Ng Chooi Fei, Possingham Hugh P, McAlpine Clive A, de Villiers Deidré L, Preece Harriet J, Rhodes Jonathan R
School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; National Environmental Research Program Environmental Decisions Hub, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; National Environmental Research Program Environmental Decisions Hub, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; Imperial College London, Department of Life Sciences, Silwood Park, Ascot, Berkshire, England, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2014 Apr 3;9(4):e92430. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0092430. eCollection 2014.
Finding cost-effective management strategies to recover species declining due to multiple threats is challenging, especially when there are limited resources. Recent studies offer insights into how costs and threats can influence the best choice of management actions. However, when implementing management actions in the real-world, a range of impediments to management success often exist that can be driven by social, technological and land-use factors. These impediments may limit the extent to which we can achieve recovery objectives and influence the optimal choice of management actions. Nonetheless, the implications of these impediments are not well understood, especially for recovery planning involving multiple actions. We used decision theory to assess the impact of these types of impediments for allocating resources among recovery actions to mitigate multiple threats. We applied this to a declining koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) population threatened by habitat loss, vehicle collisions, dog attacks and disease. We found that the unwillingness of dog owners to restrain their dogs at night (a social impediment), the effectiveness of wildlife crossings to reduce vehicle collisions (a technological impediment) and the unavailability of areas for restoration (a land-use impediment) significantly reduced the effectiveness of our actions. In the presence of these impediments, achieving successful recovery may be unlikely. Further, these impediments influenced the optimal choice of recovery actions, but the extent to which this was true depended on the target koala population growth rate. Given that species recovery is an important strategy for preserving biodiversity, it is critical that we consider how impediments to the success of recovery actions modify our choice of actions. In some cases, it may also be worth considering whether investing in reducing or removing impediments may be a cost-effective course of action.
寻找具有成本效益的管理策略来拯救因多种威胁而数量下降的物种具有挑战性，尤其是在资源有限的情况下。最近的研究为成本和威胁如何影响管理行动的最佳选择提供了见解。然而，在现实世界中实施管理行动时，往往存在一系列影响管理成功的障碍，这些障碍可能由社会、技术和土地利用因素驱动。这些障碍可能会限制我们实现恢复目标的程度，并影响管理行动的最佳选择。尽管如此，这些障碍的影响尚未得到充分理解，尤其是对于涉及多种行动的恢复计划。我们使用决策理论来评估这些类型的障碍对在恢复行动之间分配资源以减轻多种威胁的影响。我们将此应用于一个因栖息地丧失、车辆碰撞、狗袭击和疾病而数量下降的考拉（Phascolarctos cinereus）种群。我们发现，狗主人不愿意在夜间拴住他们的狗（一种社会障碍）、野生动物通道减少车辆碰撞的有效性（一种技术障碍）以及恢复区域的不可用性（一种土地利用障碍）显著降低了我们行动的有效性。在存在这些障碍的情况下，实现成功恢复可能不太可能。此外，这些障碍影响了恢复行动的最佳选择，但这种影响的程度取决于目标考拉种群的增长率。鉴于物种恢复是保护生物多样性的一项重要策略，至关重要的是我们要考虑恢复行动成功的障碍如何改变我们的行动选择。在某些情况下，考虑投资减少或消除障碍是否可能是一种具有成本效益的行动方案也可能是值得的。
