Case Study: Endangered Species Recovery Plans Format your recovery plan using the following sections: 1. Title page (Include a picture, correctly cited.) 2. Background (Include life history information and past/current status.) (1 page) 3. Recovery Plan and Evaluation Methods (1 page) 4. Recommendations (Include how to allow the species to recover.) (0.5 page) 5. Literature Cited (new page) Make sure you are following the rules: 1. Stay within the page limits above. 2. Make sure you proofread your work. 3. You need to stay with Times New Roman font, one-inch margins, a title page with a picture, and a literature cited page. Scientific names: Use scientific names on the title page: Recovery of the Florida Manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) Use scientific names in the document: The Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) is an obligate herbivorous animal that requires vast amounts of sea grass and other vegetation daily. Florida manatees weigh between 1000 and 1200 pounds and can consume 10% to 15% of their body mass daily (Reynolds and O’Shay 1999). Grammar and capitalization: Please use your word processor to check the grammar and spelling in your document. Word will underling things in red (spelling error), green (grammar error) or blue (commas, dashes, etc.). Examine each error, but use caution as sometimes Word does not use the correct grammar due to technical words. Using Word in a different language and allowing it to translate is always a bad idea. Word is bad with this process and makes many mistakes. These examples are not correct: 1. “The Green Iguana…” 2. “The habitat and range of the Mountain Gorilla….” 3. “The Habitat and Range of the Mountain Gorilla has changed through time.” 4. “In the 1980’s…” “The habitat of dog’s…” Usually the only thing capitalized in a sentence is the first word and proper nouns (like country names). Apostrophes are only used for making something possessive. Like this: “The dog’s bone….” In this case, the bone belongs to the dog. BIOL/EVPP 377: Applied Ecology 1. 2. 3. 4. Scientific papers must contain facts. Every fact included in your paper must be in your own words. If you do not know the meaning of a word, use another one. Every fact in your paper must be cited. Use Journal of Ecology style in Zotero. All other styles are unacceptable for this It is very important to write in the third person. Leave out all references to "you", "we", “they”, “their” or "I" unless you are actually the person that conducted the research. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. “Your” and “You’re” are not the same word. The contraction of “could have” is not spelled “could of”. “Then” is a sequence of events. “Than” is used for comparison. Most of the time “affect” is a verb and “effect” is a noun. “Their”, “They’re” and “There” are completely different words. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. “Too”, “Two” and “To” are completely different words. Your pants are “loose” and you “lose” your keys. You “bear” weight with your “bare” hands. “A lot” is ALWAYS two words. “Although” is good; “Though” is slang. To take a person somewhere is “lead”; the past tense of that is “led”; the metal is “lead”. 1. 2. Use commas correctly. If you are unsure, leave it out! The period or other punctuation goes after closing parenthesis of the citation. For example: The cat lives for between 5 and8 years in the wild (Smith et al. 2008). 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. You use a spell checker and a grammar checker in your word processing program. Pay attention to those suggestions! Have someone else read your paper. Try your parents, they always want to know what you are up to and they will undoubtedly have an opinion. Read your paper aloud to yourself. When all else fails, or before, please ASK!! Send your paper to me and I will read it……really……  Be clear and concise: o Write briefly and to the point. Say what you mean clearly and avoid embellishment with unnecessary words or phrases. o Brevity is very important. Use of the active voice alone shortens sentence length considerably.  Some things to avoid: 1. You do not have to try to impress people by using words most people have never heard. Many published articles are like this, and they are poor papers on account of it. 2. Do not use colloquial speech, slang, or "childish" words or phrases. 1. Your papers will include no less than 3 reputable JOURNAL sources. 2. You must cite your references in proper form. ◦ Using Zotero you need the Journal of Ecology format. 3. You must use proper English language. Punctuation, spelling and grammar errors will lower your final grade. Be sure you use scientific names correctly. And be sure to USE them. Example: 1. o 2. o o 3. o 4. 5. o o Trichechus (capital; italics) manatus (small; italics) When referring to an animal by the scientific name: The manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris)…… Do this ONE time and then refer to the animal by the common name. Spell out an abbreviation the first time you use it. Example: The manatee was 2.5 meters (m) in length. Look at your paper before you turn it in. Are all of the sections on the same page as that section’s title? Did you print the Literature Cited? Start sentences with words not numbers or dates. Example: 4 manatees were seen along the coast. Four manatees were seen along the coast. X √   If you copy and paste from a paper and then add a citation to the end of that sentence, this is PLAGIARISM. You MUST change EVERYTHING into your own words and THEN cite the end of your new and completely different sentence.   PLEASE…ask for help. I do not know you need help if you do not tell me. You will research all three of the papers you are writing due to the case studies. You MUST cite in the correct style. Be sure to research using either the databases on the Library website or Google Scholar.       