Centre for Ecosystem Sciences, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Kensington NSW 2052, Australia; NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, P.O. Box 1967, Hurstville NSW 2220, Australia.
Conserv Biol. 2014 Jun;28(3):810-9. doi: 10.1111/cobi.12234. Epub 2014 Feb 11.
Anthropogenic climate change is a key threat to global biodiversity. To inform strategic actions aimed at conserving biodiversity as climate changes, conservation planners need early warning of the risks faced by different species. The IUCN Red List criteria for threatened species are widely acknowledged as useful risk assessment tools for informing conservation under constraints imposed by limited data. However, doubts have been expressed about the ability of the criteria to detect risks imposed by potentially slow-acting threats such as climate change, particularly because criteria addressing rates of population decline are assessed over time scales as short as 10 years. We used spatially explicit stochastic population models and dynamic species distribution models projected to future climates to determine how long before extinction a species would become eligible for listing as threatened based on the IUCN Red List criteria. We focused on a short-lived frog species (Assa darlingtoni) chosen specifically to represent potential weaknesses in the criteria to allow detailed consideration of the analytical issues and to develop an approach for wider application. The criteria were more sensitive to climate change than previously anticipated; lead times between initial listing in a threatened category and predicted extinction varied from 40 to 80 years, depending on data availability. We attributed this sensitivity primarily to the ensemble properties of the criteria that assess contrasting symptoms of extinction risk. Nevertheless, we recommend the robustness of the criteria warrants further investigation across species with contrasting life histories and patterns of decline. The adequacy of these lead times for early warning depends on practicalities of environmental policy and management, bureaucratic or political inertia, and the anticipated species response times to management actions.
人为气候变化是全球生物多样性的一个关键威胁。为了为应对气候变化而保护生物多样性的战略行动提供信息，保护规划者需要对不同物种面临的风险有早期预警。IUCN 濒危物种红色名录标准被广泛认为是在数据有限的情况下进行保护风险评估的有用工具。然而，人们对该标准检测潜在缓慢作用威胁（如气候变化）所带来风险的能力表示怀疑，特别是因为评估种群下降速度的标准是在长达 10 年的时间尺度上进行评估的。我们使用空间明确的随机种群模型和预测未来气候的动态物种分布模型，来确定物种在灭绝之前需要多长时间才能有资格根据 IUCN 红色名录标准被列为受威胁物种。我们专注于一种短命的青蛙物种（Assa darlingtoni），选择这种物种是为了特别代表标准中的潜在弱点，以便详细考虑分析问题，并开发更广泛应用的方法。与以前的预期相比，该标准对气候变化更为敏感；从最初被列为受威胁类别到预测灭绝的时间间隔因数据可用性而异，从 40 年到 80 年不等。我们将这种敏感性主要归因于评估灭绝风险相反症状的标准的综合属性。尽管如此，我们建议进一步调查具有不同生命史和下降模式的物种的标准的稳健性。这些预警的提前期是否足够取决于环境政策和管理的实际情况、官僚或政治惰性以及物种对管理措施的预期反应时间。
