African conservation planning, when South African National Parks was grappling with the application, and especially the implementation, of systematic conservation planning process. Currently, their key focus areas are planning for parks within an integrated bioregional context and climate change impacts and response.

Relevance of biogeography to your work

Antje Ahrends. Is climate change an important topic in South African National Parks Planning, and are adaptive strategies in development/have been developed?
Stephen Holness. We are extremely worried about climate change and its potential impact on the national park system and the region's biodiversity. In terms of park expansion programs we are explicitly building climate change into our park expansion planning, and then applying this to our currently very active land expansion program. Our biodiversity planning has taken on a far more outward looking approach that deals specifically with promoting landscape linkages and intact landscapes around parks. This is in response to the climate change issue in particular, as well as the other interlinked issues of rapid fragmentation of landscapes. One of the aspects of this is that we are now tending to plan for integrated bioregions rather than just for a national park. We are also developing collaborative projects with organizations such as the South African national Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) on the issue of climate change and protected areas. We are very keen to develop collaborative projects with local and international institutions and academics on the response to climate change.
AA. Is biogeography – “the study of the geography of life” – a relevant discipline to your work? Do you think it is relevant to practical conservation planning in general? If so, how?
SH. This question should be a bit of a no-brainer, as biogeography should be a fundamental underpinning science of conservation planning. However, the reality is that we have struggled to find any direct application of biogeography in the practicalities of conservation planning. It appears that the zoologists and botanists have been far quicker to provide useable insights into things like centres of endemism, movement of biota across landscapes over long and short term timespans, corridors etc. What has been useful, and is directly applied, are underlying fundamental principles of island biogeography which underpin our concepts of reserve design. However, it would be a pity if biogeography only contributed to underlying principles and didn’t contribute much to the ongoing planning process.
AA. Do you think that predictive species modelling can help to identify and fill monitoring and data gaps, or allow the prediction of areas that under future climate scenarios will become important refuges? In your view, are these models actually useful to practical conservation in South Africa, or are they only of mainly academic interest – given that it is still questionable to which degree these models are applicable at a local scale, and there are necessarily a lot of uncertainties associated with the predictions?
SH. We have had quite a lot of difficulty translating fairly broad scale predictions both of climate change scenarios and of the biotic response to these changes into local and regional scale action. Generally, in the end we have ended up applying fairly generic principles around creating linked landscapes, incorporating climatic and altitudinal gradients, incorporating as much micro-climatic and physical environment variability as possible, creating sufficiently large core protected areas, incorporating areas we feel may be refugia etc. We have not been particularly successful in incorporating specific outputs from processes such as predictive species modelling under different scenarios etc, as although these studies should be useful, they have so far tended to oversimplify or ignore the issues around probable movement of species across landscapes. Key issues such as potential movement rates for different taxa, natural barriers to movement such as unsuitable soil types for particular plant species, and the real potential of movement across heavily fragmented landscapes have tended to be ignored in studies. This makes it very difficult to apply current biogeographic studies to practical planning issues.
AA. If you think that these models are useful, what do you think is the best way to communicate this input? (e.g., consultants, courses, freeware, etc.)
SH. I believe that the issues are more around the nature of the studies themselves than the communication of the outputs! We have a reasonably good science-implementation linkages and are dealing with a small academic and planning community, so we don’t need to get to fancy about the communication process.
AA. Do you generally read biogeographic journals, or otherwise seek information on new findings in the field of biogeography?
SH. Generally, I end up in a biogeographic journal only when I have been following a reference thread from conservation planning journals, which I tend to follow more closely. Additionally, I tend to do most of my reading and reference finding electronically, so I often don’t pay to much attention to which journal the article is in. The key is actually whether the journal is reasonably accessible and open electronically via our library services.

