Advanced Conservation Strategies, P.O. Box 1201, Midway, Utah 84049, USA.
Conserv Biol. 2010 Dec;24(6):1586-95. doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2010.01541.x.
Little is known about how specific anthropogenic hazards affect the biology of organisms. Quantifying the effect of regional hazards is particularly challenging for species such as sea turtles because they are migratory, difficult to study, long lived, and face multiple anthropogenic threats. Expert elicitation, a technique used to synthesize opinions of experts while assessing uncertainty around those views, has been in use for several decades in the social science and risk assessment sectors. We conducted an internet-based survey to quantify expert opinion on the relative magnitude of anthropogenic hazards to sea turtle populations at the regional level. Fisheries bycatch and coastal development were most often ranked as the top hazards to sea turtle species in a geographic region. Nest predation and direct take followed as the second and third greatest threats, respectively. Survey results suggest most experts believe sea turtles are threatened by multiple factors, including substantial at-sea threats such as fisheries bycatch. Resources invested by the sea turtle community, however, appear biased toward terrestrial-based impacts. Results from the survey are useful for conservation planning because they provide estimates of relative impacts of hazards on sea turtles and a measure of consensus on the magnitude of those impacts among researchers and practitioners. Our survey results also revealed patterns of expert bias, which we controlled for in our analysis. Respondents with no experience with respect to a sea turtle species tended to rank hazards affecting that sea turtle species higher than respondents with experience. A more-striking pattern was with hazard-based expertise: the more experience a respondent had with a specific hazard, the higher the respondent scored the impact of that hazard on sea turtle populations. Bias-controlled expert opinion surveys focused on threatened species and their hazards can help guide and expedite species recovery plans.
关于特定人为危害如何影响生物生物学的知识甚少。由于海龟是洄游性的、难以研究的、寿命长的，并且面临多种人为威胁，因此量化区域危害的影响对海龟等物种来说尤其具有挑战性。专家 elicitation，是一种用于在评估这些观点的不确定性的同时综合专家意见的技术，在社会科学和风险评估领域已经使用了几十年。我们进行了一项基于互联网的调查，以量化专家对区域水平海龟种群人为危害相对重要性的意见。渔业副渔获物和沿海开发最常被评为某一地理区域海龟物种的首要威胁。筑巢捕食和直接捕捞紧随其后，分别是第二和第三大威胁。调查结果表明，大多数专家认为海龟受到多种因素的威胁，包括渔业副渔获物等海上的重大威胁。然而，海龟社区投入的资源似乎偏向于陆地影响。调查结果对保护规划很有用，因为它们提供了危害对海龟的相对影响的估计，并衡量了研究人员和从业人员对这些影响的大小的共识。我们的调查结果还揭示了专家偏见的模式，我们在分析中对其进行了控制。没有某种海龟物种经验的受访者往往会将影响该海龟物种的危害等级排在更高的位置，而有经验的受访者则不会。更引人注目的模式是基于危害的专业知识：受访者对特定危害的经验越多，受访者对该危害对海龟种群的影响评分就越高。针对受威胁物种及其危害的经过偏见控制的专家意见调查可以帮助指导和加快物种恢复计划。
