• Science recently published further evidence of the “broken window” theory, which suggests that people act badly in degraded environments. These studies are about human-dominated environments, but it seems likely that the same is true for more “natural” areas, too.
• Christopher Dunn argues in Nature that cultural diversity ought to be preserved alongside biodiversity. He even suggests that maps of hotspots of the two tend to overlap. Okay, so let’s make a deal: people can stay in and around areas of high biodiversity if they agree to live according to their “traditional” culture — any development or significant growth and you’ve got to move to the city. Fair?
• Yesterday I mentioned some worry about homogenizing landscapes in rural areas. There was a paper published in Conservation Biology by Rahmig et al. recently that suggested exactly that: homogenization of farming practices has led to declines in avian diversity.
• Also in Cons Bio, Ben Collen and colleagues at ZSL take a closer look at the “Living Planet Index,” one of the 22(!) headline indicators established by the Convention on Biological Diversity used to assess trends in biodiversity loss. Their conclusion: it’s good, but we need more data.
• Kindberg et al. have shown that hunter-reported observations of moose in Sweden were (if corrected) a pretty good method of monitoring.

Heck, that was good timing. In the in press issue of Conservation Biology, Georgina Mace and colleagues give a great overview of the IUCN Red List — its origins, history, and current status; its methods and pitfalls (especially good discussion of the issues concerning “Data Deficient” species). The more I think about it, the less I value efforts to use the Red List to assess ecological traits that might pre-condition species for endangerment: many of those traits are highly correlated with the conditions for being Red Listed (e.g. habitat specificity and Criterion B: Small Range Area and Decline). The Red List isn’t a list of species that will go extinct; it’s a list of species that very smart and concerned scientists believe might go extinct based on a number of factors that they believe would pre-condition a species for extinction. So any study using the Red List is inevitably analyzing what those traits are, as defined by the Red List.

And since I mentioned genetic uniqueness in that post about the Red List, here’s a paper by Daniel Faith from the very same issue of Cons Bio discussing the EDGE of existence program: an effort to combine extinction probability with phylogenetic risk. Heavenly.

Mace, G. et al. Quantification of Extinction Risk: IUCN’s System for Classifying Threatened Species. Conservation Biology, in press. (doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.01044.x)

Faith, D. Threatened Species and the Potential Loss of Phylogenetic Diversity: Conservation Scenarios Based on Estimated Extinction Probabilities and Phylogenetic Risk Analysis. Conservation Biology, in press. (doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.01068.x)

Here’s a fascinating article in Conservation Biology (and picked up by Nature) on home location choice and environmental attitudes in the Teton Valley outside Yellowstone. The authors found that the more their respondants cared about the environment, the more likely they were to be living in an environmentally damaging way (i.e. big ranches, small families), whereas people with lower environmentally-oriented attitudes lived in a more sustainable manner, in denser areas closer to town. Interestingly, the authors also found that the longer folks had been living out in the wilderness, the lower their concern for environmental issues.

That second point could, I think, be taken one of two ways: either they’re just finding that people who have lived out in Wyoming and Idaho for 50 years weren’t raised with the same environmental ethos that the recent Hollywod Celebrity Types and the other enviro-carpetbaggers bring with them. I think the more interesting angle would be if people legitimately became less concerned with enviromental issues the longer they’re in a place that’s more “natural.” I think the current crop of American environmental scientists, ecologists, conservationists, etc., were raised in suburbs and exurbs that have changed substantially over the course of our lifetime: seeing the loss of local creeks, small town forests, and trails was, for me, a great motivator. Being able to connect those local issues with global ones pushed me into this science. But there are no doubt areas that are doing just fine, especially if you own the 1,000 acres (404 ha) around you. No development problem there!

I think, also, this article re-highlights the need for a substantial shift in our focus on urban ecology: people who care about environmental issues are driven out of cities because there’s so little nature there. We need to find ways to make city living attractive to people who crave wilderness.

Peterson, M.N. et al. Household Location Choices: Implications for Biodiversity Conservation. Conservation Biology, 22:4. (doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.00929.x)

The Swedes are getting uppity. There’s a new letter in Conservation Biology that exposes the Convention on Biological Diversity as too heavily influenced by government bureaucrats while simultaneously not enough informed by scientists. I believe this was a True/False question on my undergrad conservation biology class final exam (as in “Government bureaucrats have too much influence on conservation policy: T/F”), but it’s nice when people are willing to speak out about it. The French are trying to create a new panel [last paragraph], modeled after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a replacement for the CBD.