Priority Threat Management For Pilbara Species Of Conservation Significance

This project provides a costed and appraised set of management strategies for mitigating threats to species of conservation significance in the Pilbara IBRA bioregion of Western Australia (hereafter 'the Pilbara'). Conservation significant species are either listed under federal and state legislation, international agreements or considered likely to be threatened in the next 20 years. Here we report on the 17 technically and socially feasible management strategies, which were drawn from the collective experience and knowledge of 49 experts and stakeholders in the ecology and management of the Pilbara region. We determine the relative ecological cost-effectiveness of each strategy, calculated as the expected benefit of management to the persistence of 53 key threatened native fauna and flora species, divided by the expected cost of management. Finally we provide decision support to assist prioritisation of the strategies on the basis of ecological cost-effectiveness.

[1]  H. Possingham,et al.  Active Adaptive Management for Conservation , 2007, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

[2]  G. Keighery.  The naturalised vascular plants of the Pilbara region, Western Australia , 2010 .

[3]  C. Petheram,et al.  Chapter 1 Water resources in northern Australia. In: Northern Australia Land and Water Science Review , 2009 .

[4]  P. Gioia.  NatureMap: Mapping Western Australia's Biodiversity , 2009 .

[5]  H. Possingham,et al.  Priority threat management to protect Kimberley wildlife , 2011 .

[6]  Martin J. Westgate,et al.  Adaptive management of biological systems: A review , 2013 .

[7]  G. Nemhauser,et al.  Discrete Dynamic Programming and Capital Allocation , 1969 .

[8]  R. A. Bradstock,et al.  Fire regimes in the spinifex landscapes of Australia. , 2002 .

[9]  S. Lavorel,et al.  Mechanisms underlying the impacts of exotic plant invasions , 2003, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[10]  Michael S. Johnson,et al.  Biogeographic discordance of molecular phylogenetic and phenotypic variation in a continental archipelago radiation of land snails , 2014, BMC Evolutionary Biology.

[11]  H. Possingham,et al.  Sustaining our natural systems and biodiversity , 2002 .

[12]  J. Firn,et al.  Impacts of Invasive Plants on Australian Rangelands , 2010 .

[13]  L. Leung,et al.  Intraguild relationships between sympatric predators exposed to lethal control: predator manipulation experiments , 2013, Frontiers in Zoology.

[14]  R. Shine.  The Ecological Impact of Invasive Cane Toads (Bufo Marinus) in Australia , 2010, The Quarterly Review of Biology.

[15]  S. Eberhard,et al.  Pilbara stygofauna: deep groundwater of an arid landscape contains globally signifi cant radiation of biodiversity , 2014 .

[16]  A. Burbidge,et al.  Herpetological assemblages of the Pilbara biogeographic region, Western Australia: ecological associations, biogeographic patterns and conservation , 2011 .

[17]  R. Bednarik.  About the age of Pilbara rock art , 2002 .

[18]  R. Shiel,et al.  An arid zone awash with diversity: patterns in the distribution of aquatic invertebrates in the Pilbara region of Western Australia , 2010 .

[19]  W. Humphreys,et al.  Imperilled Subsurface Waters in Australia: Biodiversity, Threatening Processes and Conservation , 2003 .

[20]  A. Grice,et al.  The impacts of invasive plant species on the biodiversity of Australian rangelands. , 2006 .

[21]  M. R. Carter,et al.  Terrestrial Ecosystems , 2018, Critical Transitions in Nature and Society.

[22]  R. Fensham,et al.  Water-remoteness for grazing relief in Australian arid-lands , 2008 .

[23]  P. Hennig,et al.  An inventory and condition survey of the Pilbara region, Western Australia , 2004 .

[24]  A. Arthington,et al.  Basic Principles and Ecological Consequences of Altered Flow Regimes for Aquatic Biodiversity , 2002, Environmental management.

[25]  P. Reich,et al.  High plant diversity is needed to maintain ecosystem services , 2011, Nature.

[26]  Fiona Fidler,et al.  Reducing Overconfidence in the Interval Judgments of Experts , 2010, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[27]  David J. Pannell,et al.  Integrated assessment of public investment in land-use change to protect environmental assets in Australia , 2012 .

[28]  Hugh P. Possingham,et al.  Prioritizing threat management for biodiversity conservation , 2012 .

[29]  Carl J. Walters,et al.  ECOLOGICAL OPTIMIZATION AND ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT , 1978 .

[30]  R. Turkington,et al.  Diversity loss with persistent human disturbance increases vulnerability to ecosystem collapse , 2013, Nature.

[31]  Olivier Buffet,et al.  Adaptive Management of Migratory Birds Under Sea Level Rise , 2013, IJCAI.

[32]  J Tann,et al.  Atlas of Living Australia User Needs Analysis , 2008 .

[33]  Michael D. Scanlon,et al.  Exploring the relationship between sampling efficiency and short‐range endemism for groundwater fauna in the Pilbara region, Western Australia , 2009 .

[34]  S. Burnett.  Colonizing Cane Toads cause population declines in native predators: reliable anecdotal information and management implications , 1997 .

[35]  N. L. McKenzie,et al.  Patterns in the modern decline of western Australia's vertebrate fauna: Causes and conservation implications , 1989 .

[36]  A. Austin,et al.  Is the Australian subterranean fauna uniquely diverse , 2010 .

[37]  J. Keogh,et al.  Geodiversity and endemism in the iconic Australian Pilbara region: a review of landscape evolution and biotic response in an ancient refugium , 2013 .

[38]  A. Vanak,et al.  Dogs as predators and trophic regulators , 2014 .

[39]  Michael R Kearney,et al.  Excluding access to invasion hubs can contain the spread of an invasive vertebrate , 2011, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[40]  Liana N. Joseph,et al.  Optimal Allocation of Resources among Threatened Species: a Project Prioritization Protocol , 2009, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

[41]  J. S. Beard,et al.  Vegetation Survey of Western Australia , 1974 .