You MUST use a title page for your research paper. Choose a title that tells all about your subject. You may insert pictures if you like. You MUST put a picture on your Endangered Species research paper. Put your name on the page, MINE is NOT important, I did not write your paper. In the following example, you can see that they have their organization affiliations listed as well.     Each section heading should be the SAME FONT. It MUST be Times New Roman in all papers. All fonts in the paper text should be Times New Roman as well. Each section heading should be BOLD and should look exactly the same (same font style, same alignment, same font size), including the Literature Cited section. One space before each citation. One BLANK line between sections.        An abstract is a summary of the main paper. An abstract is not cited unless you have statistics or dates from another paper. This should be 200 words long. An abstract is NOT single spaced. An abstract is NOT on a separate page. You MAY include key words if you like. You will write an abstract (kind of) for the Zoo Enclosure Assignment. Follow these instructions then.    Introduce the main points of the topic. It is nice to allude to things you will cover. Also give a succinct description of your topic, defining any terms that may be required later.     IF you have one, a conclusion is NEVER one paragraph! You MUST have at least 2 paragraphs. Wrap up your project into something simple that you could present to a funding source. OF COURSE you CITE in the conclusion if it is required!! You may wish to answer: ◦ What did you learn? ◦ What significance does your research show for science? ◦ Why should other people be interested in this topic?    Format is everything here. Use Zotero. The program will fix everything and make it completely correct. The following example is from Marine Mammal Science and your Literature Cited should look different.  Go to the library and search for your papers. ◦ George Mason Library website  Keep in mind that you are downloading .pdf copies of PAPERS, from JOURNALS.  When you cite them leave the web address out.   You should use the program Zotero to create your Literature Cited section. Step 1: Download the software.  Click on the type of installation which works for your computer. ◦ To run Zotero, you SHOULD use Mozilla Firefox. The Stand Alone version of Zotero tends to cause problems. Recommended NOT recommended   So you should STOP and install Firefox if you do not have it on your computer. The Stand Alone version of Zotero sometimes has a hard time interfacing with word processing programs and creating a library.  Click on the Add a plugin for Word or LibreOffice. Choose the plugin that will work with your word processor. There are lots!   Now you have two plugins. One for Firefox and one for your word processor. If Zotero breaks for any reason, just re-install it. Click on the little grey wheel. Select PREFERENCES. Select CITE. Select STYLES. Select Get additional styles. Search for Journal of Ecology. Click on Journal of Ecology. You will see an example of the citation style. Have Firefox install that style.    To be able to cite in your word processor, you need to build a library in Zotero. You can do this by searching on Google Scholar or the databases at the library (library.gmu.edu). Type in as specific a topic as you can. Click on the yellow (or white) box to add things to your library. You can pick sources or add them all.    To use Zotero, you must build a library. The library allows you to cite easily into Word. Keep in mind that you need Zotero running in Mozilla Firefox AND in Microsoft Word in order to cite correctly. Also keep in mind that Zotero is prone to error and you should CAREFULLY check everything you allow it to put in your paper.   These examples are in Microsoft™ Word on a PC. The Mac is slightly different. If you have issues, please come see me with your computer. You can get a tab in your file menu for Zotero or it can be under Add-Ins.  In the end you need to find this menu.   In order to add a citation in Word, you first need to have that citation in your library. This is simple to do, if you go out to the library or Google Scholar and add it, as shown earlier. Click “Add/Edit Citation”. MAKE SURE: That you are in Journal of Ecology style. And click “OK”.  You will get this red box. You can type dates, parts of author’s names or parts of titles here to find your required citation  After that you can add one author or many. Then hit “Enter”.   Your document will then have citations in it in exactly the right format. Note that Zotero does not add spaces before the citation, you MUST do that.   After you have all of your citations in the paper, insert a page break. Add the words Literature Cited and click this button. It says “Insert Bibliography”.   A perfectly formatted Literature Cited section will appear. You MUST check it to be sure everything is right, as Zotero sometimes makes mistakes. Changes in fishery preferences are often driven by economic forces, and the value of a species will determine the investment that fishermen are willing to make in order to catch it, and thus how heavily it is fished at low abundance (Pinnegar et al. 2002).   This I copied this word for word from the article and I cited it. Is that plagiarism? Changes in fishery preferences are often driven by economic forces, and thus how heavily it is fished at low abundance (Pinnegar et al. 2002).   I changed it. What about now? According to Pinnegar et al. (2002) the fish that are caught are determined by the price the fishermen can get for them. This, in turn, shows fishing effort when there is a small population.   