Vanderduys Eric Peter, Reside April E, Grice Anthony, Rechetelo Juliana
CSIRO Land and Water, PMB PO, Aitkenvale, Queensland, Australia.
Centre for Tropical Environmental & Sustainability Sciences, James Cook University, Queensland, Australia.
PLoS One. 2016 Mar 2;11(3):e0148485. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0148485. eCollection 2016.
Where threatened biodiversity is adversely affected by development, policies often state that "no net loss" should be the goal and biodiversity offsetting is one mechanism available to achieve this. However, developments are often approved on an ad hoc basis and cumulative impacts are not sufficiently examined. We demonstrate the potential for serious threat to an endangered subspecies when multiple developments are planned. We modelled the distribution of the black-throated finch (Poephila cincta cincta) using bioclimatic data and Queensland's Regional Ecosystem classification. We overlaid granted, extant extractive and exploratory mining tenures within the known and modelled ranges of black-throated finches to examine the level of incipient threat to this subspecies in central Queensland, Australia. Our models indicate that more than half of the remaining P. cincta cincta habitat is currently under extractive or exploratory tenure. Therefore, insufficient habitat exists to offset all potential development so "no net loss" is not possible. This has implications for future conservation of this and similarly distributed species and for resource development planning, especially the use of legislated offsets for biodiversity protection.
当受威胁的生物多样性受到发展的不利影响时，政策通常规定“不造成净损失”应成为目标，而生物多样性补偿是实现这一目标的一种可用机制。然而，开发项目往往是临时批准的，对累积影响没有进行充分审查。我们证明了在规划多个开发项目时，濒危亚种可能受到严重威胁。我们利用生物气候数据和昆士兰地区生态系统分类法对黑喉草雀（Poephila cincta cincta）的分布进行了建模。我们将已获批的、现存的采掘和勘探采矿权覆盖在黑喉草雀已知和建模的分布范围内，以研究澳大利亚昆士兰州中部该亚种面临的初始威胁程度。我们的模型表明，黑喉草雀剩余栖息地的一半以上目前处于采掘或勘探权范围内。因此，没有足够的栖息地来抵消所有潜在的开发活动，所以“不造成净损失”是不可能的。这对该物种及分布类似的物种的未来保护以及资源开发规划具有影响，尤其是对生物多样性保护中法定补偿措施的使用。
