Biodiversity (1988) / Chapter Skim
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Part 6: How is Biodiversity Monitored and Protected?
Part 6: How is Biodiversity Monitored and Protected?
Pages 225-260
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From page 227... ...
THE GAP ANALYSIS CONCEPT To tackle this problem, conservation biologists for years have intentionally or unwittingly used the process called gap analysis to establish short-term and longer' term conservation priorities. The concept is deceptively simple, if not simplistic: 227
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From page 228... ...
The Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service recently completed mapping the vegetation of Queensland s 90 national parks, environmental parks, fauna reserves, and scientific reserves larger than 1,000 hec' tares, and it now is analyzing gaps in the representation of vegetation types by protected areas. As these are i~lentifiecl, steps will be taken to protect or otherwise conserve good representative examples of the highest-priority vegetation types (Settler, 1986~.
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From page 229... ...
in Lima, Peru, for example, recently analyzed gaps in ecosystem coverage by overlaying biogeo' graphic provinces, life zones, selected vegetation types, and existing and planned conservation areas. Although biologists in Peru have known for some time that the Andean cloud forests and coastal vegetation types were being decimated by human impacts and were important ecosystems to be conserved, the gap analysis done by the CDC revealed these priorities in a much more systematic, quantified way and identified particular areas that should be put under some form of protective management.
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From page 230... ...
National Parks, Conservation, and Development. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
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From page 231... ...
JENKINS, JR. Vice President, Science Programs, The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, Virginia Everyone is beginning to recognize that biodiversity at all levels gene pool, species, and biotic community is important for many reasons and that it is being rapidly diminished by habitat destruction and other damaging influences resulting from human population growth, pollution, and economic expansion.
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The rest of this chapter describes an effort that seems to be succeeding. NATURAL HERITAGE DATA CENTERS The Nature Conservancy was established to conserve biodiversity by establishing natural area preserves.
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JENKINS, JR. / 233 A._ ~ I ~;~ ~3 State Nature Conservancy Natural Heritage Programs ~3 Nature Conservancy Natural Heritage Programs Conservation Data Centers W_~ ~ ':.: FIGURE 27-1 Distribution of the Natural Heritage Data Centers in 1986.
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From page 234... ...
projects and to monitor status changes across a species' or community's entire range. In addition to the central data bases on North America, the Conservancy's international office has made significant progress through a special Latin American
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From page 235... ...
Data Base Biogeography Project in assembling parallel data bases on the biota, ecosystems, and conservation areas throughout the rest of the Westem Hemisphere. These central data bases are in Spanish and exchange information with the Latin Amer' ican Conservation Data Centers.
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From page 236... ...
A large fraction of the total heritage data consists of records on Element Occurrences (actual field localities with rare species populations, rare community remnants, or other features)
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From page 237... ...
The data bases also constitute one of the largest and most accurate biogeographic resources in existence and may increasingly be used directly as grist for the analysis mill. As a conservation planning device, the Heritage enterprise can also help identify for the growing body of conservation biologists which research problems could produce practical results for applied conservation in such areas as minimum critical habitats, minimum viable population sizes, genetic variation among metapopulations, landscape ecology and patch dynamics, the role of corridors between reserves, management of vegetation succession, nuclear preserves in macrosites, and archipelagos of associated reserves.
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From page 238... ...
I cannot begin to cite all the individuals and organizations without whose cooperation this work could not proceed. The Natural Heritage Data Network is the furthest thing imaginable from a proprietary enterprise.
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From page 239... ...
. Natural Heritage Program Operations Manual (some parts available on request)
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From page 240... ...
Hence, the evolution of major crops has been a continuing process- from the wild progenitors to the products of modern plant breeding and genetic manipulation. By contrast, other species have been used as food but have never been domesticated.
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From page 241... ...
at conservation centers and activities dealing with the collection, characterization and documentation of crop genetic resources, and training. Beginning with a handful of countries in 1974, IBPGR'S work now involves 106 countries, and the number of gene banks has grown from half a dozen in 1974 to more than 100, about 40 of which have agreed to accept responsibility for long-term maintenance of genetic resources.
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From page 242... ...
Some of its funds are used to carry out urgent work and to fill gaps in the collection. Linked with the IBPGR program are all crop genetic resources activities in the world, many collections of which were initiated and supported by IBPGR.
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From page 243... ...
This strategy has been highly successful in ensuring the preservation of intraspecific diversity in a very limited time and is still implemented. For the wider gene pools, where species and species relationships are the principal interest, taxonomy plays a major role in the conservation of genetic resources work, especially experimental taxonomy designed among other things to clarify genomic relationships.
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From page 244... ...
