Tara G Martin

University of British Columbia - Vancouver | UBC · Department of Forest Sciences

Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) support coastal and freshwater ecosystems, economies and cultures, but many populations have declined. We used priority threat management (PTM), a decision‐support framework for prioritizing conservation investments, to identify management strategies that could support thriving populations of wild salmon over 25 y...

Salmon and herring support both land and ocean predators and are critical to ecosystem resilience. Their linkages across land and sea realms make them highly susceptible to human activities, which can have flow-on effects up the food web. We quantify and compare the potential cumulative effects of human-driven pressures on interdependent species in...

Deciding when to protect threatened species habitat when complete knowledge about the habitat extent is uncertain is a common problem in conservation. More accurate habitat mapping improves conservation outcomes once that habitat is protected. However, delaying protection to improve accuracy can lead to species decline or, at worst, local extinctio...

Biodiversity conservation decisions are difficult, especially when they involve differing values, complex multidimensional objectives, scarce resources, urgency, and considerable uncertainty. Decision science embodies a theory about how to make difficult decisions and an extensive array of frameworks and tools that make that theory practical. We so...

Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes personatus) support marine food webs in the Salish Sea, yet our knowledge of intertidal spawning habitat for this species is limited. Increasing participation in community science surveys for intertidal sand lance spawning has resulted in the detection of eggs on >90 beaches in the Canadian Salish Sea since 2001. Using...

Non-native earthworms can alter ecosystems by modifying soil structure, depredating seeds and seedlings, and consuming soil organic matter, yet the initial responses of plant communities to earthworm invasions remain poorly understood. We assessed the effect of non-native earthworms on seedling survival during germination and after establishment us...

Loss of connectivity caused by anthropogenic barriers is a key threat for migratory freshwater species. The anadromous life history of salmonids means that barriers on streams can decrease the amount of habitat available for spawning and rearing. To set appropriate targets for restoration, it is important to know how different populations have been...

Early detection of invasive species is an important predictor of management success. Non-native narrow-leaved cattail ( Typha angustifolia ) has been detected in the Fraser River Estuary (FRE) in recent decades, but questions around their degree of establishment, and the potential emergence of hybrid cattail ( Typha x glauca ), remain unanswered. T...

Estuaries represent a transition zone for salmon migrating from freshwater to marine waters, yet their contribution to juvenile growth is poorly quantified. Here, we use genetic stock identification and otolith analyses to quantify estuarine habitat use by Chinook salmon ( Oncorhynchus tshawytscha ) – the Pacific salmon species considered most reli...

The need to manage threats to biodiversity, and to do so cost‐effectively, is urgent. Cross‐realm conservation management is recognized as a cost‐effective approach, but it requires collaboration between agencies and jurisdictions, and local knowledge of anthropogenic threats to biodiversity. With its emphasis on stakeholder engagement and use of s...

As the number of species at risk of extinction continues to grow, it is imperative that we act quickly to manage threats to biodiversity and implement recovery actions to safeguard ecosystems over the long term. Priority Threat Management (PTM) is an emerging decision support framework that facilitates the rapid identification of effective strategi...

1. Effective biodiversity conservation requires responding to threats in a timely fashion. This entails understanding the impacts of threats on biodiversity and when interventions to mitigate threats need to be implemented. However, most ecological systems face multiple threats, so monitoring to assess their impacts on biodiversity is a complex tas...

Abstract Throughout history, humans have settled in areas of high biodiversity. Today these areas are home to our biggest urban centers with biodiversity at increasing risk from escalating cumulative threats. Identifying the management strategies to conserve species within such regions, and ensuring effective governance to oversee their implementat...

Current investment in conservation is insufficient to adequately protect and recover all ecosystems and species. The challenge of allocating limited funds is acute for Pacific salmon Oncorhynchus spp. in Canada, which lack a strategic approach to ensure that resources are spent on actions most likely to cost‐effectively recover diminished populatio...

Current investment in conservation is insufficient to adequately protect and recover all ecosystems and species. The challenge of allocating limited funds is acute for Pacific salmon ( Oncorhynchus spp.) in Canada, which lack a strategic approach to ensure that resources are spent on actions that would cost-effectively recover diminished population...

In 2010 world governments agreed to eliminate, phase out or reform incentives that harm biodiversity by 2020. Yet few governments have even identified such incentives, never mind taking action on them. While some subsidies are well studied, such as in fisheries and fossil fuel production, there is an urgent need for the conservation community to st...

Interfacing with land and sea, estuaries support a mosaic of habitats that underpin the production of many coastal fisheries. These ecosystems are threatened by multiple stressors, including habitat loss and climate change, but the relative importance of estuarine habitat types for different fish species remains poorly understood since direct habit...