Now I have made it into my own words and cited it. Is that plagiarism? Changes in fishery preferences are often driven by economic forces, and the value of a species will determine the investment that fishermen are willing to make in order to catch it, and thus how heavily it is fished at low abundance (Pinnegar et al. 2002). According to Pinnegar et al. (2002) the fish that are caught are determined by the price the fishermen can get for them. This, in turn, shows fishing effort when there is a small population. Is this different enough?? Endangered Species Recovery Plans Background There are a variety of approaches, skills and techniques required to maintain and increase populations of animals that are threatened in the wild. Any approach to saving species must consider the genetic diversity of the population, how many populations exist in the wild, what sort of requirements the population has in the wild and any ecosystem or landscape features that are important to maintaining the species. Such information is of limited value for conservation unless it is integrated into a comprehensive recovery plan. In addition to obvious complexities of the plan itself, any conservation plan must be administered by an organizational agency within the federal government and may be heavily influenced by an outside nongovernment organization (NGO) or some type of cooperative coalition. In such efforts, the structures of the organizations responsible for the recovery will be as important, if not more important, than the biological validity of the plan or the skill of the planner. An effective conservation biologist is not simply one who knows how to collect and present information, but rather one who understands how to organize and distribute information to the appropriate decision makers through established organizational channels. Conservation is not defined or achieved simply by acquiring and presenting information, but rather by achieving normative outcomes that are legally enforceable and socially sustainable. Effective conservation biologists carefully study and evaluate the goals and values inherent in their organizational structure, as well as economic and political boundaries of their organization and the surrounding social context. They then present information in a way that directly and intentionally addresses these values and proposes specific ways to meet organizational goals within economic and political limitations. Students who wish to explore the influence of organizational structures and processes on such efforts will find an excellent introduction to these problems in the article “Designing and Managing Successful Endangered Species Recovery Programs” by Clark et al. (1989). Your mission in this exercise is to design a conservation plan for a threatened or endangered species, assuming an organizational structure suitable and responsive to this task and having explicit goals and values aimed at endangered species conservation. Essential Criteria of a Species Recovery Plan Effective species-specific recovery plans vary in detail. However, these plans must follow, in a logical order, a series of steps that make the plan workable. Keep in mind that you must be able to justify your plan to a group of people, perhaps even Congressmen or Senators, who are interested in either helping or stopping your plan from functioning. Goals Before a recovery plan can hope to succeed, you must identify the stakeholders who have a vested interest and a necessary role in the recovery of your species. An effective conservation biologist can synthesize the values of all stakeholders to determine an overall direction and outcome for the recovery plan. Once a direction has been determined, a careful scientific analysis must be completed. Such analyses should include assessing the species’ status, setting objectives that can be expressed as management actions, determining the feasibility of the proposed plan, designing monitoring and evaluation strategies and preparing a strategy of long-term adaptive management. Scientific Assessment: What Is the Status of the Species? An effective scientific assessment must accurately identify the life history requirements of the species in question and the status of the environmental and habitat conditions it faces. In this phase, a conservation biologist must ask and answer specific questions about the species. Be sure you answer all of the following questions. 1. Is there objective evidence that the species is in decline or that its numbers are approaching or already below a critical biological threshold (minimum viable population) or that its present range is less than its past range? One of the best rules of effective conservation is to never overlook the obvious. Some species of concern may turn out, upon closer inspection, to be stable or increasing populations. The concern for the animal may be coming either from the public (due to misconception), from political forces (due to controversial land use practices), economic (due to actual or potential commodity values), or aesthetic (due to the species being attractive, invested in cultural significance, or strongly identified with a cultural group, organization or country). Among these reasons, there may be no actual biological need to increase numbers of the species. Evidence that would support the hypothesis of the declining population would include things like reduced frequency of encounters with the species, lower counts of the animals during yearly surveys, population estimates of less than 1000 individuals, or a low intrinsic rate of increase. 2. What are the environmental requirements of the species being considered in the conservation plan? To answer this question, you need to have a thorough understanding of the species’ natural history. This includes things like the number of life stages the organism has and whether those stages need different environments to thrive, if there are other species that impact the organism, in either a positive or negative manner, and what kind of resources the organism needs to thrive. 