Amphibian Conservation: Global evidence for the effects of interventions (Vol. 4) (Synopses of Conservation Evidence, Vol. 4) - Hardcover

Smith, Rebecca; Sutherland, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1907807861 ISBN 13: 9781907807862

Publisher: Pelagic Publishing, 2014

Synopsis

Amphibian Conservation is the fourth in the series of Synopses of Conservation
Evidence, linked to the online resource www.ConservationEvidence.com.

This synopsis is part of the Conservation Evidence project and provides a useful
resource for conservationists. It forms part of a series designed to promote a more evidence-based approach to biodiversity conservation. Others in the series include bee, bird, farmland and bat conservation and many others are in preparation.

Approximately 32% of the 7,164+ amphibian species are currently threatened with extinction and at least 43% of species are declining. Despite this, until recently amphibians and their conservation had received little attention. Although work is now being carried out to conserve many species, often it is not adequately documented.

This book brings together and summarises the available scientific evidence and
experience relevant to the practical conservation of amphibians.

The authors consulted an international group of amphibian experts and
conservationists to produce a thorough summary of what is known, or not known,
about the effectiveness of amphibian conservation actions across the world.

"The book is packed with literature summaries and citations; a veritable information goldmine for graduate students and researchers. It also admirably provides decision makers with a well-researched resource of proven interventions that can be employed to stem/reverse the decline of amphibian populations." -John G Palis, Bulletin of the Chicago Herpetological Society

About this title

About the Author:

Dr Rebecca K. Smith is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. She holds degrees in the ecology & conservation of European hares (PhD, University of Bristol), Applied Ecology & Conservation (MSc, University of East Anglia) and Biology (BSc with Honours, University of Bristol). Dr Smith is part of the Conservation Evidence group at the University of Cambridge, which focuses on summarising and disseminating scientific evidence about the effects of conservation interventions for habitats and species. She is an author of the Farmland Conservation synopsis and has undertaken systematic reviews on the effectiveness of conservation management for birds. Prior to this work Dr Smith undertook projects developing monitoring and management strategies for high conservation priority mammal species. Her current scientific duties include facilitating the development of further synopses including bat, reptile and forest conservation and invasive species management. She is also the Editorial Administrator of the Conservation Evidence Journal.

Review:

The book begins with six pages briefly describing the methods the authors used to identify and locate published studies, and to systematically quantify their results. The authors summarize evidence for nine threats (Residential and Commercial Development, Agriculture, Energy Production and Mining, Transportation and Service Corridors, Human Disturbances, Habitat Modification, Invasive Species, Pollution, and Climate Change) and four solutions (Habitat Protection, Habitat Restoration, Species Management, and Education and Outreach). All topics are focused on practical hands-on actions; the book does not reference any modeling studies, does not address policy efforts, and does not discuss ethical considerations. The book would have benefitted from a summary chapter that gave an overview of success for each topic and taxonomic group. Skimming through the extensive examples, I concluded that we have had inconsistent results in our interventions to conserve amphibians, despite varied approaches in numerous systems. It was sobering to realize that even habitat protection efforts―considered as close to a sure thing as we get in conservation―are often not assessed, and are only partially successful.

To demonstrate how the book is organized, I summarize the chytridiomycosis abatement strategies, listed under the Invasive Species section. This section included eleven actions that attempted to reduce chytridiomycosis: two reducing geographic spread, three reducing amount of Bd in the environment, and six reducing infection load on amphibians. The authors provided (a) a short overview, (b) a statement of reported successes, (c) a brief background summary, (d) a few pages of text describing each article's findings, and (e) references. It would have been nice if the authors included some sort of gap analysis identifying actions that have not been tested. I thought readers would have benefited if the authors provided details on the original causes of declines, what kind of effort went into finding unreported and unpublished failures, and whether interventions were designed to address those original threats or were only able to assess net changes. It would also be helpful if the authors discussed whether effective interventions would likely work for other species or in other areas. As in most cases in conservation biology, the devil is in the details, and because many of the details are not included, it's hard to assess the assessment.

