Incorporating surrogate species and seascape connectivity to improve marine conservation outcomes
- Olds, Andrew D, Connolly, Rod M, Pitt, Kylie A, Maxwell, Paul S, Aswani, Shankar, Albert, Simon
- Authors: Olds, Andrew D , Connolly, Rod M , Pitt, Kylie A , Maxwell, Paul S , Aswani, Shankar , Albert, Simon
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124722 , vital:35655 , https://doi.10.1111/cobi.12242
- Description: Conservation focuses on maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, but gaps in our knowledge of species biology and ecological processes often impede progress. For this reason, focal species and habitats are used as surrogates for multispecies conservation, but species-based approaches are not widely adopted in marine ecosystems. Reserves in the Solomon Islands were designed on the basis of local ecological knowledge to conserve bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) and to protect food security and ecosystem functioning. Bumphead parrotfish are an iconic threatened species and may be a useful surrogate for multispecies conservation. They move across tropical seascapes throughout their life history, in a pattern of habitat use that is shared with many other species. We examined their value as a conservation surrogate and assessed the importance of seascape connectivity (i.e., the physical connectedness of patches in the seascape) among reefs, mangroves, and seagrass to marine reserve performance. Reserves were designed for bumphead parrotfish, but also enhanced the abundance of other species. Integration of local ecological knowledge and seascape connectivity enhanced the abundance of 17 other harvested fish species in local reserves. This result has important implications for ecosystem functioning and local villagers because many of these species perform important ecological processes and provide the foundation for extensive subsistence fisheries. Our findings suggest greater success in maintaining and restoring marine ecosystems may be achieved when they are managed to conserve surrogate species and preserve functional seascape connections.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Olds, Andrew D , Connolly, Rod M , Pitt, Kylie A , Maxwell, Paul S , Aswani, Shankar , Albert, Simon
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124722 , vital:35655 , https://doi.10.1111/cobi.12242
- Description: Conservation focuses on maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, but gaps in our knowledge of species biology and ecological processes often impede progress. For this reason, focal species and habitats are used as surrogates for multispecies conservation, but species-based approaches are not widely adopted in marine ecosystems. Reserves in the Solomon Islands were designed on the basis of local ecological knowledge to conserve bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) and to protect food security and ecosystem functioning. Bumphead parrotfish are an iconic threatened species and may be a useful surrogate for multispecies conservation. They move across tropical seascapes throughout their life history, in a pattern of habitat use that is shared with many other species. We examined their value as a conservation surrogate and assessed the importance of seascape connectivity (i.e., the physical connectedness of patches in the seascape) among reefs, mangroves, and seagrass to marine reserve performance. Reserves were designed for bumphead parrotfish, but also enhanced the abundance of other species. Integration of local ecological knowledge and seascape connectivity enhanced the abundance of 17 other harvested fish species in local reserves. This result has important implications for ecosystem functioning and local villagers because many of these species perform important ecological processes and provide the foundation for extensive subsistence fisheries. Our findings suggest greater success in maintaining and restoring marine ecosystems may be achieved when they are managed to conserve surrogate species and preserve functional seascape connections.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
Customary management as TURFs: social challenges and opportunities
- Authors: Aswani, Shankar
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145403 , vital:38435 , DOI: 10.5343/bms.2015.1084
- Description: There is a growing interest in working with customary management (CM) systems to effectively manage benthic resources and small-scale fisheries. The underlying notion is that CM institution as territorial use rights in fisheries (TURFs) can be sufficiently adaptive and dynamic to create the local incentives that are necessary for promoting sustainable fishing practices and marine conservation more generally in a given region. This paper reviews the social opportunities and challenges of working with CM systems as a form of TURF, particularly in Oceania. A key conclusion is that policy makers and managers not only need to recognize natural interconnectivity in any one marine space, but also consider the social interconnectivity of stakeholders that covers customary TURFs. Only by recognizing and working with the existing social networks that overlay any given marine territory can the operational principles of CM (as reviewed in this paper) be effectively deployed for achieving some kind of bioeconomic efficiency and creating an equitable rights-based fisheries management system.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Aswani, Shankar
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145403 , vital:38435 , DOI: 10.5343/bms.2015.1084
- Description: There is a growing interest in working with customary management (CM) systems to effectively manage benthic resources and small-scale fisheries. The underlying notion is that CM institution as territorial use rights in fisheries (TURFs) can be sufficiently adaptive and dynamic to create the local incentives that are necessary for promoting sustainable fishing practices and marine conservation more generally in a given region. This paper reviews the social opportunities and challenges of working with CM systems as a form of TURF, particularly in Oceania. A key conclusion is that policy makers and managers not only need to recognize natural interconnectivity in any one marine space, but also consider the social interconnectivity of stakeholders that covers customary TURFs. Only by recognizing and working with the existing social networks that overlay any given marine territory can the operational principles of CM (as reviewed in this paper) be effectively deployed for achieving some kind of bioeconomic efficiency and creating an equitable rights-based fisheries management system.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
Detecting change in local ecological knowledge: an application of an index of taxonomic distinctness to an ethnoichthyological classification in the Solomon Islands
- Aswani, Shankar, Ferse, Sebastian C A, Stäbler, Moritz, Chong-Montenegro, Carolina
- Authors: Aswani, Shankar , Ferse, Sebastian C A , Stäbler, Moritz , Chong-Montenegro, Carolina
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/179059 , vital:40103 , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.106865
- Description: The global accelerating loss of biodiversity is having immediate repercussions for ecosystems and human wellbeing, particularly in areas where people depend intimately on their natural environment for their livelihoods. Dovetailing this loss is the demise of local/traditional knowledge systems resulting from factors such as changing lifestyle and the transformation of local belief systems. While the importance of local ecological knowledge (LEK) for documentation of biodiversity and environmental change and development of management responses is well established, quantitative tools to analyze and systematically compare LEK are scarce. In this research, we analyze the complexity of local ecological knowledge used by respondents to classify locally-recognized marine species. We do so by applying a modified index of taxonomic distinctness to an ethnoichthyological classification in coastal communities in the Solomon Islands. In addition, we assess simple taxonomic diversity (richness in locally-recognized species names) by comparing taxonomies collected in 1992–1995 and 2014–2015.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Aswani, Shankar , Ferse, Sebastian C A , Stäbler, Moritz , Chong-Montenegro, Carolina
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/179059 , vital:40103 , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.106865
- Description: The global accelerating loss of biodiversity is having immediate repercussions for ecosystems and human wellbeing, particularly in areas where people depend intimately on their natural environment for their livelihoods. Dovetailing this loss is the demise of local/traditional knowledge systems resulting from factors such as changing lifestyle and the transformation of local belief systems. While the importance of local ecological knowledge (LEK) for documentation of biodiversity and environmental change and development of management responses is well established, quantitative tools to analyze and systematically compare LEK are scarce. In this research, we analyze the complexity of local ecological knowledge used by respondents to classify locally-recognized marine species. We do so by applying a modified index of taxonomic distinctness to an ethnoichthyological classification in coastal communities in the Solomon Islands. In addition, we assess simple taxonomic diversity (richness in locally-recognized species names) by comparing taxonomies collected in 1992–1995 and 2014–2015.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
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