3. What are the probable causes of the species’ decline, low numbers or restricted range? This cause of decline may be either obvious or hard to determine. It can also be true that the obvious cause is not the one that is having the greatest impact on the population of organisms. It is a good idea to examine all of the following, if possible. A. Geographic range: Was there a change in range over time? B. Habitat Use and Availability: Was there a change over time? C. Competitors, Predators, Parasites and Diseases that Affect the Population. D. Environmental Conditions E. Direct Exploitation F. Environmental Stochasticity G. Genetic Constraints H. Susceptibility to Natural Catastrophes 4. For each reasonable cause of the species’ decline, express the cause as a specific hypothesis that leads to specific predictions about the population. Examples would be: “At a given site, the presence of Y leads to a decline in X.” “At a given site, there is not a negative relationship between the density of Y and the density of X.” “At a given site, if Y is reduced, X will increase.” Setting Objectives: The Determination of Appropriate Action The key to creating objectives is to determine specific operational actions that will bring about necessary and desired conditions for recovery. If properly formulated, each action will correct a deficiency identified in the scientific assessment. Management options to increase the size, distribution and persistence of small, declining or geographically restricted populations of a species are usually of one of the following three types. 1. Intensive ecological and environmental management of the species in its natural habitat. Using this strategy managers depend on the capability of the organism to reproduce successfully in the wild. The manager controls, or changes, the environment to promote the greatest increase in population numbers. They also minimize detrimental environmental variation and optimize characteristics of population demography that will allow for population increase. This may include the removal of parasites, invasive species, predators or competitors in the environment. Other strategies may include removal of such things as disease, creation of a favorable habitat, increasing the amount of available habitat or improving the opportunity for the organism to migrate (increasing genetic variability). Even more drastic interventions like translocating individuals or even providing extra food for those in the managed habitat. 2. Supplementing populations with populations of captive-reared individuals. To employ this strategy, managers must have or create a captive population of the species of conservation concern, the offspring of which they release into the wild at favorable sites to supplement existing populations or start new ones. 3. Capture of all remaining wild individuals to preserve the population in captivity. This scenario is the most extreme but it is not strictly hypothetical. During the 1980s, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) was faced with an extremely small number of California condors (Gymnogyps californianus). In response to the rapid decline, they captured all remaining individuals and invested all their efforts into captive-breeding programs at the Los Angeles and San Diego zoos. The condors are slowly being reintroduced into the wild in California. Similarly, the 19 remaining individuals of black-footed ferrets (Mustela nigripes) were captured and placed into a captive-breeding program just before canine distemper eliminated the entire population in 1991. Black-footed ferret populations have since been established in Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Arizona. Determining the Feasibility of the Proposed Management Strategy Many well-designed plans for species recovery have failed, not because in theory they could not work, but because in practice they could not be carried out. In assessing the feasibility of proposed management actions, a conservation biologist must identify the issues and assumptions upon which the management plan rests. The issues are the political and economic concerns of the various stakeholders. The assumptions are the biological uncertainty inherent in the management action that has been proposed. For example, a conservation biologist must consider in advance the anticipated response of each stakeholder entity to the proposed management action. Conservation plans cannot be carried out in a social and political vacuum, but must consider stakeholders and involve them in management decisions and actions. To determine which individuals or groups are likely to be affected by management actions and how they may respond it will be helpful to ask the following questions. 1. Who owns, administers or uses the land or land produced commodities where the management action will take place? 2. How will the conservation plan affect ownership, administration, land use, or commodity production on lands where the management action is administered? Will the effects of the action help or hurt the interests of affected parties? 3. What nonresident individuals or groups have vested interests in the managed species? What is this interest and will it be helped or hurt by the management action? 4. Is the proposed management action likely to generate political or media interest? If so, how is the proposed action likely to be perceived by political interests and how is it likely to be portrayed by the media? Will such perception and portrayal help or hurt the implementation of the proposed management plan? 5. What forum exists (or can be created) for stakeholders to discuss their concerns constructively regarding proposed experiments or management actions? Ensuring Support A further essential dimension of a feasible recovery plan is its financial and social support. A conservation biologist must identify, in advance, the means of securing financial, logistical and political support for implementation of the plan. A wise economist once said: “If people want conservation, somebody is going to have to pay for it.” This means that the conservation biologist must determine which management actions will incur costs and then determine who is legally obligated to pay for these costs. In some cases, there will be organizations, groups or institutions that are willing to contribute to the conservation of the species of interest to further their own goals. If support is a legitimate and legally mandated function of the government, the planner must determine which agency or agencies should pay for implementation and supply necessary materials and equipment, as