The Conservation Value of Freshwaters: Perspectives From United Kingdom and United States
Presiding: C Pringle, University of Georgia; P J Boon, Scottish Natural Heritage
NB51D-01 INVITED 08:30h
Synthesising Information for use in Conserving Freshwater Ecosystems, and the Value of Comparing Perspectives from Different Countries
Human impacts on freshwater ecosystems worldwide create a compelling case for investing in programmes of management and conservation. The effectiveness of these programmes in different countries is determined by several factors, such as the ability to base conservation action on sound science, having agreed protocols in place for assigning priorities for conservation, and gathering, synthesising and exchanging information to support conservation. Over the past 20 years, several key publications have emerged from the UK and the US on freshwater conservation. This special session is based on a new publication, currently in production, which examines the challenge of how to assess the conservation 'value' of fresh waters. This approach taken is innovative, in that it explores the subject from both sides of the Atlantic using pairs of authors from the UK and the US, as well as perspectives provided by authors from other selected countries. The final product will cover methods for assessing rivers and lakes across the full spectrum of 'quality', applying them to a range of management scenarios (e.g. protection, mitigation, restoration). The comparisons between two countries where the organisation and practice of nature conservation is very different should be instructive.
NB51D-02 INVITED 08:45h
Freshwater Conservation in Action: Contrasting Approaches in the U.S. and U.K.
Conservation, as an acceptable goal of freshwater resource management, is a relatively recent phenomenon in the UK and US, reflecting changes in societal needs and values. Here we compare and contrast the effectiveness of different conservation approaches employed by both countries. We also discuss how differing socio-political and economic factors have helped shape these approaches. Differing approaches to freshwater conservation between the UK and US are determined, in part, by differences in the structure and mission of governmental agencies and the role of non-governmental organizations. In the US, non-governmental conservation organizations (e.g., Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club) have emerged as key players in freshwater conservation within the last decade. Their role as "watchdogs" of state and federal regulatory agencies can have both positive and negative consequences for freshwater conservation. In the UK, legislation emanating from the European Union has had a significant influence over the past 25 years, culminating in the Water Framework Directive 2000. Nongovernmental conservation organizations have been instrumental in holding the UK Government to account for implementing European Directives and, more generally, for the high profile that nature conservation has with UK parliamentarians.
NB51D-03 INVITED 09:00h
Assessing the Natural Values of Fresh Waters: Science or Art?
If conservation is to be effective, there needs to be agreement on how priorities are assessed - especially among scientists, resource managers, and policy-makers. Although tensions remain between some sectors, considerable progress has been made. In the UK, for example, the recent implementation of the EC Water Framework Directive has brought the aspirations of 'freshwater management' and 'freshwater conservation' closer, although there are still legitimate differences between the two. Effective conservation also requires robust and objective methods of assigning 'value' to fresh waters. To compare approaches used in the UK and the US, a survey was conducted among selected individuals, classified within three broad affiliations: universities and research institutes, conservation bodies, and resource managers. Respondents assigned scores to reflect the importance attached to each of 27 features, grouped within broad conservation criteria. Naturalness and rarity were ranked the highest both in the UK and the US, with representativeness and diversity rated significantly lower. The naturalness of channels and banks, and littoral and shoreline zones, respectively, were considered the most important features for rivers and lakes. Results indicate much common ground between the two countries, suggesting that some 'core' features are essential components in determinations of freshwater conservation value.
NB51D-04 INVITED 09:15h
Methods for Assessing the Conservation Value of Rivers
Assessments of rivers for conservation value in the US and the UK have built on concepts of recognizing biological representation, distinctiveness and conservation status, to support the goals of maximizing protection of biodiversity. In the UK, the System for Evaluating Rivers for Conservation (SERCON) scores attributes related to physical diversity, naturalness, representativeness (of aquatic macrophyte communities), importance to rare species, occurrence of special features, and human impacts. SERCON is designed to facilitate repeatable and comparable assessments of river reaches (generally 10 to 30 km in length). In the US, high diversity, endemism and rates of decline in riverine biota have led to a greater emphasis on protecting imperiled species (based on species occurrence data, expert opinion, and the occurrence of habitat elements considered essential to species persistence) as well as protecting the full range of habitat or community types occurring in a given region. Assessing value with respect to representing biodiversity is an evolving science, utilizing methods for habitat and community classification, and probabilistic models of assemblage richness. Methods for assessing the value of a particular river reach with respect to ecological processes that maintain lotic communities are particularly needed for conservation planning at local scales.
NB51D-05 09:30h
Identifying River Catchments of National Importance for Indigenous Biodiversity in New Zealand
We describe a process to identify the minimum set of catchments that best represents the full range of indigenous biodiversity in New Zealand rivers. Our assessment addressed the contrasting objectives of the maintenance of viable populations of all indigenous freshwater species and protection of the full range of riverine habitats and ecosystems. In the absence of nationally comprehensive biodiversity data, we used surrogate information derived from spatially explicit environmental, biogeographic and human disturbance data. We divided the country into 29 biogeographic units and used river classes defined by the (NZ) River Environment Classification to characterise environmental variance among river catchments. Catchments over 100 ha were ranked according to the degree of human induced disturbance pressure, on the assumption that least degraded systems retain most indigenous biodiversity. A natural heritage score for each catchment was created by combining measures of environmental representation and human disturbance pressure with information on threatened species and connectivity to wetlands, lakes and estuaries.
http://www.doc.govt.nz/Conservation/Freshwater/Waterbodies-of-National-Importance/index.asp
NB51D-06 INVITED 09:45h
Freshwater Assessments in Developing Country Contexts: Innovations and Opportunities
The world's developed nations have hosted the lion's share of freshwater conservation assessments, yet developing nations are home to a disproportionately large fraction of global freshwater biodiversity. With less `hard-path' infrastructure in place, opportunities for proactive freshwater conservation abound, but economic growth pressures do as well. The need for freshwater assessments is urgent in these environments, but assessment approaches and outcomes can exhibit important differences from those in developed country contexts. First, the need to balance biodiversity conservation with economic development interests is a common and strong undercurrent and translates to an elevated focus on freshwater ecosystem goods and services over pure existence values. Second, data gaps about species, habitats, and processes can be so extensive as to nearly engender paralysis. Assessment methodologies created for data-rich situations often transfer imperfectly to these environments, and planners must find creative ways of circumventing data gaps without sacrificing scientific robustness. In some cases, this need has catalyzed technological `leapfrogging,' with advanced tools developed expressly to address these gaps. Here we present examples of these innovations as applied in South America, with a focus on the use of habitat classifications and threat analyses based on models and geospatial data.