The general practicality of incorporating new biogeographic findings in conservation work

AA. The nature of scientific research is to continuously challenge existing paradigms. Does this make it difficult to accommodate new findings in conservation planning, which needs long term strategies?
SH. We are reasonably adaptive in our approach to conservation planning, so we are quite comfortable with adapting our planning to either better data or different concepts. Perhaps more of an issue, is that the scientific debate (especially around paradigms) tends to get caught up in the academic stratosphere, and very seldom asks the question: What, if anything, does this mean practically? This certainly delays the accommodation of new findings into practical conservation planning. It would be really useful if authors could give this a bit more thought when they publish.
AA. Existing prioritisation schemes such biodiversity hotspots, Global 200, or Endemic and Important Bird Areas necessarily suffer from data inadequacies, and also reflect the interests and values of the NGOs that generated them. Is there a need for objective reviews of the merits of these schemes, and alternative scenarios? Or do potentially conflicting messages jeopardise the implementation of conservation strategies, confuse decision makers and compromise public support?
SH. I have no problem with hotspots and similar approaches as a method for drumming up public support for an issue, however, from a planning point of view they are severely flawed. There are strong misgivings from the systemic conservation planning community about the vigour of some of these approaches. I would certainly tend towards a far more target and data driven systemic approach to conservation planning, even at an international scale.
AA. Much biogeographic research is concerned with uncertainties of predictions and limitations of techniques, e.g. predictive species modelling. Is it possible to accommodate and communicate uncertainty in conservation planning?
SH. We can certainly accommodate uncertainty into the inputs into a plan, and much of our work deals with accommodating the limitations of available datasets (including modelled data). However, we get in deep trouble when we are not specific on the outputs. For instance, we need to identify particular spatially explicit corridors for incorporation into land use plans, or specific properties for incorporation into a park. We can’t say maybe here or maybe there. Rather, we say within our current knowledge this is our best possible assessment, with the explicit statement that as our data improves we will adapt and improve our planning. It is absolutely critical that the planning process allows for this continual improvement, update and learning. Having said this, we do strive for reasonable stability in our planning outputs, and it is critical that there is only one officially recognized conservation plan for an area at a time.

Communication between biogeographers and conservation practitioners

AA. Do you think that biogeographers communicate adequately the applicability of their research findings to conservation planning? And vice versa, do conservation practitioners adequately communicate their information needs to biogeographers?
SH. There is certainly room for improvement from both groups.
AA. Is an intensified exchange between conservation practitioners and biogeographers necessary?
SH. Yes
AA. Where do you see potential platforms for this?
SH. I would like to see stronger biogeography presence at the SCB conference for a start.
AA. Are there any further thoughts you would like to share:
SH. As conservation planners, we are desperately keen to make sure that the best possible science underpins our planning. There opportunity is there to get both the science principles and its outputs implemented. I order for this to happen, I think that we need to have far better interactions between conservation planners and biogeographers at the beginning of projects. Unless the research projects are more closely tailored to real world implementation issues, and start giving better answers to practical questions such as actual rate of movement of species and communities to changing climate, more specific identification of refugia for a range of taxa etc, we will be stuck in the situation where biogeography’s broadest original underlying concepts are used in conservation planning, but not much else.
We are keen to develop mutually beneficial research programmes, especially around issues such as climate change response and protected areas. Please feel free to contact me at sholness(at)nmmu.ac.za.

Conservation biogeography forum -- Fostering the dialogue between conservation practitioners and biogeographers

