Positive cost-benefit analysis for conservation spending

In a time when most news about human impacts on the Earth's biodiversity seems to be negative, a new paper in Nature provides a glint of good news about our ability to change the current trend of loss. Encouraging new conservation efforts and funding may be contingent on providing evidence that such efforts will actually be effective.

The new report from Waldron et al. (2017) provides evidence for a predictable relationship between conservation spending and reduction of biodiversity loss. They focused on signatory countries of the Earth Summit's Convention on Biological Diversity and Sustainable Development Goals, and developed a pressures-and-conservation-impact’ (PACI) model to predict how biodiversity loss changed in these countries between 1996-2008. Improvements were driven by conservation spending (relativized to reflect differences in buying power between nations) and were counteracted by GDP growth and agricultural expansion. 

Using this model, the authors could predict how the conservation investments made in these nations had affected their loss of biodiversity, as compared to the scenario in which no investment had been made. Amazingly, the median loss of biodiversity per nation was 29% lower than would otherwise have been expected. Over 1996-2008, seven countries even had net biodiversity improvements: Mauritius, Seychelles, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Poland and Ukraine.

Fig 1. Map of biodiversity decline scores (BDS) for signatory nations.
"Colours show percentage of all global declines (total BDS) associated with each country. Pie charts show the predicted reduction in decline (in black) if spending had been I$5 million higher (for selected countries); pie size represents the square root of the BDS. Inset shows predicted versus observed BDS (log-transformed) for the continuous model".

They discuss a number of interactions among model terms that capture greater socio-economic complexity - for example, the impacts of GDP growth on biodiversity loss are lower when a country's base GDP is very low. Such large scale studies naturally face data limitations - here, they use mammal and bird Red List status changes to develop a quantitative measure of biodiversity loss. Other taxa presumably show similar trends, but we lack the data to incorporate them at this moment.

Hopefully by demonstrating this cost-benefit analysis for conservation actions, Waldron et al. (2017) encourage future 'investors' as to the payoff of spending on conservation. 

Reductions in global biodiversity loss predicted from conservation spending. Anthony Waldron, Daniel C. Miller, Dave Redding, Arne Mooers, Tyler S. Kuhn,  Nate Nibbelink, J. Timmons Roberts, Joseph A. Tobias & John L. Gittleman. Nature (2017). doi:10.1038/nature24295. 

Biodiversity conservation in a human world: do successes involve losses?

It's become commonplace to state that the world is in the midst of a mass extinction event. And there is no doubt about the cause. Unlike previous mass extinction events, like the cretaceous extinction event that saw most dinosaurs disappear, the current extinction event is not caused by a geological or astrological event. Rather, the current extinction event is caused by a single species, humans. Through habitat destruction, wildlife harvesting, pollution, and the introduction of pest species to other regions, the current extinction rate is 100 to 1000 times higher than it should normally be. We often think of human legacy in terms of art or architecture, but a permanent scar in the biological record of the Earth is our greatest legacy.

Of course many people and some governments are very concerned about our impact, and have committed to try to conserve elements of the remaining natural world. How best to do this is largely influenced by conservation biology, a field of research and applied management that includes biology, economics, and sociology, amongst others. There are many debates within conservation biology, and a big one is about how much to involve people, and their activities, in conservation areas versus attempting to completely exclude people from protected areas.

Two conservation conversations have explored this dichotomy in meaningful ways. First is a recent paper by Elena Bennett (Bennett 2017), who argues that strategies for environment and conservation protection needs to take a human-first approach and focus on human well-being. The second is a talk I saw from Daniel Janzen the other day. Janzen is a world-renowned ecologist and has dedicated his life to conservation in Costa Rica for the past 30 years. This debate was central to his talk about the conservation successes at the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG), where Janzen developed and implemented a conservation philosophy that included local people in the managing and research in the conservation area. Before Janzen, the Park relied on the traditional approach of excluding people to protect nature and it was failing. Janzen’s approach has been immensely successful, and the Park is now considered a conservation success story.

