State Vegetation Type Map for New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The map shows color-coded Plant Community Types (PCTs). Click for the full size image.

To better manage our native vegetation, the New South Wales government is delivering a comprehensive and complete state-wide baseline for the extent and distribution of the different groupings or types of vegetation – the State Vegetation Type Map (SVT Map).

The SVT is based on site surveys, a standard classification system and high resolution spatial representation. With a complete vegetation type map for NSW, for the first time government, business and the community will be able to see what we currently know about the distribution of Plant Community Types for all of NSW. This approach will provide a wide-ranging basis to set conservation priorities instead of just localized and incomplete information.

Plant Community Types (PCTs) are the agreed foundation level for classifying vegetation in NSW and are intended to provide the most ecologically relevant grouping of plant species for a range of purposes not just mapping. For example, site assessments will use this classification unit to describe the vegetation present and compare their current condition with related benchmarks.

Plant communities are complex and dynamic entities that can be challenging to map or even recognize on the ground especially where they have been significantly modified through clearing or logging. Some closely related PCTs can share common species or differ by a particular layer. Boundaries between types are not always distinct. Our understanding of PCTs will continue to change as more site survey data is collected especially in poorly sampled areas.

With the support of the NSW Environmental Trust, a major project was initiated to accelerate the creation of a complete and consistent reference layer for the extent and distribution of the approximately 1300 (PCTs) in NSW–the State Vegetation Type Map.

The State Vegetation Map cannot be expected to be a perfect and timeless representation of the landscape. Rather, it is designed to provide a common basis for vegetation information in NSW that can be readily updated without the need for producing entirely new maps. The underlying skeleton can more easily incorporate new site information and more detailed special-purpose vegetation maps (where compatible) to continuously improve the state wide picture.

For more information about vegetation information please visit our website at: http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/vegetation/vinfo.htm

Bob Denholm
Senior Team Leader Vegetation Mapping
Native Vegetation Information Science Branch
Science Division
Office of Environment and Heritage

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Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden.

CEE is an open collaboration with a global mission to provide the best available evidence to inform decision making in the environmental sector. We are witnessing the beginning of a new age—the Anthropocene. Whether you are a scientist, policy maker, activist or concerned citizen, the challenges we are facing are enormous. Evidence about what works and what doesn’t in environmental management is needed to meet these challenges and CEE has developed to collate, synthesize and disseminate reliable evidence to meet this need.

We hope that this conference serves to raise awareness and facilitate increased adoption among policy makers, scientists, donor agencies, and concerned citizens of the work of CEE and the knowledge we currently have.

So who is this conference for? Anyone who believes that information about what works and what doesn’t. Better evidence is needed for people to make informed choices. Better decisions are needed about how to create a better environment, making the world a better place.

We hope that this conference will be the start of an ongoing conversation between CEE and the diverse actors at the science-policy interface and will raise awareness about methods used in obtaining high-level evidence as well as the value of evidence-informed decision-making.

Full details of the conference can be found at www.environmentalevidence.org/meetings

Please print out the flyer below and post on your notice boards and in your office.

First Announcement CEE Conference (PDF)

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Megastigmus schimitscheki, a type of cedar wasp, is considered to be an invasive species in southern France. (See Fabre JP, Auger-Rozenberg MA, Chalon A, Boivin S, Roques A. 2004. Competition between exotic and native insects for seed resources in trees of a Mediterranean forest ecosystem. Biological Invasions 6:11‒22. Photo courtesy of Thomas Boivin.)

Invasive species project: first phase goals

During the first phase of the project, we are gathering opinions via an online survey on the global and local issues that might affect the management of biological invasions in the next 20 to 50 years. We want to explore issues that may emerge and have implications in a more distant future than currently considered in the management of biological invasions. These can be issues which might have positive or negative implications.

Invasive species project: survey goals

We invite people working with or interested in biological invasions to fill in the survey on our website: www.alienfutures.org.

Click to take the invasive species survey

The survey is also available in French and Spanish on that page. We encourage people to think creatively beyond the time frame of their current work. All of the issues identified will be published online on the project webpage. Project outputs will include a long list of global issues, a long list of local issues and a shortlist of global issues. We will make the data available for use and further research, with workshops planned to explore the implications of these issues for policy and management.

Please share the invasive species project survey

We would like to distribute the survey as widely as possible and ask people to share it within their networks. Please contact us at info@alienfutures.org if you want an email draft (available in English, French and Spanish).

Follow the invasive species project

You can follow the progress of the project on the website www.alienfutures.org or Twitter at @alienfutures. You can search or follow using the hashtag #alienfutures.

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Introduced mallard ducks (left) regularly mate with native grey ducks (right) in New Zealand. Males of either species often opt to mate with females of the other species. Is this mutual appreciation for the exotic wayward, or do they have something to teach us? (Images courtesy of Wikipedia Creative Commons)

Many of us have built entire careers out of identifying which introduced species inconvenience natives. We explore and quantify their effects, and then crow about how important it is to rid ourselves of these ‘invasive’ nuisances.

So, for some, it is with considerable trepidation that they witness this complacent formula starting to unravel in recent years. Study after study, across discipline after discipline, is showing that introduced species are not, and never were, as bad as we thought.

An aging rear guard has devoted itself to the defense of old-school nativism, with all its irregularities, quirks and eccentricities. But many of us can now see that that ship was flawed all along and is now best abandoned.