A good example of the importance of details is the section on Species Management. In this section, two approaches are described: translocations and ex-situ conservation (e.g., captive breeding, rearing, and releases). Translocations are organized by taxonomic group (i.e., frogs, toads, salamanders), which shows the incredibly small number of such studies and the bias towards three species: Wood Frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus), Natterjack Toads (Epidalea calamita), and Great Crested Newts (Triturus cristatus). Success was qualified by the type of persistence, the length of persistence, and the percent of attempts that persisted for some amount of time; only one study mentioned that a population was self-sustaining. The authors use the original study to define success rather than adopting a universal definition. Consequently, projects that they identify as successful may not actually result in self-sustaining populations. Sections on captive breeding and release are also organized into sections on frogs, toads, and salamanders with most studies conducted on three other species: midwife toads (Alytes spp.), harlequin frogs (Atelopus spp.), and Green and Golden Bell Frogs (Litoria aurea). Here's where I'd want to know what the original threats were that led to captive breeding and also what has been done, but not published. For example, in the case of the harlequin frogs, we know they are in captivity because of chytridiomycosis, but the book does not mention this. Do they breed in captivity? Yes! Is it a success? Well, maybe. We don't really know how many Atelopus species were brought in to create captive assurance colonies but failed and were never reported in the literature, or even the degree to which the facility tried to establish large captive populations. We also don't know why they failed; there are many practical reasons why organizations do not even attempt to breed their frogs (limited space, time, funding, interest). Negative results, details on causes of failure (lack of knowledge, resources, patience, policies), and what the stated objectives of holding captive assurance colonies were are what we need to determine effectiveness. The details of how we define success are critical to assessing the efficacy of our conservation efforts, and those details are glossed over here.

In terms of mechanics, the writing is simple, straightforward, and factual, but not especially engaging, as it avoids any personal ideas or synthesis statements, focusing instead on reproducing the original information. I found few errors in the sections I read and the presentation was balanced and uncontroversial. The layout is not especially attractive as the book completely lacks images, graphics, tables, figures, and color. The book also uses small fonts, and many styles and formats of headings and subheadings, but without figures or tables to break up the text, I found it easy to get lost. A more serious complaint is the lack of a combined literature cited for the whole book.

This book and online journal will be excellent resources for those looking to get up to speed on what actions have been attempted to conserve amphibians and the outcomes of those efforts. It will be a valuable guide for graduate students interested in evaluating evidence for effective amphibian conservation, and is sure to generate new approaches, critical analyses, and discussions. The free online version makes this especially valuable for conservation practitioners and students from all countries, and should facilitate real-time updates as new studies are published. More than anything, this book reveals the surprisingly large number of species, regions, and threats that have yet to be tested, the need for critical assessment and discussion of “success,” and a realization of how much work we have to do.

(Karen R. Lips Copeia)

This book attempts to summarize all of the published evidence relating to conservation interventions aimed at amphibians and specifically, where interventions have been quantitatively monitored. This ranges from very small specific interventions such as the introduction of artificial hibernacula to wide ranging interventions such as the Million Ponds Project in the UK. No attempt is made to make recommendations, merely to lay out the evidence in an easy to read and easy to find format in a way that can help decision makers at a local, national or international scale make more informed judgements as to the most effective measures to implement. The first half of the book is arranged into chapters that each relate to a specific threat such as climate change, transport networks, agriculture and pollution whilst the second half examines the impact of habitat management, species management (captive breeding and translocations) and education and awareness raising.

One of the big plus points of this book is that it is very easy to establish if there is evidence available about a particular subject and where to find the source material. In this respect it serves its purpose well. However, it is intriguing to examine whether the book can actually be applied by land managers or those giving advice to land managers to fine tune the management of sites for their amphibian populations. The Kent Reptile and Amphibian Group regularly gives advice to a wide range of organisations and individuals about managing ponds and terrestrial habitat for amphibians and most of the advice is based around generally accepted best practice guidance. At least 90% of advice is covered by just a few basic principles. In other words, creating ponds is good, and almost always more cost effective than managing existing ponds, discouraging birds and fish is useful, maintaining structurally complex terrestrial habitat will help and not moving the widespread amphibians around except under exceptional circumstances is the best option. So, could this book confirm that this is sound advice based on well established, published literature or just the ramblings of well meaning amateurs that is at best ineffective or in a worst case scenario, counterproductive?

Things started well, pond creation gets a resounding thumbs up though the success of specific species depends upon the kind of ponds created and some studies have expressed doubt that the creation of ponds specifically for translocated species leads to self-sustaining populations. In contrast, evidence suggests that pond restoration can have mixed effects on existing amphibian populations. Fish control similarly has good evidence to back up its effectiveness though the use of piscicides can also kill off amphibian populations. The evidence to support other interventions is less conclusive as the example of excluding waterfowl shows. The book simply states that ‘We captured no evidence for the effects of preventing heavy usage or excluding wildfowl from aquatic habitat on amphibian populations.' Herein lays the challenge of writing a book such as this. The complexities of amphibian habitat management and the impact of interventions on a range of species mean that there simply isn't enough published information to fully inform a land manager. Other examples, particularly broad ranging interventions such as introducing a grazing regime or the management of terrestrial habitat have evidence of both success and failure. This simply illustrates that for most interventions it is the fine-tuning of management techniques and regimes that yield success rather than simply the type of intervention itself. In short, this book provides a useful starting point for justifying specific interventions (or not intervening) and can help direct the reader to further information.