People can be convinced to appreciate biodiversity around
-if it provides a benefit. (photo by M. Cadotte)

Including people in nature conservation is bound to have successes. People feel more familiar and involved with nature protection, which gives them a sense of ownership. If people understand the benefits of nature, economic and otherwise, then they will be invested in its protection. It all seems so logical, but as I listened to Janzen’s talk (and read Bennett’s paper), I kept thinking: “would there be any losers under a human-first approach to conservation”. I think the answer is yes, and the reason is that we are prone to use a shifting baseline to evaluate success. Let me explain what I mean.

The human-nature story is one that is about a continual 30,000 year retreat. All of our successes -our population growth, our art, our medicine, have all come at the expense of nature. Anywhere on Earth where there are humans, there are losses. Habitat alteration and destruction, and species extinctions are the defining feature of our presence. This legacy has permanently altered the biology of our planet.

Why is this important? Because we really don’t care. We don’t miss wholly mammoths in northern Europe. We don’t miss giant sloths in California. We don’t miss black bears in downtown Toronto. We don’t miss lions in Cape Town. The definition and acceptance of nature  for most people is not influenced by what is not there, but rather the critters we are familiar with and are willing to accept. Big mammals simply have no place in human dominated landscapes and we don’t bemoan their absences.

Can human-first conservation protect jaguars?
(Photo from wikipedia)

Human-first conservation strategies work simply because we accept a less valuable system as acceptable and perhaps normal because of our shifting baselines. Would a human-first conservation strategy work in Costa Rica’s ACG if there was a huge jaguar population that was attacking livestock? Not likely.

The United States government spends billions on national parks to conserve nature (among other things), but if it was up to ranchers living near Yellowstone, for example, all the top predators will be exterminated. Hunters and ranchers in Germany are similarly up in arms (literally) over the re-appearance of wolves and lynx in restored forests within Germany’s borders. Some there consider the extermination of large predators a commendable feat of an advanced society.

The point is that we like the nature we know, and the nature that is not likely to kill us. People are most often invested, familiar, and willing to conserve nature around them, which already works for them.

Costa Rica’s ACG human-first conservation works in certain contexts. It gets people involved, it protects certain facets of nature, and it has a high likelihood of long-term success. If this is the model for a successful conservation philosophy, then we must accept that not all of nature can be protected. In all likelihood, many large mammals will go extinct in my childrens’ lifetime, regardless of how well we do conservation. So perhaps, moving forward with the human-first strategy is the best option, but a part of me hopes that there is a place for real nature in our world. The rest of me knows that there isn’t.


Bennett, E. M. 2017. Changing the agriculture and environment conversation. Nature Ecology & Evolution 1:0018.

The value of ecology through metaphor

The romanticized view of an untouched, pristine ecosystem is unrealistic; we now live in a world where every major ecosystem has been impacted by human activities. From pollution and deforestation, to the introduction of non-native species, our activity has influenced natural systems around the globe. At the same time, ecologists have largely focused on ‘intact’ or ‘natural’ systems in order to uncover the fundamental operations of nature. Ecological theory abounds with explanations for ecological patterns and processes. However, given that the world is increasingly human dominated and urbanized, we need a better understanding of how biodiversity and ecosystem function can be sustained in the presence of human domination. If our ecological theories provide powerful insights into ecological systems, then human dominated landscapes are where they are desperately needed to solve problems.

From the Spectator

This demand to solve problems is not unique to ecology, other scientific disciplines measure their value in terms of direct contributions to human well-being. The most obvious is human biology. Human biology has transitioned from gross morphology, to physiology, to molecular mechanisms controlling cellular function, and all of these tools provide powerful insights into how humans are put together and how our bodies function. Yet, as much as these tools are used to understand how healthy people function, human biologists often stay focussed on how to cure sick people. That is, the proximate value ascribed to human biology research is in its ability to cure disease and improve peoples’ lives. 

