Maintaining representation of a full range of ecosystem types is a widely accepted strategy to conserve biodiversity in protected areas. We evaluated representation in the central coast region of British Columbia, a forested landbase containing a complex mix of management options, administrative and ownership types, and disparate ecological and economic objectives. We found that most ecosystem types were well represented outside areas subject to management activities, but a minority were poorly represented. When we examined areas under consideration for protection or special management, we found that they failed to represent many of the most poorly represented ecosystem types and incorporated limited amounts of the remainder. Because these poorly represented types were relatively limited in area, it should be possible to adjust proposed reserve areas to improve representation of these types with limited impact on other values. Failing to do so will result in increased opportunity costs to improve representation in the future. Despite the limitations of ecological classification systems to represent biodiversity, they are an improvement over strictly ad hoc approaches because they employ a systematic, repeatable approach in selecting reserve areas.Résumé : Une stratégie largement acceptée pour conserver la biodiversité dans les aires protégées consiste à s'assurer que toute la gamme des types d'écosystèmes soit représentée. Nous avons évalué cette représentation dans la zone côtière du centre de la Colombie-Britannique, une région forestière composée d'un mélange complexe d'options d'aménagement, de types d'administration, de propriétaires et d'objectifs écologiques et économiques disparates. Nous avons observé que la plupart des types d'écosystèmes sont bien représentés à l'extérieur des zones soumises à des activités d'aménagement sauf une minorité qui est mal représentée. Lorsque nous avons examiné les zones faisant l'objet de mesures de protection ou d'un aménagement particulier, nous avons constaté que plusieurs des types d'écosystèmes les moins bien représentés ne l'étaient pas et que les autres l'étaient peu. Étant donné que les types d'écosystèmes mal représentés occupent une superficie relativement restreinte, il devrait être possible d'ajuster les limites des réserves qui sont proposées pour améliorer leur représentation sans avoir trop d'impact sur les autres valeurs. Les coûts d'opportunité pour améliorer leur représentation vont augmenter dans le futur si on ne le fait pas maintenant. Bien que les systèmes de classification écologique comportent des lacunes pour représenter la biodiversité, ils constituent une amélioration par rapport aux approches strictement ad hoc parce qu'ils utilisent une approche systématique et reproductible pour sélectionner les réserves.[Traduit par la Rédaction] Wells et al. 2150
The authors summarize the distribution of terrestrial vertebrates of British Columbia across major habitat types and present empirical and projected effects of global weirding within two particularly vulnerable habitats—alpine and wetland. Global weirding embraces all phenomena associated with climate change: increases in average temperatures, heat waves, cold spells, floods, droughts, hurricanes, blizzards, plant and animal die-offs, population explosions, new animal migration patterns, plus dramatic regional differences. Current data suggest that many alpine species will be lost to changes in habitat wrought by climate, particularly increases in average temperatures. For many wetlands, particularly in the central and southern interior of the province, the basic issue is simple—the incoming water is decreasing and the outgoing water (evaporation) is increasing. The authors illustrate three approaches to projecting trends in wetland habitat, elaborating on the “drying index” approach, in which they have most confidence. For wetland species, they say management will struggle with the concept of a real-world triage—allocating conservation efforts where they are most likely to succeed and have the most benefit. They conclude that several conservation approaches for wetland species will face the difficulty of allocating water between needs of these species and of humans.
This extension note is the first in a series of eight that describes a set of tools and processes developed to support sustainable forest management planning and its pilot application in the Arrow Timber Supply Area (TSA). Conducted under the Arrow Innovative Forestry Practices Agreement (IFPA) Sustainability Project, and initiated by an interdisciplinary team of academics and practitioners, the “Sustainable Forest Management Framework” offers a comprehensive approach to forest management planning that is also applicable in other parts of British Columbia. Throughout the planning to monitoring process, it uses criteria and indicators as a means of developing and implementing forest management strategies with clear goals and objectives. In this way, forest practitioners can achieve measurable and effective results for identified forest resource values. The framework also incorporates a hierarchical planning process to address these goals and objectives at various spatial and temporal scales, and is supported by a suite of decision-support tools and procedures, including scenario planning, integrated modelling, public multicriteria analysis, and trade-off analysis. Within this framework, public participation is integrated throughout the planning process.During the life of the IFPA, aspects of this framework were tested in the Arrow TSA and it has been used operationally as part of Canfor?s certification effort. Although this approach has received strong support from academic and management circles and promises to provide an objective approach to sustainable forest management, some features have not yet been implemented. The proposed framework is a work-inprogress that evolves as more components of the framework are tested and outcomes evaluated.
The Kern Primrose Sphinx moth (Euproserpinus euterpe) is a threatened moth twice thought to have gone extinct. It was historically known only from a small basin in the southern Sierra Nevada of California, but a new putative population was recently discovered 115 km to the west. Analysis of both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA suggest discontinuous genetic breaks between the Kern Primrose Sphinx, its closest relative the Phaeton Sphinx (Euproserpinus phaeton), and at least one additional species discovered during the course of this study. Geographic distance is well correlated with genetic distance within species, but not between species. Genetic discontinuities show the influence of past glacial events and suggest recent range expansions, though not always congruent with other phylogeographic studies from the region. Our phylogeographic results demonstrate that past glacial events, the altitudinal suppression of suitable habitat, and isolation may have been more important than population-level ecological factors such as differences in habitat (e.g. sand dunes, oak forest, montane grasslands) in promoting speciation. Effective conservation of the genetic diversity of the widespread Phaeton Sphinx and its two geographically restricted relatives requires genetic data at the population level because relatively few localized populations harbor most of the genetic variation.
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