Uniting diverse stakeholders through communication, education or building a collaborative ‘common vision’ for biodiversity management is a recommended approach for enabling effective conservation in regions with multiple uses. However, socially focused strategies such as building a collaborative vision can require sharing scarce resources (time and...

British Columbia has the greatest biological diversity of any province or territory in Canada. Yet increasing numbers of species in British Columbia are threatened with extinction. The current patchwork of provincial laws and regulations has not effectively prevented species declines. Recently, the Provincial Government has committed to enacting an...

Assessing species' vulnerability to climate change is a prerequisite for developing effective strategies to conserve them. The last three decades have seen exponential growth in the number of studies evaluating how, how much, why, when, and where species will be impacted by climate change. We provide an overview of the rapidly developing field of c...

British Columbia has the greatest biological diversity of any province or territory in Canada. Yet more and more species in British Columbia are threatened with extinction and require active measures for protection and recovery. The current patchwork of provincial laws and regulations managing wildlife and their habitats has not effectively prevent...

1.Threats to biodiversity and the integrity of ecological systems are escalating globally, both within and outside of protected areas. Decision makers have inadequate resources to manage all threats and typically lack information on the likely outcomes and cost‐effectiveness of possible management strategies. Priority Threat Management (PTM) is an...

The absence of a rigorous mechanism for prioritizing investment in endangered species management is a major implementation hurdle affecting recovery. Here, we present a method for prioritizing strategies for endangered species management based on the likelihood of achieving species’ recovery goals per dollar invested. We demonstrate our approach fo...

Aim: To determine the role of regional forcing on plot-level species diversity and composition, and to quantify the relative importance of biogeographical and climatic factors in explaining woody plant diversity and composition at the local-, island- and archipelago-scale. Location: Forty-one tropical islands of the Indo-Pacific region from Madagas...

Conservation in human-dominated landscapes is challenging partly due to the high costs of land acquisition. We explored a property tax mechanism to finance conservation easements or related contracts as a partial-property acquisition strategy to meet Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) treaty targets to conserve critically imperiled coastal Do...

Conservation planning is the science of choosing which actions to take where for the purpose of conserving biodiversity. Creating a system of protected areas is the most common form of systematic conservation planning. Hence, we will focus on the process of protected area selection in this chapter. Marxan is the most widely used software in the wor...

Most ecological processes now show responses to anthropogenic climate change. In terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems, species are changing genetically, physiologically, morphologically, and phenologically and are shifting their distributions, which affects food webs and results in new interactions. Disruptions scale from the gene to the...

Predicting climate change impacts on biodiversity is a major scientific challenge, but doing so is important for assessing extinction risk, developing conservation action plans, providing guidance for laws and regulations, and identifying the mechanisms and patterns of impact to inform climate change adaptation. In the few decades since the threat...

With many conservation issues requiring urgent action, determining how much data are needed to inform good decisions is a common problem. We examine this problem in relation to the protection of critical habitat, the habitat required for species' recovery and persistence. The protection of critical habitat is an essential step in the threatened spe...

Freshwater ecosystems are declining under climate change and land-use change. To maximize the return on investment in freshwater conservation with limited financial resources, managers must prioritize management actions that are most cost-effective. However, little is known about what these priorities may be under the combined effects of climate an...

Ecological restoration of modified and degraded landscapes is an important challenge for the 21st century, with potential for major gains in the recovery of biodiversity. However, there is a general lack of agreement between plant- and animal- based approaches to restoration, both in theory and practice. Here, we review these approaches, identify l...

Humans are adapting to climate change, but often in ways that further compound our effects on nature, and in turn the impact of climate change on us.

Invasive species pose a substantial risk to native biodiversity. As distributions of invasive species shift in response to changes in climate so will management priorities and investment. To develop cost-effective invasive species management strategies into the future it is necessary to understand how species distributions are likely to change over...

Climate change is a major threat to global biodiversity and its impacts can act synergistically to heighten the severity of other threats. Most research on projecting species range shifts under climate change has not been translated to informing priority management strategies on the ground. We develop a prioritization framework to assess strategies...

Carbon farming in agricultural landscapes may provide a cost-effective mechanism for offsetting carbon emissions while delivering co-benefits for biodiversity through ecosystem restoration. Reforestation of landscapes using native tree and shrub species, termed environmental plantings, has been recognized as a carbon offset methodology which can co...

Fig S1: Target calculation diagram provided from unpublished data related to Watson and colleagues. For species with a range size smaller than 1000 km2 a target of 100% of their range was set (upper horizontal line). For species with a range size larger than 10,000 km2 a target of 10% of their range was set (lower horizontal line). For species with...

