Conserving biodiversity and Indigenous bush tucker: Practical application of the strategic foresight framework to invasive alien species management planning

Abstract

Invasive alien species are a major driver of global biodiversity loss. Constrained conservation budgets demand that threat abatement strategies take into account the heterogeneity of areas in need of protection, such as significant ecological and cultural sites, as well as the competing values, preferences, and objectives of stakeholders. We used strategic foresight to assess the threat that invasive alien grasses pose to environmental and Indigenous cultural values on the floodplains of a comanaged, World Heritage‐inscribed national park. We found strategic foresight to be a useful framework to set management priorities that simultaneously conserve biological and cultural diversity. However, it required the development and application of novel ecological and participatory tools and significant time, financial, and human resources. This was the first study to apply strategic foresight to weed management planning in a realistic, culturally complex setting and our work provides an exemplar for the application of the strategic foresight framework and our tools to other contexts.

Distribution and Management of Nutria (Myocastor coypus) Populations in South Korea

“…International trade is frequently accompanied by the migration of associated species. This increases the movement and settlement of invasive alien species, some of which can rapidly reproduce and disperse and thus adapt to new environments threatening the local biodiversity [1][2][3][4]. Combined with major factors affecting the global environment, such as climate change [5,6] or the destruction of wild habitats by human disturbance [7,8], invasive alien species further aggravate biodiversity loss.…”

Understanding Indigenous values and priorities for wetlands to guide weed management actions: Lessons from the Nardab floodplain in northern Australia’s Kakadu National Park

“…This paper builds on the growing body of cross-cultural ecology and Indigenousled conservation that has developed frameworks and methods to understand how Indigenous values and priorities can be incorporated into invasive species impact assessments and collaborative management efforts (Bayliss et al 2017;Adams et al 2018). This paper shows that the cultural and physical geography of wetlands influences Indigenous priorities for invasive species management, which varied from place to place across the wetland.…”

“…The need to choose high value areas to prioritize invasive species strategies has been recommended in previous studies, due to the high cost of removing all weeds from There has been some attempt to include Indigenous values in these assessments (e.g. Adams et al 2018;Robinson & Wallington, 2012), but this is often reduced to a single value (e.g. harvesting sites) without consideration of the suite of values in a given place that might affect the choice of sites for management attention or the suite of actions needed to manage invasive species impacts at a given area.…”

How Dreaming and Indigenous ancestral stories are central to nature conservation: Perspectives from Walalkara Indigenous Protected Area, Australia

“…T he intersection of Indigenous knowledge and nature conservation is now regarded as essential to meeting the global goals for biodiversity conservation, improved human well-being and maintenance of cultural diversity (Ens et al 2015;Garnett, Burgess, et al 2018;Reyes-Garc ıa & Benyei 2019). Collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners is increasing in conservation and land management (see articles in this species issue) through policy (Forest People's Programme 2020; Goolmeer et al 2022), planning (Adams et al 2018;Buscher et al 2021;Carter et al 2022), ecological research (Russell et al Ens 2021;Skroblin et al 2022;Wysong et al 2022) and on-ground land and sea management (Schwartzman and Zimmerman 2005;Long et al 2020;Lindsay et al 2022). For example, globally, Indigenous-managed lands are protecting similar levels of vertebrate biodiversity to non-Indigenous protected areas (IPAs) such as National Parks (Schuster et al 2019), and Indigenous land managers are maintaining fire regimes that benefit species conservation and culture (Bliege Bird et al 2018).…”