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Agency plans are inadequate to conserve US endangered species under climate change

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Aimee Delach at Defenders of Wildlife
Aimee Delach
Astrid Caldas
Astrid Caldas
Astrid Caldas
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Kiel M. Edson
Kiel M. Edson
Kiel M. Edson
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Robb Krehbiel at Defenders of Wildlife
Robb Krehbiel
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Abstract and Figures

Despite widespread evidence of climate change as a threat to biodiversity, it is unclear whether government policies and agencies are adequately addressing this threat to species. Here we evaluate species sensitivity, a component of climate change vulnerability, and whether climate change is discussed as a threat in planning for climate-related management action in official documents from 1973 to 2018 for all 459 US animals listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. We find that 99.8% of species are sensitive to one or more of eight sensitivity factors, but agencies consider climate change as a threat to only 64% of species and plan management actions for only 18% of species. Agencies are more likely to plan actions for species sensitive to more factors, but such planning has declined since 2016. Results highlight the gap between climate change sensitivity and the attention from agencies charged with conserving endangered species.
Sensitivity to climate factors, threat assessment and planned management action a–c, Despite sensitivity to one or more climate factors (a), US endangered animals are not often assessed for whether climate change is a potential threat (b) and most do not receive planning for management actions to address climate change impacts (c). a, Species that are sensitive to more climate factors are more likely to receive management action planning (dark purple line; P < 0.05) than are species sensitive to fewer factors, and are marginally more likely to receive evaluation of climate change as a threat (dark pink line; P = 0.07). All endangered animals except one (Hawaiian goose (Branta sandvicensis)) are sensitive to one or more of eight climate factors (see Table 1 for description of factors). The two most sensitive species (seven factors) were a fish, the Clear Creek gambusia (Gambusia heterochir), and a mollusc, the shinyrayed pocketbook (Lampsilis subangulata). Bars represent the number of species; lines represent the proportion of species within each number of sensitivity factors. Analyses in a and b contain all endangered animals on the ESA (n = 459); analysis in c excludes species for which only listing decisions exist (excluded n = 39; included n = 420; see text for details). Colours correspond to Figs. 2–4.
Sensitivity to climate factors, threat assessment and planned management action a–c, Despite sensitivity to one or more climate factors (a), US endangered animals are not often assessed for whether climate change is a potential threat (b) and most do not receive planning for management actions to address climate change impacts (c). a, Species that are sensitive to more climate factors are more likely to receive management action planning (dark purple line; P < 0.05) than are species sensitive to fewer factors, and are marginally more likely to receive evaluation of climate change as a threat (dark pink line; P = 0.07). All endangered animals except one (Hawaiian goose (Branta sandvicensis)) are sensitive to one or more of eight climate factors (see Table 1 for description of factors). The two most sensitive species (seven factors) were a fish, the Clear Creek gambusia (Gambusia heterochir), and a mollusc, the shinyrayed pocketbook (Lampsilis subangulata). Bars represent the number of species; lines represent the proportion of species within each number of sensitivity factors. Analyses in a and b contain all endangered animals on the ESA (n = 459); analysis in c excludes species for which only listing decisions exist (excluded n = 39; included n = 420; see text for details). Colours correspond to Figs. 2–4.
… 
Taxonomic differences in sensitivity to climate factors a,b Differences occur between taxa in the type (a) and total number (b) of climate factors. Analysis includes all 459 endangered species listed on the Endangered Species Act. See Table 1 for descriptions of factors, Supplementary Table 1 for the number of species in each taxa, and Supplementary Fig. 1 for taxa sensitivity by factor across management agency and region.
Taxonomic differences in sensitivity to climate factors a,b Differences occur between taxa in the type (a) and total number (b) of climate factors. Analysis includes all 459 endangered species listed on the Endangered Species Act. See Table 1 for descriptions of factors, Supplementary Table 1 for the number of species in each taxa, and Supplementary Fig. 1 for taxa sensitivity by factor across management agency and region.
