This paper in press at Conservation Letters by Haines et al. presents a novel method for assessing conservation actions. There’s been quite a bit of work done in the past decade, particularly by NGOs, to develop methods to assess whether their actions have actually succeeded; this work was spear-headed in particular by Nick Salafsky and his Foundations of Success. This paper suggests that many of conservation biggest problems can be monitored with spatial datasets and proposes using the Human Footprint as a basis for such monitoring. The Human Footprint is, in essence, a collection of spatial datasets that holistically represent the collective anthropogenic impact on the land. In their paper, Haines et al. suggest that by tracking these spatial datasets through time in a paired way — conservation action site randomly paired with a control — we can get a better handle on whether the particular action was successful. The nice thing about the paper is how clear-eyed it is about what is and is not possible using this approach:

The human footprint is a spatially explicit approach to conservation planning that may serve as an effective visual medium to public audiences and stakeholders worldwide by simplifying the presentation of complex information.

(This is always the last, best resort for spatial analysts: even if the model isn’t perfect, it’s a great communication tool. ) But they also warn:

Spatial data rarely produce a complete picture of what negative impacts are occurring because human footprint data are not well-suited to track anthropogenic impacts that lack a spatial signature…[e.g.] the spread of some chemical pollutants, invasive species, diseases, and impacts of poaching…

Although I have to disagree partially with these particulars — presence of roads is often a very good correlative of poaching — their main point is an important one to consider. How well does a spatial model of human influence catch these hidden factors? A few years ago I did an informal (and sadly never completed) analysis of invasive plants and the Human Footprint and found that they were actually fairly well correlated. You could also argue that disease may be higher amongst individuals that are negatively impacted by the presence of humans. There’s plenty of opportunity here for further exploration.

Haines, A. et al. A theoretical approach to using human footprint data to assess landscape level conservation efforts. Conservation Letters, in press. (doi: 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2008.00024.x)

The papers on biodiversity in the current issue of PNAS resulted from a colloquium “In the Light of Evolution II: Biodiversity and Extinction,” held late last year; audio of presentations can be found here.

Out of the many published from the colloquium, I’ll start by recommending Ehrlich and Pringle’s paper, “Where does biodiversity go from here? A grim business-as-usual forecast and a hopeful portfolio of partial solutions,” which pretty well describes it. Reading it feels like a microcosm of any conservationist’s day/life: a see-saw between despair and optimism. They first address the current extinction crisis in fairly dire terms with ample references, comparing Homo sapiens’ age — compared to the average persistence of a mammal species — squarely in teenagerndom, calling us “narcissistic and presupposing our own immortality,” and saying “we mistreat the ecosystems that produced us and support us, mindless of the consequences.” Tsk, tsk, mankind. Go to your room. Most of the paper covers seven approaches to conservation that they believe, taken together, could potentially avert the worst of what’s to come. I’ll quote from the abstract:

• Stabilize the human population and reduce its material consumption
• Deployment of endowment funds and other strategies to ensure the efficacy and permanence of conservation areas
• Steps to make human-dominated landscapes hospitable to biodiversity
• Measures to account for the economic costs of habitat degradation
• Ecological reclamation of degraded lands and repatriation of extirpated species
• Education and empowerment of people in the rural tropics
• Fundamental transformation of human attitudes about nature

Seeing as this is essentially an overview of conservation, I probably won’t be able to address all of these ideas adequately in a single post. I will say that it’s an exciting paper to read, just as it’s always exciting when somebody calls you to action. As easy as it is to slip into despair over the future of the natural world, having something to re-focus one’s commitment is vital, whether it’s a few weeks out in the field or a concise summation of action in a journal.

Okay, that said. I want to talk about their discussion of the attempt to monetize the environment — the branding of ecosystem services. As Ehrlich and Pringle themselves say, “tree plantations are not forests.” While on the one hand it’s crucial that business begin to account for the environmental effects of their practices, I fear for a world that recognizes Big Green as equivalent to, say, big record labels. When the industry is a simple one — clothing the masses, for example — capitalism has worked fantastically well. But as the industry becomes more complex, capitalism has shown itself to be a blunt tool, incapable of nuance. One need only move focus from clothing to food to recognize the ways that big business has estranged people from basic nourishment. The same goes for culture: big movie studios, big record labels, big publishing houses are all successful at bringing acceptable entertainment products to hundreds of millions of people, but we’ve given up a basic human accomplishment and given it over to focus groups. Speaking of nuance, what about the way news is presented in our country? Anyway, this is all a roundabout way of saying that the idea of our country’s system of protected areas falling into the same business as MacDonald’s, Justin Bobby, The Purpose Driven Life, or The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a terrifying one. I suppose if the alternative is a homogenous and barren planet I’d take it, but it’s the elemental and non-human quality that makes the rest of the world so unique and important. There’s my wacko populist rant for the month.

Ehrlich, P and R. Pringle. Where does biodiversity go from here? A grim business-as-usual forecast and a hopeful portfolio of partial solutions. PNAS, 105, 11579-11586.