Protected areas are the cornerstone of the conservation movement, and, for the most part, they work quite well.
They do have some hefty pitfalls though. One of these is that the comings and goings of many globetrotting or wide roaming species pay little heed to whether an area has been designated for protection or not. As such, the ranges of many migratory species are left unprotected.
Agile conservation strategies that can respond to new threats quickly and at low cost are the dog’s bollocks, and can provide a well-needed boost to more static approaches, like permanent protected areas
For instance, migratory waterbirds rely on Goldilocks habitats that are just right when they come to visit. There’s no use having a nice protected area in Alaska when an overwintering goose lands on a dry landscape in California looking for somewhere soggy to forage.
That’s where short-term investments for short-term habitat creation comes in. Californian farmers are invited to send in bids answering the following question: “How much would you have to be paid to flood your field for the month or so when migrating waterbirds come to town?” After that, it’s a simple matter of picking the cheapest-to-flood farms that are also the sexiest destination for visiting waterbirds and BOOM. There you have it.
An ingenious method for cheaply paying farmers for providing vitally needed temporary habitat at a fraction of the cost of setting up a series of permanent refuges.
Such agile strategies are inherently ramp up-able. Already this temporary habitat approach has been expanded to 200 km2 of wetlands in California, spanning different seasons and field types and targeting different bird species.
Ninja conservation works in the oceans too.
Fisheries are ocean areas where we get our fish from. Unfortunately, fisheries are also where turtles get tangled in fishing lines, dolphins get caught in nets and albatrosses get snagged on hooks. One way to reduce bycatch is to close areas within fisheries for long periods of time.
Unfortunately, this fixed approach (like protected areas on land) has some downfalls. The largest of these is the negative financial burden this wallops fishermen with.
Southern bluefish (SB) tuna are much more at risk of extinction than pandas (DON’T EAT THEM), making avoiding their inadvertent capture a major concern. In the Eastern Australian longline fishery, near real-time predictions of SB tuna locations are used to create fishing zones that try to avoid unwanted captures.
These zones function like increasingly better-trained bouncers guarding ever-more prestigious wine and cheese tasting soirees. In zones where bycatch risk is deemed low (according to predictions based on temperature-dependent habitat preferences) most fishermen are allowed to enter and fish. But in zones where risk is high, entry is prevented to all but the most tightly regulated fishermen, and even then, only under the eagle-eyed supervision of a classically trained and Latin speaking butler (/onboard CTTV camera).
And because the location of these zones is determined by where SB tuna are likely to be found, these zones can be shifted in sea-space. Pretty nifty ninja skills, ey?
Our ability to be hunky ninja conservationists is only set to increase with the advent of new technologies and huge crowd-sourced data streams. Increasingly, this will allow animals to be tracked in near real-time, allowing for the delivery of habitat or the tailoring of resource extraction in a way that least harms biodiversity.
So if you’re starting out in a career in conservation, don’t forget to be a ninja!
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