In Ecology, our sick patients are heavily impacted and urbanized landscapes. By understanding how natural systems function can provide insights into strategies to improve degraded ecosystems. This value of ecological science manifests itself in shifts in funding and publishing. We now have synthesis centres that focus on the human-environment interaction (e.g., SESYNC). The journals that publish papers that provide applied solutions to ecological and environmental problems (e.g., Journal of Applied Ecology, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, etc.) have gained in prominence over the past decade. But more can be done.

We should keep the ‘sick patient’ metaphor in the back of our minds at all times and ask how our scientific endeavours can help improve the health of ecosystems. I was once a graduate student that pursued purely theoretical tests of how ecosystems are put together, and now I am the executive editor of an applied journal. I think that ecologists should feel like they can develop solutions to environmental problems, and that their underlying science gives them a unique perspective to improving the quality of life for our sick patients. 

Where the wild things are: the importance of urban nature

Cities represent our ultimate domination over nature. They are landscapes that are completely modified to meet all of our needs and desires. In cities we drastically change the vegetation, reroute rivers, seal the Earth’s surface in impermeable cement, and often change the chemical composition of the air around us. For most people, this unnatural state of affairs seems completely natural. Its how we grow up.

What we don’t notice is all that is missing. The trees, the birds, and the mammals are largely absent from big cities. But not all cities are equal in this missingness. For those of us that live in cities like Toronto, Nashville, or Sydney, seeing birds and mammals is part of our normal life. In my back yard in Toronto, I am likely to see racoons, skunks, possums, red squirrels, eastern grey squirrels, chipmunks, deer mice, and a plethora of birds, and just down the road, foxes, coyotes, and deer are not uncommon. One morning I heard a ‘thud’ come from our sunroom window, and outside was a stunned red-tailed hawk (he was fine in the end). These cities are evidence that nature can persist and coexist with urban development.

However, there are other cities where nature is almost completely absent. While living in Guangzhou, China I saw just cats, dogs and rats, and barely any birds –shockingly no pigeons. Recently in while in Montpellier, France, it became obvious to Caroline and I (the two EEB & Flow contributors) that besides a small lizard species, pigeons and a few sparrows, we were not going to see any wildlife in the city. Guangzhou and Montpellier are very different cities in terms of size (16 million vs. 300 thousand), density, building height, pollution levels, etc.  But one way they are similar is that they are old. People have living and changing the landscapes in these regions for thousands of years. Of course the same could technically be said of North America and Australia, but the magnitude and intensity of human modification has no parallel in North America and Australia. Long-term intensive human activity removes other species in the long run. Is this the natural endpoint for our younger cities?

Cambridge, England. While quite beautiful, it is a typical old european city with a lot of stone.

Why we should celebrate raccoons

Toronto has a war against the raccoon. To most Torontonians, the raccoon is a plague –vermin that get into garbage cans and pull shingles off of roofs. Their density in Toronto is about 10 times higher than in wild habitats and many people in Toronto support removing them all together.

I have a different stance. We should be celebrating the raccoon. Yes raccoons cause problems; yes they carry disease; yes they damage property; yes their density is unnaturally high. But the same can be said of people (I don’t think I ever caught a flu from a raccoon). If raccoons were to recede to distant wilds and disappear from Toronto altogether, we would be no different than all those other cities where nature has completely lost. Raccoons give hope –hope that nature can flourish under the repressive and cruel dominion of urban centres. Raccoons remind us that nature has a place and can thrive in cities, and that we can share this world. They give me hope that Toronto’s destiny is not prescribed and we are not bound to the same fate as so many other cities.

I have a couple of new Chinese scientists visit my lab each year, and the differences between Toronto and say Beijing or Shanghai could not be more stark for them. To see deer, squirrels and raccoons in the city is a marvel. Every time one of these visitors comments on the wildlife in our city, I am reminded that we are really fortunate and have something that should be cherished.