Antje Ahrends
York Institute for Tropical Ecosystem Dynamics, University of York

Be it a local assessment of the distribution of a threatened population, or a study on global diversity patterns - biogeography has an important role to play in conservation planning at all spatial scales. Biogeographic information underpins prominent schemes that channel major resources to target areas, such as Conservation International’s biodiversity hotspots (Meyers et al., 2000), the WWF Global 200 (Olson and Dinerstein, 1998), or BirdLife International’s Endemic Bird Areas (Stattersfield et al., 1998). Biogeography can be key for developing and evaluating strategies to prevent species extinction in the face of global environmental change, monitoring the impact of invasive species, or assessing the effectiveness of the existing protected area network – to name just a few examples. Prominent worldwide assessments of the status and trends in biodiversity, such as the Biodiversity module of the UNEP Global Environmental Outlook (GEO) and the 2010 Biodiversity Indicators of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), are underpinned by information on the distribution of species. Biogeographic information thus feeds into the development of legal frameworks, policies and strategies, guides resource allocations, and is used to raise awareness amongst decision makers and the public.
Highlighting the central role of biogeography for conservation guidance, Whittaker et al. (2005) make a case for a greater engagement of biogeographers in the evaluation and refinement of prominent conservation schemes, such as biodiversity hotspots and Global 200; particularly as such schemes are sensitive to data, methodological and theoretical inadequacies. The authors also stress that alternative scenarios are needed, as these schemes only use a limited numbers of indicator taxa that reflect the interests, values and resources (both technically and data bound) of the NGOs that originated them.
Do conservation practitioners share this view? Do they read biogeographic journals? Are prominent conservation schemes flexible enough to incorporate new biogeographic insights, or indeed uncertainty? Is the rapid emergence of new methods and paradigms, driven by the need to be novel and ‘the first’, difficult to accommodate in the conservation world where implementing strategies and generating public support are lengthy processes that require long-term commitment of effort and resources? How do biogeographers view their role in supporting these processes? Do they feel that biogeography has a responsibility to contribute to conservation planning, or should research be entirely free of political agendas? Do they regularly look for updates on the happenings in the conservation world, and are they aware of the mechanisms and organisations that have been created to facilitate the contribution of biogeographic information to conservation planning? Do conservation practitioners and biogeographers communicate enough? Is information communicated in an appropriate way, or what information is required and in what format? Are both sides interested in an intensified exchange and what are the potential platforms for this?
We are proposing to shed light on these and other questions in an interview-style dialogue between conservation practitioners and biogeographers presented either on the IBS blog or in forthcoming issues of the IBS newsletter. From the former camp, we are hoping to be able to talk to people with backgrounds ranging from conservation science and international conservation strategy development to practical implementation in the field. As such we are proposing to seek the views of representatives of schemes such as biodiversity hotspots and Global 200, the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Climate Change Initiative or the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre Ecosystem Assessment Programme (UNEP-WCMC) and conservation project and protected area managers in the field. We would greatly appreciate if researchers, in particular in the fields of predictive distribution modelling, species and genetic diversity, invasive species and climate change would agree to participate in an interview.
We hope that this will be a fruitful dialogue for both sides. Please help us to make this contribution as useful to you as we can - your views, suggestions and contributions are most welcome.

References
Myers, N.; Mittermeier, R.A. Mittermeier, C.G., Da Fonseca. G.A.B. & Kent, J. (2000). Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature 403: 853-858.
Olson, D.M. & Dinerstein, E. (1998). The Global 200: a representation approach to conserving the earth’s most biologically valuable ecoregions. Conservation Biology 12: 505-515.
Stattersfield, A.J., Crosby, M.J., Long, A.J. & Wege, D.C. (1998). Endemic Bird Areas of the World: Priorities for Biodiversity Conservation. BirdLife Conservation Series No.7. Cambridge.
Whittaker, R.J., Araujo, M.B., Jepson, P., Ladle, R.J., Watson, J.E.M. & Willis, K.J. (2005). Conservation Biogeography: assessment and prospect. Diversity and Distributions 11: 3-23.

Editor’s note: This is the opening text for a section build of short interviews to both biogeographers and conservation stakeholders about the role of biogoegraphy in conservation. We intend this section to be a n open forum to communicate between these two groups, so we will be happy to receive offers of participation and/or suggestions for potential interviewees. Please contact either Antje Ahrends (aa528(at)york.ac.uk) or the IBS editor (ibs(at)mncn.csic.es).