… 
Taxonomic differences occur in whether and how climate change is discussed in official management documents for endangered animals a, Analysis of whether climate change is a threat contains all 459 US endangered animals listed under the ESA. b, Analysis of how climate change is a threat excludes species for which only listing decisions exist (excluded n = 39; included n = 420; see text for details). The number of species in each group is shown above the x axis.
Taxonomic differences occur in whether and how climate change is discussed in official management documents for endangered animals a, Analysis of whether climate change is a threat contains all 459 US endangered animals listed under the ESA. b, Analysis of how climate change is a threat excludes species for which only listing decisions exist (excluded n = 39; included n = 420; see text for details). The number of species in each group is shown above the x axis.
… 
Discussion of climate change as a threat and planning of management action in official documents over time a,b, Baseline assessment of climate change as a threat (a) to endangered animals has increased at a substantially faster rate than planning of management action (b). Analysis in a contains all 459 endangered animals listed on the Endangered Species Act; analysis in b excludes species for which only listing decisions exist (excluded n = 39; included n = 420; see text for details). The number of species in each group is shown above the x axis.
Discussion of climate change as a threat and planning of management action in official documents over time a,b, Baseline assessment of climate change as a threat (a) to endangered animals has increased at a substantially faster rate than planning of management action (b). Analysis in a contains all 459 endangered animals listed on the Endangered Species Act; analysis in b excludes species for which only listing decisions exist (excluded n = 39; included n = 420; see text for details). The number of species in each group is shown above the x axis.
… 
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Articles
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0620-8
1Landscape Conservation, Defenders of Wildlife, Washington, DC, USA. 2Field Conservation, Defenders of Wildlife, Seattle, WA, USA. 3Center for
Conservation Innovation, Defenders of Wildlife, Washington, DC, USA. 4Present address: Union of Concerned Scientists, Washington, DC, USA.
5Present address: Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey, CA, USA. 6Present address: Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, Boston, MA, USA. 7Present address: Wildlife Habitat Council, Silver Spring, MD, USA. *e-mail: adelach@defenders.org
Climate change is a threat to ecosystems and biodiversity glob-
ally1,2 and has emerged as a driver of observed and potential
species decline and extinction3–5. Government laws and poli-
cies should play a vital role in supporting climate change adapta-
tion for imperilled species, yet imperilled species protections have
been critiqued as insufficient in Australia6,7, Canada8 and Europe9.
Funding shortfalls for environmental programmes mean that
govern ments may not be adequately addressing baseline threats to
species10,11, let alone more complex emerging threats from climate
change12–15. Furthermore, the politicization of climate change in
many countries, including the United States, has led to different lev-
els of concern and action on the topic among political parties16,17.
Understanding whether and to what extent government authorities
are supporting climate change adaptation, especially for imper-
illed species, is critical for improving tools and processes to reduce
climate change impacts on biodiversity18,19.
The primary law directing the conservation of imperilled
species in the United States is the Endangered Species Act20 (ESA).
Central to the listing and recovery processes under the ESA is the
enumeration and abatement of threats to species. The law directs
the secretaries of the Interior and Commerce to use the “best avail-
able scientific and commercial data” to make listing determinations
on the basis of five threat factors: (1) habitat destruction and degra-
dation, (2) overutilization, (3) disease or predation, (4) inadequacy
of existing protections or (5) other factors. While each factor may
result from or be exacerbated by climate change, this threat is not
explicitly described among the five factors. This is likely because
the ESA was most recently amended legislatively in 198821, the same
year as the formation of the IPCC and 4 yr before the first detailed
discussion of the consequences of climate change for biological
diversity in the United States22.
