Icons Of Conservation Management

 


Conservation management begins with the identification of a measurable environmental feature that is valued for its own sake, but is subject to a factor or factors causing its decline from a favorable condition. A conservation management system (CMS) provides the logic for controlling such factors in an action plan. It is simply a filing tool for scheduling and recording the sequence of actions of a wildlife manager responding to a scientific or probabilistic rationale.  A conservation rationale provides the reasoning or justification for an action or a choice he or she makes to meet measurable objectives.  Its aim is to promote efficient and effective operations, and allow recording of the work that was done, what it cost and  whether or not the objective was achieved. As part of the plan, the feature’s condition is monitored as a performance indicator.

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of rationale that define conservation management systems. 

These can be exemplified by orchids and puffins. 


Orchids are a conservation feature of UK grassland and puffins, a conservation feature of  the

South Atlantic marine environment. 

With respect to orchids, a local scientific rationale implicates intensive grazing as a factor in their decline  Therefore, a local management system based on reducing herbivores will have an immediate positive conservation outcome.  This system is signified by a panda icon. 

Regarding puffins, there is a  global probabilistic rational that is based on the likelihood of there being a connection between global warming and a reduction in the productivity of marine food chains.  This would be expected to cause a decline in availability of sand eels, the puffin's primary food source.  Global warming cannot be controlled locally.  Therefore, management of a puffin population is limited to the maintenance of cliff top nesting sites in a favorable condition, free of predators and human impacts.  This kind of CMS is signified by a puffin icon. A puffin strategy is adopted to deal with marine and atmospheric factors, such as global warming and plastic waste, that require global action; a panda strategy deals with terrestrial factors that can be dealt with locally.


A CMS also enables the exchange of information about methods and achievements within and between organisations. These are all essential components of a CMS of any scale, whether a national park, or a village pond.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let's Talk About Puffins (2016)

Image
  They’re cute, curious little seabirds that spend their lives trying to eat delicious fish and breed among the coastal rocks. Unfortunately, humanity is threatening to drive them to extinction. Luckily, there are a number of puffin patrols and rescue societies out there trying to help. Puffins come from a family of birds known as auks. They live in coastal areas and are instantly identifiable by their black-and-white coloration, thick beaks that turn orange in the spring, and rounded shape. Also known as the “sea parrot,” or the “clown of the ocean,” the adorable birds can be found in a few places across the globe including including along the coast of the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans. Their colorful beaks and pudgy stature make them a winsome sight wherever they are found, and their friendly attitude doesn’t hurt either. Also, they’re total goofs. “They are quite flighty, flying off when people come too close in boats and they are also very clumsy on lan...
Read more

Think Like A Puffin

Image
  THE sun had not shared its warmth with the island for weeks but this morning it rose over the eastern side of the bay into a crystal-clear sky. The sea, which had not settled for months on end, now rested in a quiet calm. A gull drifted silently across the cliff face, following its own distorted shadow cast by the early morning sun. The only sounds to break the stillness were the piping calls of oystercatchers on the rocks beneath the cliff and the gentle lapping of the wavelets as they gurgled between the boulders. The stillness of the day was demonstrated by a whiff of smoke, rising vertically from the chimney of a lonely cottage which nestled into the cliff top. Far out at sea, a white speck appeared for a moment or two. Within an hour, the silent gull had been joined by others of its kind on the west side of the bay yet, although they now squabbled amongst themselves over some trivial matter, their cries did not destroy the harmony of the island.  The speck on the sea, w...
Read more

Remember The Eskimo Curlew

Image
The last Eskimo Curlew tells his story throughout a year during his migration from wintering grounds in the pampas grass-lands of Argentina and Uruguay to the Canadian Arctic in search of a mate. It’s a bird’s eye view of a perilous migratory journey of up to 8,000 km, which paints a realistic and detailed picture of this bird's life and his behaviour. The lone survivor crying for a mate, that never comes. stands for the entirety of a species on the brink of extinction, and for all in nature that is endangered. The Eskimo Curlew is gone because humankind hunts for leisure; it's never coming back. The message hits especially hard because it follows this individual bird, and you become invested in his life and you want him to succeed, but you know that's not happening. The Last Curlew’s story was written by Fred Bodsworth, a Canadian newspaper reporter and naturalist, in 1954. Decades later the science journalist Sonia Shah in her book ‘The Next Migration: Beauty and Terro...
Read more