When conservation strategies require new, field-based information, practitioners must find the best ways to rapidly deliver high-quality survey data. To address this challenge, several rapid-assessment approaches have been developed since the early 1990s. These typically involve large areas, take many months to complete, and are not appropriate when conservation-relevant survey data are urgently needed for a specific locale. In contrast, bioblitzes are designed for quick collection of site-specific survey data. Although bioblitzes are commonly used to achieve educational or public-engagement goals, conservation practitioners are increasingly using a modified bioblitz approach to generate conservation-relevant data while simultaneously enhancing research capacity and building working partnerships focused on conservation concerns. We term these modified events expert bioblitzes. Several expert bioblitzes have taken place on lands of conservation concern in Southern California and have involved collaborative efforts of government agencies, nonprofit organizations, botanic gardens, museums, and universities. The results of expert bioblitzes directly informed on-the-ground conservation and decision-making; increased capacity for rapid deployment of expert bioblitzes in the future; and fostered collaboration and communication among taxonomically and institutionally diverse experts. As research and conservation funding becomes increasingly scarce, expert bioblitzes can play an increasingly important role in biodiversity conservation.
Mediterranean‐climate natural systems have high ecological value, yet the extent of their cover has diminished greatly due to changes in land use. Other stressors, ranging from intense short‐term disturbances such as wildfire to more gradual events such as extended drought and continuous pressures including competition with invasive species, test the resistance and resilience of community composition and structure. Data from long‐term monitoring provided an opportunity to evaluate the responses of three Southern California plant communities (chaparral, coastal sage scrub, and grassland) to disturbances. We analyzed ten years of point intercept and quadrat data from Orange County to describe trends through time and assess community resistance and resilience. We found that grassland communities, which were more degraded from the start of our study, were generally resistant to change. Chaparral was also fairly resistant to disturbance, while coastal sage scrub exhibited more variation, with some transects exhibiting more resilience than others. Transects with fewer native shrubs experienced less of a decline in shrub cover during drought than those with dense shrubs. Grasslands had the lowest native diversity. There were increases in native diversity in years with more precipitation that were preceded by dry years. There was a decline in native perennial bunchgrasses during our monitoring. Our analyses demonstrated the resilience of native shrub cover to fire and the susceptibility (low resistance) of dense native shrubs and native grasses to drought and increases in non‐native species. We encourage academic ecologists to embrace diverse data sources available for hypothesis testing, especially monitoring efforts associated with regulatory purposes, to advance the goal of understanding long‐term dynamics.
Conservation translocations, the human-mediated movement and release of a living organism for a conservation benefit, are increasingly recommended in species’ recovery plans as a technique for mitigating population declines or augmenting genetic diversity. However, translocation protocols for species with broad distributions may require regionally specific considerations to increase success, as environmental gradients may pose different constraints on population establishment and persistence in different parts of the range. Here we report on ongoing, genetically informed translocations of a threatened amphibian, California red-legged frog (Rana draytonii), from Baja California, México, to extirpated parts of the range in southern California in the United States, where contemporary stressors related to urbanization, invasive species, and aridification add to the natural environmental challenges already present for amphibians at this ‘warm edge’ of the range. We describe the collaborative binational planning required to jumpstart the effort, the fine-tuning of protocols for collection, transport, headstarting, and release of individuals, and results of multiple translocations, where time will tell whether the successes to date have reached their full potential. The steps outlined in this paper can serve as a template to inform future conservation translocations of imperiled amphibians across the U.S./México border, where the phylogenetics, historical biogeography and future habitat availability of a focal species are blind to political boundaries and critical to guiding recovery actions across the range.
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