well as determine under what legal mandate they are compelled to do so. If support is needed from outside interests, the conservation biologist must determine the interests that should be approached for support and on what basis their support should be solicited. Specifically, what groups, institutions, organizations, or individuals hold values or pursue missions that are advanced by implementing the proposed management plan? Finally, how can the plan be presented to the public in order to foster a climate of overall public endorsement of the management plan and its desired outcomes? Designing a Monitoring and Evaluation Strategy To be successful, a recovery plan must have a method of assessing the effect the plan has on the population of interest. The criteria put forth must be able to measure success or failure of the recovery plan and these criteria must be set down in advance of the implementation of the plan. To do this, a conservation biologist should identify the variables to be measured that will predict success or failure of the management plan to move the species towards recovery. It is also important to determine the variables that will show success or failure with regard to the stakeholders and the general public on key issues critical to the recovery of the species. In combining both scientific and political monitoring, a well-designed recovery plan is one in which the conservation biologist can describe the techniques that could be used to monitor the status of the species over time. This must include such things as restrictions on land use, exploitation of the species or use of resources associated with the habitat of the species. Adaptation – Preparing a Plan for Ongoing Adaptive Management Even the best, most carefully designed and well-supported plans do not always work. A conservation biologist must be able to identify what adjustments could be made in the management plan if the initial implementation of the plan is not successful. Adaptive management is a necessary part of a recovery plan because none of the questions or problems previously posed can be resolved with certainty. Good conservation planning can be described as the information a manager learns as a management plan is put into place. What is different before and after the implementation of the plan? Acknowledging and assessing the level of uncertainty in the implementation of the plan is critical to a successful recovery effort. However, the existence of uncertainty does not and cannot prevent recovery efforts from taking place. Assignment You are to select a species that is identified as endangered by the International Union on the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). They have an enormous amount of information available on their website (http://www.iucn.org/). It is important to examine the information available on your species before committing to the creation of a recovery plan for that species. Keep in mind that it is plagiarism to cut and paste, or in this case even use, a previously created recovery plan for your species. Format your recovery plan using the following sections: 1. Background: Include Life History Information and Past and Current Status 2. Recovery Plan 3. Evaluation Methods 4. Recommendations for making sure the species is recovering 5. Literature Cited Your recovery plan must be (Times New Roman font only). You must also include a title page with a picture (cited correctly) of your species. You should also address all the following questions or address the concerns in your recovery plan. 1. The planner makes appropriate and integrated use of reliable existing information to identify the most critical issues associated with the target species. 2. The planner makes appropriate and integrated use of reliable existing information or suggests feasible methods to acquire additional information on the status of the target species. Does it exist in a restricted range or was the range reduced at some time in the past? 3. Based on available or collected information the planner makes informed and intelligent inferences about the causes of the decline of the species, its current population numbers or reduced range. All of which must be correctly cited. 4. The planner effectively translates the inferences in steps 1 through 4 into specific hypotheses, each of which leads to at least one prediction. 5. The planner describes a specific experimental approach or management plan with clear action steps that can be used to evaluate the predictions derived from the hypotheses and that is likely to lead to the achievement of the goal of species recovery. Time frames that are used by the manager must be realistic. This is not opinion, be sure to examine past plans and se common sense about creating your new one. 6. The planner determines the full array of stakeholders with legitimate interests in the species and in management actions associated with conservation of the species, identifies their values and concerns and anticipates stakeholder response to management actions. 7. The planner identifies and anticipates types and sources of opposition and obstacles and has a means to overcome those. 8. The planner provides an intelligent and feasible means of gaining financial, logistical, political and public support for the conservation plan to increase the likelihood of its effectiveness, continuance and eventual success. 9. The planner provides an effective and feasible means of monitoring the status of the targeted species and specific criteria for determining the effectiveness of the plan once it is implemented. Actions associated with the plan are concrete and can be monitored. Results can be measured and one can objectively determine if goals are accomplished. 10. The planner provides an ongoing means of integrating results of current management actions into modifications and development of future management plans in terms of some type of adaptive management. Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner Scanned by CamScanner
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