Raccoon family –not an uncommon sight in Toronto (CCBYgaryjwood) 

Need to rethink urban nature

The problem is that Toronto, and most other cities, is continuing to grow and become more densely packed, making it more difficult for nature to endure. We need to rethink how cities grow and develop, and we need to keep a place for nature. There is no reason why new developments can't accommodate natural elements and green space –this often does not happen in most cities. Singapore is unique in this sense, new public infrastructure projects explicitly incorporate novel green space and infrastructure. I toured green sites there recently and saw a new hospital where it was impossible to tell where the park space ended and the hospital started (see picture below). There I saw patients tending gardens on the roof, nearby residents strolling through the forested courtyards, and turtles, wading birds and a large river monitor in the neighbouring pond. Also, Singapore's new large pump house infrastructure that reduces flooding in the city has a full sloping lawn on the top that is used by picnickers. In most North American cities this type of building would be grey industrial cement with little other function than to house pumps.

Singpore's Khoo Teck Puat hospital -the world's greenest hospital? 

Large old cities devoid of wildlife need not be the natural endpoint for a city.  Smart development and accommodating nature needs to be woven into the tapestry of cities. Toronto’s raccoons are great, and I wouldn’t want to live in a Toronto without them.

What’s so great about Spain? Assessing UNESCO World Heritage inequality.

Some places are more valuable than others. We often regard places as being of high or unique value if they possess high biological diversity, ancient cultural artefacts and structures, or outstanding geological features. These valuable places deserve special recognition and protection. The sad reality is that when we are driven by immediate needs and desires, these special places are lost.

The natural world, and the wonderful diversity of plants and animals, is on the losing end of a long and undiminished conflict with human population growth, development, and resource extraction. We don’t notice it when there is ample natural space, but as nature becomes increasingly relegated to a few remaining places, we place a high value on them.

The same can be said for places with significant cultural value. Ancient temples, villages, and human achievement are too valuable to lose and we often only have a few remnants to connect us to the past.

In either case, natural or cultural, when they’re gone, we lose a part of us. That is because these special places tell us about ourselves; where we come from, how the world shaped us, and what unites all of humanity. Why did the world cry out in a united voice when the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001, even though many of those concerned people were not Buddhist? The answer is simple –the expansion of Buddhism out of India along ancient trade routes tells us why many Asian nations share a common religion. They tell us about ourselves, the differences that interest us, and the similarities that bind us. The same can be said about the global outcry over the recent destruction of the ancient city of Palmyra by ISIS.

Before and after photos of the taller of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Image posted by Carl Montgomery CC BY-SA 3.0.

Similarly, the natural world tells us about ourselves. The natural world has constantly shaped and influenced what it means to be human. Our desires, fears, and how we interact with the natural world are products of our evolution. If I flash a picture of a car to my 500-student ecology class, very few students, if any, screech in fear. But if I flash a photo of a hissing cobra or close-up of a spider, invariably a bunch of students squirm, gasp, or scream. Rationally, this is an odd response, since cars are the leading cause of death and injury in many western countries. Snakes and spiders kill very few people in Canada.

These special places deserve recognition and protection, and that is what the UNESCO World Heritage designation is meant to achieve. To get this designation for a site requires that countries nominate ones that represent unique and globally significant contributions to world heritage, and are adequately protected to ensure the long-term existence of these sites.  World Heritage sites are amazing places. They represent the gems of our global shared heritage. They need to be protected in perpetuity and should be accessible to all people. Though some I have visited seem like they are loved too much with high visitation rates degrading some elements of Heritage sites.

Examples of UNESCO World Heritage sites. A) The Great Wall of China. B) The Gaoligong Mountains, part of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan. C) Angkor Wat in Cambodia. D) An example of a site that may be too loved -Lijiang in Yunnan. All photos by Shirley Lo-Cadotte and posted on our family travel blog -All The Pretty Places.