Let’s learn to live with introduced species, not because it’s a novel or contrarian view, but because it has become the most compelling and sane thing to do.

Reasons to appreciate introduced species

Here are five good reasons why:

1. More diversity. In general, introduced species increase local and regional species richness. Most islands, for example, have doubled their lists of plant species through introductions. Longstanding nightmares of ecosystems dominated by single species, while common in agricultural landscapes, are the exception in the wild. Let’s stop talking about species like kudzu as if they were representative.
2. More uniqueness. A fixation on species-level biodiversity has fostered the impression that we are losing uniqueness. This assumption is flawed. While species have gone extinct (sometimes due, in part, to introduced species), our ecosystems are every bit as unique as they always were. Native ecosystems are unique, but so too are novel ecosystems, comprising biota that have never lived in the same configurations in history.
3. More evolution. Change is continuous and countless recent studies investigating rates of evolution show that it happens a lot faster than we used to think. Both native and introduced species don’t care about our historical baselines and are actively breeding and (de)selecting themselves away from them. Much like technological innovation in times of crisis, evolution seems to be speeding up in response to the environmental changes we have wrought. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this is a good thing and that trying to stop it might actually be damaging to the vitality of future ecosystems.
4. More nature. We ask people to explore and cherish nature, but so much of the nature they experience around them is the ‘wrong’ kind. Introduced genes, species, and ecosystems are everywhere, permeating everything.
   The search for purity is more than an embarrassment now. We risk disenfranchising a whole generation of people by constantly pointing to the belief that real nature is always somewhere else.
5. More compassion. Over the last few decades, people have blamed introduced species for just about every environmental malady you could think of. We have been told (and told ourselves) that they are the perpetrators of undesirable processes and states again and again.

The truth is that introduced species are as much the victims of globalisation as native species, having little choice over their location, and no choice over their valuation, but having to suffer the consequences all the same. Scapegoating introduced species is a tired, unethical pastime.

For a more detailed examination of the arguments raised in this article consider reading my recently completed PhD thesis: The Reconciliation of Introduced Species in New Zealand.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

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There is a risk that traditional conservation strategies oriented toward biodiversity may not be effective at protecting the economic benefits of an ecosystem, and vice-versa. ~ Bill Adams

Putting a price on the services which a particular ecosystem provides may encourage the adoption of greener policies, but it may come at the price of biodiversity conservation. Writing today (30 October) in the journal Science, Professor Bill Adams of the University’s Department of Geography argues that assigning a quantitative value to nature does not automatically lead to the conservation of biodiversity, and may in fact contribute to species loss and conflict.

While assigning a monetary value to the benefits of an ecosystem can be an essential tool in the environmental planning process, unequal access to those benefits, particularly where there are differences in wealth and power, can lead to poor trade-offs being made, both for the ecosystem itself and those who rely on it.

“Putting a price on what nature provides is not in itself a conservation measure,” said Adams. “There is a risk that traditional conservation strategies oriented toward biodiversity may not be effective at protecting the economic benefits of an ecosystem, and vice-versa.”

For example, when stream channels in the US state of Maryland were re-engineered to provide a means of natural flood control, it ended up causing the loss of trees which had been growing next to the water and were unable to adapt to their new, drier environment.

The ways in which we depend on our natural environment are increasingly expressed as ‘ecosystem services’, or the range of benefits we get from nature for free. These benefits include the provision of food and clean water, erosion control and carbon storage. Quantifying the value of nature in this way is meant to allow policymakers to consider the potential economic and social impacts of altering a particular habitat.

This approach does sometimes lead to win-win scenarios, where the value of ecosystem services is dependent upon a high level of biodiversity. One example is in the coffee plantations of Costa Rica, where the retention of forest habitat in areas around the plantations doubled the amount of pest control of coffee berry borer beetle provided by birds, which benefitted the coffee farmers while protecting biodiversity.

However, consideration of ecosystem services when making decisions does not automatically lead to retention of biodiversity. “In many cases, trade-offs are made,” said Adams.

Several factors cause tension between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. One problem is that the biological and physical processes that guarantee the supply of specific ecosystem services may be different from those that support valued species. An ecosystem that is managed to deliver particular services may not support particular elements of biodiversity.

A second problem is that there are often no markets for some vital services, such as soil formation and nutrient cycling, and while payment schemes can be created to create market-like structures, the value assigned to ecosystem services depends on market prices, which are subject to change.

A third problem arises from the institutional and political processes linking economic benefits from ecosystems and human wellbeing. “Unequal access to benefits, for example where there are differences in wealth and power among stakeholders, can lead to trade-offs being made, with negative impacts for the ecosystem itself and those who rely on it,” Adams comments “It’s not enough to identify the net benefits of ecosystem services; it also matters who gets them.”

For example, in Nepal, research has shown that forests managed by the local community, rather than by the state, yielded benefits of clean water, tourism and harvested wild goods. However, these forests restricted poorer people’s access to forest-derived products, creating hardship, illegal use and impacts on other areas.

“In a world run according to economic arguments, the survival of biotic diversity will depend on its price,” said Adams. “Sometimes economics will favour conservation and sometimes it won’t. But conservationists need to plan for both outcomes.”

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to the original page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

Original article: Does it help conservation to put a price on nature?

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