hugh possingham plus a cast of many the ecology centre the university of queensland australia the...

Hugh Possingham plus a cast of manyThe Ecology Centre

The University of Queensland

Australia

www.ecology.uq.edu.au

www.uq.edu.au/spatialecology

the ecology centreuniversity of queensland

australiawww.uq.edu.au/spatialecology

h.possingham@uq.edu.au

Conservation biology:

what is the problem?

Most of the spatial ecology lab (www.uq.edu.au/spatialecology)

Rational decision-making is critical to the future of the discipline

The examples presented generalise to every problem I have heard

the ecology centreuniversity of queensland

australiawww.uq.edu.au/spatialecology

h.possingham@uq.edu.au

Message

What shall I do with my money?

Species Prob of extinction

Cost to secure

Prob of success

Polar bear

40%, V 5 30%

Panda bear

90%, CE 20 50%

Koala bear

30%, V 5 100%

A plant 60%, E 10 50%

Which is the highest priority species?

• How threatened is it, V, E or CE? That determines priority right?

• That is not a properly posed problem, it is a question that has caused us to waste a lot of time and money – it has no objective!

• A question with an objective: How can I spend my money so I maximise the number of species secured?

Cost efficiency

Species Prob of extinction

Cost to secure, C

Prob of success,P

Polar bear

40%, V 5 30%

Panda bear

90%, CE 20 50%

Koala bear

10%, NT 5 100%

A plant 60%, E 10 50%

P/C

= expected benefit /cost

0.06

0.03

0.20

0.05

Oops, sorry wrong problem

• Spend my money so I minimise the number of species I lose

• The biodiversity benefit, B, from securing the species is the benefit above and beyond what would have happened = prob of extinction

Cost efficiency

Species Prob of extinction

B

Cost to secure, C

Prob of success,P

Polar bear

40%, V 5 30%

Panda bear

90%, CE 20 50%

Koala bear

10%, NT 5 100%

A plant 60%, E 10 50%

B*P/C

= expected benefit /cost

0.024

0.025

0.020

0.030

Oops, sorry wrong problem

• Spend my money so I minimise the number of species I lose taking into account their value: their taxonomic uniqueness, or how much I would like to cuddle them.

• Easy, multiply the biodiversity benefit by that value and recalculate

• Why is this the optimal approach, cant I use a scoring system?

Scoring system

Species Prob of extinction

B

Cost to secure, C

Prob of success,P

Polar bear

40%, V 5 30%

Panda bear

90%, CE 20 50%

Koala bear

10%, NT 5 100%

A plant 60%, E 10 50%

2

4

1

3

2

3

5

3

4

2

4

3

Total score

8

9

10

9

Do you think scoring is rational?

• Is Force = mass + acceleration?• What is the cost efficiency of buying 20kg of

bananas for $10.00?• Scoring system are wrong: there are rational and

irrational ways of combining these numbers• Say after me: Scoring Systems Suck

– Liana Joseph Thursday 14:30– Possingham et al TREE 2002– Mace et al 2006

• Proof of triage

Where and when should we invest $ for reservation to conserve biodiversity?

Kerrie Wilson, Michael Bode, Marissa McBride

© "Hotspots Revisited", Conservation International 2004© "Hotspots Revisited", Conservation International 2004

Brooks et al Science 7 July 2006:Vol. 313. no. 5783, pp. 58 - 61

Global Biodiversity Conservation Priorities

Maps of the nine global biodiversity conservation priority templates: CE, crisis ecoregions (21); BH, biodiversity hot spots [(11), updated by (39)]; EBA, endemic bird areas (15); CPD, centers of plant diversity (12); MC, megadiversity countries (13); G200, global 200 ecoregions [(16), updated by (54)]; HBWA, high-biodiversity wilderness areas (14); FF, frontier forests (19); LW, last of the wild (20).

Prioritising where and when money is spent

Explain the problem

Describe the innovative science

Show how the science solves the problem

Something provocative

Funding agencies and partners

The problem (in words)

• How should we allocate scarce resources within or between different parts of the globe to conserve biodiversity?

• There are many priority setting schemes based on scores and rules and a lot of biodiversity data

• The problem is – nobody bothered to state the problem – what are these priority regions for, my annual holiday?