UNESCO World Heritage sites should also be representative. What I mean by this is that they should be designated regardless of national borders. Heritage sites are found on all continents across most countries –though a number of politically unstable countries (e.g., Liberia, Somalia, etc.) do not possess Heritage sites, likely because they lack the organization or resources to undertake the designation application process, and they lack the governance to ensure a site is adequately protected. But there are substantial differences in the number of World Heritage sites across nations[1]. Some countries, because of inherent priorities, national pride, resources or expertise, are better able to identify and persuade UNESCO that a particular place deserves designation.

The distribution of the number of UNESCO World Heritage sites across countries and the top ten.

Why do we see such disparity in the number of World Heritage sites -where many countries have few sites, and a few countries have many sites? This is a difficult question to answer, and to do so I took an empirical approach. I combined data on the number of sites per country with Gross Domestic Product (GDP)[2], country size[3], and country population size[4]. I then ran simple statistical analyses to figure out what predicts the number of Heritage sites, and identified those countries that are greatly over-represented by Heritage sites, and those that are very under-represented. A couple things to note, the best statistical models included variables that were all log-transformed, I excluded the World Heritage sites that spanned more than one country, and I did not include countries that did not have any Heritage sites. The data and R code have been posted to Figshare and are freely available.

All three of GDP, area, and population size predicted the number of World Heritage sites. It is important to note that these three country measures are not strongly correlated with one another (only moderately so). So, larger, richer and more populous countries had more World Heritage sites. This makes sense –big countries should contain more unique sites due to random chance and more populous countries tend to have longer historical presence of organized states, and so should possess more cultural relics (especially China). GDP is more difficult to assign a reason, but high GDP countries should have robust national parks or other bureaucratic structures that assess and protect important sites, making them easier to document and justify for UNESCO.  GDP is quite interesting, because it is the single best measure for predicting the number of Heritage sites, better than population size and area. Further, neither country density (population/area) nor productivity (GDP/population) are strong predictors of the number of Heritage sites.

The relationships between the number of World Heritage sites and GDP, area, and population. Note that the axes are all log-transformed.

While these relationships make sense, it is also clear that countries are not all close to the main regression line and some countries are well above the line –meaning they have more Heritage sites than predicted; as well as some below the line and thus having fewer sites. When I combine the different measures in different combinations and look for the best single statistical explanation for the number of World Heritage sites, I find that the combination including GDP and population size, and their interaction (meaning that population size is more important for high GDP countries) is the best. For aficionados, this model explains about 65% of the variation in the number of Heritage sites.

Now, we can identify those countries that are over or under represented by UNESCO World Heritage sites according to how far above or below countries are from the predicted line (technically, looking at statistical residuals).

The deviation of countries from the predicted relationship between the number of sites and GDP and population (and their interaction). The top 5 over-represented and under-represented countries are highlighted.

The top five over-represented countries are all European, which means that given their GDP and population size, these countries have more World Heritage sites than expected. At the other extreme, countries under-represented come from more diverse regions including Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

An interesting comparison to think about is Germany and Indonesia. Germany has more World Heritage sites than expected (residual = +0.61) and is a moderately sized, high GDP country. Let me say, I like Germany, I’ve been there a half a dozen times, and it has beautiful landscapes and great culture. However, does it deserve so much more World Heritage recognition than Indonesia, which has fewer sites than expected (residual = -0.63)? Indonesia has spectacular landscapes and immense biodiversity and great cultural diversity and history. To put it in perspective, Germany has 35 World Heritage sites and Indonesia has just 8.

To answer the question in the title of this post: what’s so great about Spain? Well, it not only has beautiful and diverse natural landscapes and cultural history, but it appears to have the infrastructure in place to identify and protect these sites. It's place at the top of UNESCOs relative (to GDP and population) ranking of the number of World Heritage sites means that Spain's natural and cultural wonders are in good hands. However, for the countries at the other end of the spectrum, having relatively few World Heritage sites probably is not a reflection of these countries being uninteresting, or that they have little to offer the world, rather it is something more alarming. These places lack the financial capacity or national will to fully recognize those places that are of value to the whole world. The problem is that the globally important heritage that does exist in these places is at risk of being lost. These under-represented countries serve as a call to the whole world to help countries not just identify and protect heritage sites but to aid these countries with infrastructure and human well-being that empowers them to prioritize their natural and cultural heritage.