Fig. S2: Comparison of land area required for the protected area network for each scenario (represented in percentages of Australia's land area) when planning to minimize land area (dark grey); when planning to minimize agricultural losses (light grey) and when current protected areas are ignored (i.e. not locked in to the solution) (black).

A price on carbon is driving land-use changes globally, including the establishment of biodiverse carbon plantings to sequester carbon. The biodiversity benefits of these plantings depend on many factors, including their spatial locations. We provide an approach for assessing the opportunities and spatial priorities for carbon sequestration and bio...

Proenca et al. (1) highlight that sown biodiverse pastures (SBP) can provide local solutions that increase production while limiting the risk of new pasture taxa invading natural areas. We agree that in Portugal SBP is an innovative approach for reducing the weed risk. However, SBP does not offer a universal solution to the problems we identify in...

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)'s strategic plan advocates the use of environmental surrogates, such as ecosystems, as a basis for planning where new protected areas should be placed. However, the efficiency and effectiveness of this ecosystem-based planning approach to adequately capture threatened species in protected area networks i...

The effects of climate change on biodiversity are increasingly well documented, and many methods have been developed to assess species' vulnerability to climatic changes, both ongoing and projected in the coming decades. To minimize global biodiversity losses, conservationists need to identify those species that are likely to be most vulnerable to...

1. Invasive non-native plants have negatively impacted on biodiversity and ecosystem functions worldwide. Because of the large number of species, their wide distributions and varying degrees of impact, we need a more effective method for prioritizing control strategies for cost-effective investment across heterogeneous landscapes. 2. Here, we devel...

The term critical habitat is used to describe the subset of habitat that is essential to the survival and recovery of species. Some countries legally require that critical habitat of listed threatened and endangered species be identified and protected. However, there is little evidence to suggest that the identification of critical habitat has had...

An age-old conflict around a seemingly simple question has resurfaced: why do we conserve nature? Contention around this issue has come and gone many times, but in the past several years we believe that it has reappeared as an increasingly acrimonious debate between, in essence, those who argue that nature should be protected for its own sake (intr...

Agricultural intensification is critical to meet global food demand, but intensification threatens native species and degrades ecosystems. Sustainable intensification (SI) is heralded as a new approach for enabling growth in agriculture while minimizing environmental impacts. However, the SI literature has overlooked a major environmental risk. Usi...

Conservation decision tools based on cost-effectiveness analysis are used to assess threat management strategies for improving species persistence. These approaches rank alternative strategies by their benefit to cost ratio but may fail to identify the optimal sets of strategies to implement under limited budgets because they do not account for red...

The distributions of many species are dynamic in space and time, and movements made by individuals range from regular and predictable migrations to erratic, resource-driven nomadism. Conserving such mobile species is challenging; the effectiveness of a conservation action taken at one site depends on the condition of other sites that may be geograp...

Time is of the essence in conservation biology. To secure the persistence of a species, we need to understand how to balance time spent among different management actions. A new and simple method to test the efficacy of a range of conservation actions is required. Thus, we devised a general theoretical framework to help determine whether to test a...

Background/Question/Methods Species’ habitats should be identified as accurately as possible to maximize the benefit to conservation and minimize the opportunity costs of habitat protection. However, delaying habitat protection in favor of improving accuracy could result in additional habitat loss in the interim. Determining how much time to inve...

Trophic cascades are a common consequence of herbivore outbreak and in the absence of hunting can cause the local extinction of native plant species and communities. We compared plant communities at 66 island and mainland sites to test the hypothesis that deer (Cervidae) determine species cover, richness and diversity and that palatable species bec...

Conservation initiatives to protect and restore valued species and communities in human-dominated landscapes face huge challenges linked to the cost of acquiring habitat. We ask how the sale of forest carbon offsets could reduce land acquisition costs, and how the alternate goals of maximizing α or β-diversity in focal communities could affect the...

Threats to migratory animals can occur at multiple periods of the annual cycle that are separated by thousands of kilometers and span international borders. Populations of the iconic monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) of eastern North America have declined over the last 21 years. Three hypotheses have been posed to explain the decline: habitat lo...

In cases where assisted colonisation is the appropriate conservation tool, the selection of recipient sites is a major challenge. Here, we propose a framework for site selection that can be applied to the Australian biota, where planning for assisted colonisation is in its infancy. Characteristics that will be important drivers in the decision-maki...

Carbon offset mechanisms have been established to mitigate climate change through changes in land management. Regulatory frameworks enable landowners and managers to generate saleable carbon credits on domestic and international markets. Identifying and managing the associated co-benefits and dis-benefits involved in the adoption of carbon offset p...