Governing trade-offs in ecosystem services and disservices to achieve human-wildlife coexistence.

Sustaining wildlife populations, which provide both ecosystem services and disservices, represents a worldwide conservation challenge. The ecosystem services and Ostrom's social-ecological systems frameworks have been adopted across natural and social sciences to characterize benefits from nature. Despite their generalizability, individually they do not include explicit tools for addressing the sustainable management of many wildlife populations. For instance, Ostrom's framework does not specifically address competing perspectives on wildlife, whereas the ecosystem services framework provides a limited representation of the social and governance context wherein such competing perspectives are embedded. We developed a unified social-ecological framework of ecosystem disservices and services (SEEDS) that advances both frameworks by explicitly acknowledging the importance of competing wildlife perspectives embedded in the social and governance contexts. The SEEDS framework emulates the hierarchical structure of Ostrom's social-ecological systems, but adds subsystems reflecting heterogeneous stakeholder views and experiences of wildlife-based services and disservices. To facilitate operationalizing SEEDS and further broader analyses across human-wildlife systems, we devised a list of variables to describe SEEDS subsystems, such as types and level of services and disservices, cost and benefit sharing, and social participation of stakeholders. Steps to implement SEEDS involve engaging local communities and stakeholders to define the subsystems, analyze interactions and outcomes, and identify leverage points and actions to remedy unwanted outcomes. These steps connect SEEDS with other existing approaches in social-ecological research and can guide analyses across systems or within individual systems to provide new insights and management options for sustainable human-wildlife coexistence.

Control de las Compensaciones de los Servicios y Perjuicios Ambientales para Lograr la Coexistencia entre Humanos y Fauna Resumen El mantenimiento de las poblaciones silvestres de fauna, las cuales proporcionan servicios y perjuicios, representa un reto para la conservación a nivel mundial. Los servicios ambientales y los marcos de trabajo de los sistemas socio-ecológicos de Ostrom se han adoptado en la ciencias naturales y sociales para caracterizar los beneficios que proporciona la naturaleza. A pesar de ser generalizables, individualmente no incluyen herramientas explícitas para tratar el manejo sustentable de muchas poblaciones silvestres. Por ejemplo, el marco de trabajo de Ostrom no trata de manera específica las perspectivas rivales sobre fauna, mientras que el marco de trabajo de los servicios ambientales proporciona una representación limitada del contexto social y de gobierno en los que están embebidas dichas perspectivas rivales. Desarrollamos un marco de trabajo socio-ecológico unificado de servicios y perjuicios ambientales (SEEDS, en inglés) que impulsa ambos marcos de trabajo al reconocer explícitamente la importancia de las perspectivas rivales sobre fauna embebidas en los contextos sociales y de gobierno. El marco de trabajo SEEDS emula la estructura jerárquica de los sistemas socio-ecológicos de Ostrom, pero añade subsistemas que reflejan la visión y las experiencias heterogéneas que los accionistas tienen sobre los servicios y perjuicios basados en la fauna. Para facilitar la operación de los SEEDS y ampliar los análisis en todos los sistemas humano-fauna, diseñamos una lista de variables para describir los subsistemas de los SEEDS, como los tipos y niveles de los servicios y perjuicios, el costo y beneficio del reparto, y la participación social de los accionistas. Los pasos para implementar los SEEDS involucran comprometer a las comunidades locales y a los accionistas para que definan los subsistemas, analicen las interacciones y los resultados, e identifiquen los puntos y acciones de ventaja para remediar los resultados no deseados. Estos pasos conectan a los SEEDS con otras estrategias de investigación socio-ecológica y pueden guiar los análisis a través de varios sistemas o dentro de sistemas individuales para proporcionar nueva información y opciones de manejo para una coexistencia sustentable entre humanos y fauna.

Incorporating threat in hotspots and coldspots of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Spatial prioritization could help target conservation actions directed to maintain both biodiversity and ecosystem services. We delineate hotspots and coldspots of two biodiversity conservation features and five regulating and cultural services by incorporating an indicator of 'threat', i.e. timber harvest profitability for forest areas in Telemark (Norway). We found hotspots, where high values of biodiversity, ecosystem services and threat coincide, ranging from 0.1 to 7.1% of the area, depending on varying threshold levels. Targeting of these areas for conservation follows reactive conservation approaches. In coldspots, high biodiversity and ecosystem service values coincide with low levels of threat, and cover 0.1-3.4% of the forest area. These areas might serve proactive conservation approaches at lower opportunity cost (foregone timber harvest profits). We conclude that a combination of indicators of biodiversity, ecosystem services and potential threat is an appropriate approach for spatial prioritization of proactive and reactive conservation strategies.

Harmonizing Biodiversity Conservation and Productivity in the Context of Increasing Demands on Landscapes.

Biodiversity conservation and agricultural production are often seen as mutually exclusive objectives. Strategies for reconciling them are intensely debated. We argue that harmonization between biodiversity conservation and crop production can be improved by increasing our understanding of the underlying relationships between them. We provide a general conceptual framework that links biodiversity and agricultural production through the separate relationships between land use and biodiversity and between land use and production. Hypothesized relationships are derived by synthesizing existing empirical and theoretical ecological knowledge. The framework suggests nonlinear relationships caused by the multifaceted impacts of land use (composition, configuration, and intensity). We propose solutions for overcoming the apparently dichotomous aims of maximizing either biodiversity conservation or agricultural production and suggest new hypotheses that emerge from our proposed framework.

Conservation planning for biodiversity and wilderness: a real-world example.

Several of the most important conservation prioritization approaches select markedly different areas at global and regional scales. They are designed to maximize a certain biodiversity dimension such as coverage of species in the case of hotspots and complementarity, or composite properties of ecosystems in the case of wilderness. Most comparisons between approaches have ignored the multidimensionality of biodiversity. We analyze here the results of two species-based methodologies-hotspots and complementarity-and an ecosystem-based methodology-wilderness-at local scale. As zoning of protected areas can increase the effectiveness of conservation, we use the data employed for the management plan of the Peneda-Gerês National Park in Portugal. We compare the approaches against four criteria: species representativeness, wilderness coverage, coverage of important areas for megafauna, and for regulating ecosystem services. Our results suggest that species- and ecosystem-based approaches select significantly different areas at local scale. Our results also show that no approach covers well all biodiversity dimensions. Species-based approaches cover species distribution better, while the ecosystem-based approach favors wilderness, areas important for megafauna, and for ecosystem services. Management actions addressing different dimensions of biodiversity have a potential for contradictory effects, social conflict, and ecosystem services trade-offs, especially in the context of current European biodiversity policies. However, biodiversity is multidimensional, and management and zoning at local level should reflect this aspect. The consideration of both species- and ecosystem-based approaches at local scale is necessary to achieve a wider range of conservation goals.