How to prioritize species recovery after a megafire

Abstract

Due to climate change, megafires are increasingly common and have sudden, extensive impacts on many species over vast areas, leaving decision makers uncertain about how best to prioritize recovery. We devised a decision‐support framework to prioritize conservation actions to improve species outcomes immediately after a megafire. Complementary locations are selected to extend recovery actions across all fire‐affected species’ habitats. We applied our method to areas burned in the 2019−2020 Australian megafires and assessed its conservation advantages by comparing our results with outcomes of a site‐richness approach (i.e., identifying areas that cost‐effectively recover the most species in any one location). We found that 290 threatened species were likely severely affected and will require immediate conservation action to prevent population declines and possible extirpation. We identified 179 subregions, mostly in southeastern Australia, that are key locations to extend actions that benefit multiple species. Cost savings were over AU$300 million to reduce 95% of threats across all species. Our complementarity‐based prioritization also spread postfire management actions across a wider proportion of the study area compared with the site‐richness method (43% vs. 37% of the landscape managed, respectively) and put more of each species’ range under management (average 90% vs. 79% of every species’ habitat managed). In addition to wildfire response, our framework can be used to prioritize conservation actions that will best mitigate threats affecting species following other extreme environmental events (e.g., floods and drought).

Spatial prioritization for widespread invasive species control: Trade‐offs between current impact and future spread

“…Systematic conservation planning was developed to design systems of nature reserves (Kirkpatrick, 1983;Pressey, 1998) and has been widely used for identifying protected area systems and identify large-scale conservation priorities (Balmford et al, 2001;Klein et al, 2009;Margules & Pressey, 2000). It has also been applied to other conservation problems, including identifying where to implement a range of management actions across large regions (Auerbach et al, 2014;Doyle et al, 2019;Thomson et al, 2009;Ward et al, 2022). We are aware of just two studies that use systematic conservation planning tools to identify priority locations for invasive species management that strive to account for spread over time (Adams & Setterfield, 2015;Januchowski-Hartley et al, 2011).…”

Combining resilience and resistance with threat‐based approaches for prioritizing management actions in sagebrush ecosystems

“…This information is then used to evaluate the management and economic feasibility of different actions, assess cobenefits, and determine appropriate management strategies. This type of approach is being used to evaluate threats and devise approaches for conserving biodiversity in systems ranging from Sub‐Saharan African lakes experiencing the effects of increased agricultural development (Danaher et al, 2022) to areas burned in the 2019–2020 Australian megafires (Ward et al, 2022).…”

Comportamiento y adecuación de la Introducción a un nuevo ecosistema de Ladenbergia oblongifolia (Mutis) L. (árbol de la Quina), Ucayali-Perú

“…Simmonds et al (2023), Los esfuerzos de retención podrían contribuir a múltiples objetivos simultáneamente, especialmente cuando la vegetación natural y semi natural puede gestionarse para lograr cobeneficios para la biodiversidad, el almacenamiento de carbono y la prestación de servicios ecosistémicos. Ward et al (2022), debido al cambio climático, los megaincendios son cada vez más comunes y tienen impactos repentinos y extensos en muchas especies en vastas áreas. Gatto et al (2023), Para las tortugas marinas, como muchas especies ovíparas, el aumento de las temperaturas durante el desarrollo amenaza con aumentar la mortalidad embrionaria, alterar la calidad de las crías y potencialmente crear proporciones primarias de sexos subóptimas.…”