Existing hotspots answer the question of where biodiversity levels are highest and where threat was, and probably is, high

Like threatened species lists, Hotspots Like threatened species lists, Hotspots were never intended to account forwere never intended to account for

1.1. The cost of actionThe cost of action2.2. How returns for conservation How returns for conservation

investment change through time, or investment change through time, or 3.3. The dynamic nature of landscapes and The dynamic nature of landscapes and

the existence of uncertaintythe existence of uncertainty

All of these things are needed to get you All of these things are needed to get you the biggest bang for your buckthe biggest bang for your buck

Asia-Pacific Region

A dynamic system

Formulating the RIGHT problem…

• Objective: minimise the loss of biodiversity within a set of priority areas, given an ongoing loss of habitat, and a fixed budget for conservation investment

• Management decision: how many land parcels to reserve in the different priority areas at a given time

• Constraint: the annual budget

Formulating the RIGHT problem…

• System properties: endemic species richness, rate of forest conversion, and cost of land acquisition

• System dynamics: parcels are subject to a annual conversion rate, budget is allocated to one or more regions, which increases the reserved area and decreases conservation returns with time

• Uncertainty associated with the forest conversion data is incorporated by representing it as a stochastic process.

Formulating the RIGHT problem…

Proportional forest loss, l1

Reservation with fractional allocation u1

Proportional forest loss, l2

Reservation with fractional allocation u2

Budget, B

R1

A1 R2

L1

A2

L2

The Data

Ii

iy

Priority Area Number endemic birds

Conversion rate (%/yr)

Cost (US$ km-2 year-1)

Sulawesi 67 -2.4 76

Java/Bali 24 -1.7 782

Sumatra 18 -2.3 95

Southern Peninsular Malaysia

4 -1.2 2746

Borneo 29 -2.1 110

Solution Method

• Stochastic dynamic programming will give optimal results but is limited to low-dimensional problems

• Simpler heuristics– Maximise short term gain of species

(ignores threat)– Minimise short term loss of species

(accounts for threat)

Multimedia

To the whiteboarda multimedia talk

Iiiy

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Percent of total area

Nu

mb

er o

f en

dem

ic s

pec

ies

Sumatra

Borneo

Ii

iy

Results

• The minimisation of short term loss closely approximates the optimal solution

• Answer– Spend all your money in Sulawesi until nothing left

to do there

– Then Sumatra, then Java/Bali, then Borneo

– Finally Peninsular Malaysia

Ii

iy

What if we had useda simple-minded scoring approach?

Table 1 Data for the five priority areas

Priority Area

Area(km2)

Forested area (km2)

in 1997

Reserved area (km2) in 2003

# endemic

bird species

Conversion rate, % yr-

Cost US$ km-1

Rank Rank Rank

Sumatra 475746 164303 84901 18 4 2.3 2 95 2

Borneo 735372 426975 173989 29 2 2.1 3 110 3

Sulawesi 187530 79509 68150 67 1 2.4 1 76 1

Java/Bali 138787 19464 8770 24 3 1.7 4 782 4

Malaysia 131598 58500 29221 4 5 1.2 5 2746 53

24

Summary

• We properly formulated the problem

• Found simple heuristics that perform well

• Tells you not only how much to spend where, but when!

• Scoring systems provide an inefficient answer – are they really that bad?

Ii

iy

Can I do this for all the world’s hotspots?

Michael Bode, Kerrie Wilson,Tom Brooks, Will Turner, Marissa McBride, Emma Underwood

In pressrejection

Considerations • The world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots

• Take into account– Threat (rate of conversion)– Endemic species (number of)

• Mammals, Amphibian, Birds, Reptiles,Freshwater Fish, Tiger Beetles, Vascular Plants, All vertebrates

– Cost

Where should I put my $310 million over the next 20 years?

© "Hotspots Revisited", Conservation International 2004© "Hotspots Revisited", Conservation International 2004

Some of data

We could use some inane medieval scoring method?

Unpublished – Bode et al

Take home

• Money matters a lot more that the other parameters, and to a lesser extent % reserved, threat and endemic species richness

• With costs we allocate funds consistently to seven or eight regions relatively independently of the taxa used to set priorities: – Tropical Andes– Guinea Forests of West Africa– East Afromontane– East Melanesian Islands– Madagascar …

• What group of species you use does not matter too much!