One of the conclusions it is impossible not to draw from reading this text is that there are still significant areas of amphibian conservation that are not covered by scientific literature. This is exemplified by the lack of evidence for either protecting brownfield sites or habitat connectivity having a positive impact on amphibian populations. It is a challenge to summarize so much information into one relatively small book and even more of a challenge to make sense of what all the data means. This book is a useful tool and perhaps an ideal first step for identifying or rejecting potential interventions for amphibian conservation but does not provide all of the answers to making the most of the limited resources available for amphibian conservation. That would just be too simple wouldn't it?

(Mike Phillips The Herpetological Bulletin)

The global amphibian decline crisis, first noted in 1989, has stimulated a huge amount of conservation activity across the world, much of it building on existing conservation efforts focused on local concerns about amphibians. In Britain, for example, realisation that amphibian declines are a global problem gave fresh impetus to efforts to reverse the widespread destruction of amphibian breeding ponds that has occurred, as a result of changing agricultural practices, since World War II. A key question raised by all this activity is: does it work?

This remarkable and very important book addresses this question. It is a product of the Conservation Evidence project, an initiative that pursues an evidence-based approach to determine the effectiveness of the many and various interventions that have been made across the world to conserve biodiversity. The Conservation Evidence project produces an open-access journal, Conservation Evidence, maintains an expanding database, and compiles detailed synopses on specific topics, of which this book is the fourth to be published. It is the product of an enormous effort of scholarship, covering 107 different interventions that have been made to conserve amphibians around the world, and analyzing the result of 416 studies. Only studies in which the outcome of interventions has been assessed are included. Sadly, a great deal of conservation effort has been conducted over the years, the success of which, for lack of motivation or funding, has not been evaluated. A majority of studies come from Europe and North America and thus deal with temperate species.

The book is divided into 14 sections, representing major areas of conservation activity. These include: agricultural landscapes, the use of biological resources (including amphibians themselves and the habitats in which they live), countering the impact of invasive species (including chytridiomycosis), pollution, and habitat creation and restoration. A large section deals with all aspects of relocating amphibians, rearing them in captivity and releasing them into the wild. A final section discusses education and awareness raising. The book contains a mass of detailed information, concisely presented and with virtually no discussion. The reader is left to reach his or her own conclusions on the basis of the evidence presented. It is by no means ‘easy reading' but it is an invaluable resource for anyone contemplating doing something useful to help amphibians.

In keeping with an evidence-based approach, the tone of this book is measured and scrupulously objective, and free of both the optimistic rhetoric or the doom-laden foreboding that pervades much of the conservation literature. The overall message is that conservation efforts work in some instances, but not in others. What works for one species does not necessarily work for another. The book is thus an invaluable resource for anyone designing a new conservation project and it should lead to better-designed and better-informed conservation efforts in the future. It should also lead to a better use of limited resources, both financial and human, by enabling project designers to focus on procedures the effectiveness of which has been demonstrated.

Some of the results of the analyses presented in this book are surprising and thought provoking. For many years I participated in a ‘help a toad across the road' exercise, going out at night to rescue migrating toads from a busy road before they were squashed. There are many such exercises in the UK, resulting in the apparent rescue of thousands of toads each year. The evidence suggests, however, that the impact of such activity on toad population sizes is rather modest. However, toad rescues are a low-cost activity that achieves the invaluable objectives of involving local people and raising awareness of conservation issues. In contrast, the translocation of Great Crested Newts (Triturus cristatus) in Britain incurs huge costs for developers, but yields low returns in terms of the successful long-term establishment of new populations.

Sadly, amphibians across the world are threatened by a variety of factors that cannot be addressed by dedicated groups of people working at the local level. Much of the habitat deterioration and destruction that is causing amphibian declines is global in origin, resulting from pollution and climate change. Reversing the results of these processes lies not with local groups but with the world's political and industrial leaders, who show no sign of deviating from their pursuit of the continuing economic growth that threatens our planet's biodiversity. This excellent book reports many successful attempts to conserve amphibians at a local scale but, globally, the sixth mass extinction continues to gather pace.

(Dr Oxford UK Tim Halliday Phyllomedusa: Journal of ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Pelagic Publishing
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1907807861
• ISBN 13: 9781907807862
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 279