---

[1] Here I use the 2015 database of World Heritage sites.

[2] From: The United Nations 2014 GDP estimates.

[3] From: Wikipedia.

[4] From: The United Nations 2016 projections.

The vanishing pangolin: How do you change the value of an endangered species?

Extinction is forever. Extinction reduces the biological heritage of the Earth and is something that we cannot undo.

While living in China, and traveling around Asia, I have said something to my children I have never said before: “I want you to take a really good look, these animals will go extinct in your lifetime”.  I said this as we were watching 8 of the 60 remaining Hong Kong pink dolphins.

Hong Kong pink dolphin (photo by Shirley Lo-Cadotte)

Species become rare and endangered for many reasons, like habitat destruction, pollution, human facilitated spread of problematic species (rats for example), and direct harvesting. While all of these factors are subject to laws and regulations that attempt to control them, it is the last one, harvesting, that relies most on altering peoples' wants and desires. I don’t know why, but to me it is also the saddest cause, the idea that a species dies out because we desire it and kill it or chop it down, just doesn’t seem right.  

Walking through the market alley near my apartment in Guangzhou, China, I saw something that both intrigued and horrified me: a dead and quartered pangolin. You may not be familiar with pangolins –also called scaly anteaters; they are mammals about the size of a large cat or medium-small dog (like a cocker spaniel), with a very long and thick prehensile tail that they use in trees. Their most unique feature is that they are covered in large flat scales that are made of keratin –the same as your fingernails. 

A Chinese pangolin, Manis pentadactyla (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pangolin%27s_tail.jpgsted to Flickr by verdammelt cc-by-sa-2.0) 

Pangolins are critically endangered. They also have the distinction of being one of the most trafficked animals in the world. In China and Vietnam there is high demand for pangolins because they are considered a delicacy and more importantly their scales are used in traditional medicine. These scales are believed to provide a cure for a number of diseases, including cancer. The incidence of cancers in China is skyrocketing, which is not surprising given the level of pollution, and couple this with increasing affluence, the desire and ability to pay for pangolin parts has never been greater.

Obviously pangolin scales do not cure cancer. You might as well save your money and suck on your fingernails instead, but evidence and logic are not likely to sway mortal fear. There are groups in Asia dedicated to protecting endangered animals and educate citizens about wildlife. Such organizations have an opportunity to capitalize on recent attitude shifts in China and elsewhere, where animal wellbeing is increasingly seen as important. In China, pet ownership has increased dramatically over the past decade and pets are now seen as companions –which I suspect was partially a result of the one-child policy. But the demand for pangolins still exists. When we visited the Angkor Conservation Centre in Cambodia, which works tirelessly to rehabilitate animals and educate people, they were recovering from the theft of one of their pangolins from an enclosure, which they knew was transported to China.

The Chinese authorities are coming down hard on the illegal pangolin trade. They now routinely arrest individuals selling pangolins and seize large shipments. While such seizures and arrests show that the Chinese government is taking pangolin protection seriously, there is only so much they can do while demand is high.

Police confiscating a large illegal pangolin shipment bound for China (photo originally from news.163.com) 

My Mother-in-law, who is from southern China, said it best when I told her about the dead pangolin in the alley: “people just need to be educated”. That is really where the answer lies. Laws can only change peoples’ behaviour so much; education campaigns are desperately needed. Currently, there is an internationally funded billboard campaign in China to stop people from buying elephant ivory. Ivory demand is high in China. Despite the importance of reducing ivory purchases, I would argue that this type of education campaign needs to focus a little closer to home, and Pangolin conservation efforts are in desperate need of help. 

When we were visiting the conservation centre in Cambodia, I told my children that the Pangolin would go extinct in their lifetime. I really hope that I am wrong.