New stuff

• What if we built the world’s reserve systems again from scratch? We could achieve so much more with same investment – not just hotspots

Hoekstra et al.• But reservation is only part of conservation – what if we

allowed different sorts of actions like weed control, revegetation, …

Wilson, Shaw, Underwood et al. – PLoS in press

• More examples of ROI – Murdoch et al• Risk and uncertainty – McBride et al• All part of general Return On Investment/Cost

efficiency thinking

Scoring systems helpline

If you still feel you need to use scoring systems and you need confidential help:

Ring +61 7 3365 9766 – 24 hours a day

Email h.possingham@uq.edu.au

Confidentiality guaranteed

Special courses: step program where we still allow some scoring where appropriate

Working on more slogans to help you go cold turkey on scoring systems

Properly formulated problems and practically perfect in every possible way

Possingham is a patronising pontificating p…

Can be applied to any decision making

• Key biodiversity areas, KBAs• Regional management plans• The answer can be done on a

spreadsheet

Cost Efficiency = expected benefit/cost• Cost benefit analysis?• Multi-criteria decision analysis?• Does it cause change?

Quick Exit

Australian biodiversity priorities

Dear Hugh,

Given limited resources what should I do now to minimise Australia’s net loss of biodiversity over the next 100 years, yours faithfully,

John Howard

Prime Minister of Australia

Species saved per $ spent

• List continental scale management options• Estimate cost• Calculate species saved

– Convert birds or plants to all species – 1 bird = 20 plants, one plant = 20 other species

• Guess socio-political feasibility• Evaluate collateral benefit (carbon fixed)• See “Setting biodiversity priorities”

http://www.dest.gov.au/science/pmseic/meetings/8thmeeting.htm

Prevent broadscale clearing of high biodiversity areas in QLD

Factor Value

No. of species saved 5,280

Area 2,270,400 ha

Cost/ha $88

Total cost $200m

No. species saved/$1m 26

Collateral benefit $4,008m

Collateral benefit/total cost 20

Protect the health of rivers that are least disturbed

Factor Value

No. of species saved 2,940

Total cost $30m

No. species saved/$1m 98

Collateral benefit $390m

Collateral benefit/total cost 13

Mechanical control of feral predators

Factor Value

No. of species saved 44

Total cost $22.5m

No. species saved/$1m 2

Collateral benefit $15 m

Collateral benefit/total cost 0.7

Process

• List the options– Stop land clearing in QLD– Salinity management in key catchments in WA– Biocontrol of major weeds– Early eradication, better quarantine

• Work out cost and species saved• Leave collateral benefits as a separate currency• Synthesise, rank and sell to PM and cabinet

Conclusion

• Is this useful in the real world? We used cost-efficiency thinking to deliver a national conservation plan for Australia which has helped save 50+ million hectares, declaration of wild rivers, rezoned GBR …

• What am I if I do conservation and I don’t include $ in my decision making?

• Making smart conservation decisions is largely a problem of problem definition and logic: getting something done is largely a problem of marketing, timing, flirting and buying people, like me, drinks

How much money should I spend on monitoring?What is the purpose of monitoring?How should I allocate funds to managing spatially structured threatened species, or weeds, or a harvestable wildlife species?When do I know a species is eradicated?What are optimal disturbance regimes?www.ecology.uq.edu

the ecology centreuniversity of queensland

australiawww.uq.edu.au/spatialecology

h.possingham@uq.edu.au

Other lab activities

Spatial Ecology Lab at UQ: quantitative ecologists

Kerrie Wilson

Josie Carwardine

Liana Joseph

Michael Bode

+ Marissa McBride + Matt Watts + Tara Martin + Tracey Regan + David Pavlacky + Justine Murray + Carissa Klein + Eddie Game + others

Emily Nicholson

Hamish McCallum Peter

Baxter

Eve McDonald-Madden

Hiroyuki Yokomizo

Reinaldo Lourival

Karen Hurley

Maria Beger

Australian Research Council

Partners/funders

Conservation Letters