IBPGR has recognized this for two groups: first, wild grasses of the tribe Triticeae, which includes wheat, barley, rye, forages, and dozens of species in more than 20 genera distributecl throughout the world, and second, the East Asian-Pacific'Aus' tralian species of soya bean of the tertiary gene pool. In other cases, the wider gene pool has been used very little; hence, conservation priorities have been imprecisely defined.
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From page 245... ...
SCIENTIFIC SUPPORT FOR GENETIC RESOURCES WORK Conservationists outside the field of crop genetic resources frequently base their plea for conservation of wild species on spurious evidence and unrecognized needs resulting from a lack of adequately trained scientific manpower. The work in crop genetic resources has been successful because of its user orientation, and in fact has been solely directed to this end.
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From page 246... ...
In addition, preservation of species diversity by ecosystem maintenance is not always relevant to the conservation of crop genetic resources. Allelic diversity is rarely considered by ecosystem conservationists, yet it is needed for utilization by crop botanists (Franke!
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From page 247... ...
Crop Genetic Resources: Conservation and Evaluation. Allen and Unwin, London.
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From page 248... ...
The impressive heritage of national parks and reserves is a legacy from the colonial era, built on the favorite stamping grounds of repentant white hunters. Fortunately, a new era may be dawning as the result of the World Conservation Strategy (IUCN, 1980)
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From page 249... ...
This question is examined by drawing on experience in several southern African countries against a background of the diversity and dynamics of African ecosystems. BIOGEOGRAPHIC SETTING Africa broke away from South America and the rest of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwanaland some 140 million years ago.
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From page 251... ...
America 4,4253,238 1.37 aAfter Gibbs Russell, 1985. The flora of the Afrotropical realm probably includes some 40,000 species, the richest component of which is found in southern Africa, especially in the Cape Floristic Kingdom, one of the six major floristic divisions of the world's flora defined by Good (1974~.
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From page 252... ...
The most critically threatened group of these rare birds survive in the small patches of forest on Mount Moco in central Angola, more than 2,500 kilometers distant from similar but much larger forests in Cameroon, eastern Zaire, Tanzania, and the South African escarpment (Huntley, 1974~. Pressure for timber and fuelwood on this 100-hectare remnant is severe the rural peoples living on the cold mountain slopes have no alternative resources.
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From page 253... ...
Within the context of the goals of the World Conservation Strategy, the specific objective of in situ biodiversity conservation in Africa might take the following form: To establish a minimum set of protected areas that provides for the preservation of the full range of African ecosystems and their biota, including marine and coastal species and systems. Some of the steps to be taken to reach this objective include: · the development of a hierarchical series of biotic classification systems (from continental to regional to local scales)
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From page 254... ...
ASSESSING THE ADEQUACY OF CURRENT PROTECTED AREA COVER During the past 30 years, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources has developed a comprehensive data bank on the protected area systems of the world. It has recently completed a detailed listing of all protected areas of the Afrotropical realm, providing exhaustive information on the geographic, faunal, floral, and management attributes of each of some 620 protected areas greater than 50 square kilometers in the realm (IUCN/UNEP, 1987~.
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From page 255... ...
the Highveld grasslands, lowland fynbos, and succulent karoo of South Africa. All these systems face rapid reduction due to agricultural development or exploitation of timber resources for foreign exchange or fuelwood.
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From page 256... ...
Furthermore, 48% of the birds listed in the latest South African Red Data Book Birds are grassland and wetland species (Brooke, 1984~. Even more urgent, however, is the need to rehabilitate wetlands in the catchments of the country's major rivers, which now carry up to 375 tons per square kilometer per year of soil lost from overgrazed rangelands and cultivated slopes.
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From page 257... ...
detail of infor' mation on many species in these lists are inadequate, but the mere publication of these data leads to critical review and improvement. The 1976 RDB on South African birds was cited in more than 150 papers within 8 years of its publication, and the latest edition (Brooke, 1984)
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From page 258... ...
Although most of these changes in status reflect the inadequacies of the original data rather than real changes in the field situation, the existence of the RDBs triggered an upsurge of interest in monitoring rare species. This activity has been followed by the launch of annual counts of storks and cranes at a southern African scale; monitoring of all RDB bird species is now undertaken within a national bird atlassing project (Hockey and Ferrar, 1985~.
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From page 259... ...
O The analysis of the level of protection afforded mapped vegetation types is a valuable first approximation to evaluating the effectiveness of existing protected area systems. But attention must also be directed to centers of species richness and endemism and to sites of threatened species, which are seldom reflected in vege' ration maps.
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From page 260... ...
South African National Scientific Programmes Report.
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