Nonetheless, the two agencies responsible for implementing
the ESA, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National
Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), have explicitly recognized the
threat that climate change poses to species and the need to man-
age for its impacts. The FWS first described climate change as
a threat in its January 2007 proposal to list the polar bear (Ursus
maritimus) as threatened. Later that year, discussion of climate
change appeared in recovery plans for the Indiana bat (Myotis soda-
lis) and Hawaiian monk seal (Monachus schauinslandi) and in 5 yr
reviews for the red wolf (Canis rufus) and five sea turtle species (for
references to species ESA documents, see the link in data avail-
ability). The only assessment of climate change in ESA documents
to date (to our knowledge) found that by the end of 2008, 87% of
species recovery plans still did not address whether climate change
was a threat18. The scientific community has identified climate
change as the ‘primary threat’ to nearly 40% of ESA-listed animals
and over 50% of ESA-listed plants in the United States10, and agency
options for climate-related management action under the ESA have
been available for over a decade23. Thus, it is vital to understand
whether the lead agencies responsible for endangered species con-
servation have improved the use of their authority to help species
adapt to the threat of climate change.
To determine whether threats from climate change are being
addressed by US agencies, we compared the climate change sensi-
tivity of species with agencies’ discussion of climate change and
plans for managing climate change threats for the 459 ESA-listed
endangered animals found within US lands and waters. Because
climate change sensitivity had not been systematically assessed for
many of these species, we developed a trait-based climate change
sensitivity assessment24. This assessment is a simplified version of
existing tools (Methods) and provides a preliminary evaluation
of whether and which species’ life history and biological charac-
teristics contribute to sensitivity to climate change (see Table 1).
We focused on sensitivity (and related traits sometimes character-
ized as measures of adaptive capacity) because these, rather than
Agency plans are inadequate to conserve US
endangered species under climate change
Aimee Delach 1*, Astrid Caldas 1,4, Kiel M. Edson 1,5, Robb Krehbiel2, Sarah Murray 1,
Kathleen A. Theoharides1,6, Lauren J. Vorhees 1,7, Jacob W. Malcom 3, Mark N. Salvo1 and
Jennifer R. B. Miller 3
Despite widespread evidence of climate change as a threat to biodiversity, it is unclear whether government policies and agen-
cies are adequately addressing this threat to species. Here we evaluate species sensitivity, a component of climate change
vulnerability, and whether climate change is discussed as a threat in planning for climate-related management action in official
documents from 1973 to 2018 for all 459 US animals listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. We find that
99.8% of species are sensitive to one or more of eight sensitivity factors, but agencies consider climate change as a threat to
only 64% of species and plan management actions for only 18% of species. Agencies are more likely to plan actions for species
sensitive to more factors, but such planning has declined since 2016. Results highlight the gap between climate change sensi-
tivity and the attention from agencies charged with conserving endangered species.
NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | VOL 9 | DECEMBER 2019 | 999–1004 | www.nature.com/natureclimatechange 999
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved
... Over 99 % of listed plant and animal species have traits (e.g., sensitivity to temperature, disturbance, or phenologic mismatch) that render them potentially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The agencies implementing the ESA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, consider climate change to be a threat for most listed species, but actions to address climate change have been included in plans for < 30 % of animals and < 4 % of plants ( Delach et al., 2019 ;Weber et al., 2023 ;Wrobleski et al., 2023 ). In particular, critical habitat designations rarely explicitly incorporate climate change, with some notable exceptions such as bull trout ( Salvelinus confluentus ), for which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service attempted to identify and include streams likely to persist in providing cold-water habitat (75 F.R. 63898). ...
... Those species' climate change sensitivity was obtained from datasets on endangered animals ( Delach et al., 2019, endangered plants ( Wrobleski et al., 2023 ), and threatened animals . Sensitivity scores for animals were based on eight life history factors potentially influencing climate sensitivity (temperature, hydrology, disturbance, isolation, injurious species, chemistry, phenology, and obligate species relationships). ...
... For most of the 153 species we examined (129 species; 84 %), < 25 % of designated critical habitat overlaps with CRC that are also protected for biodiversity conservation in GAP 1 or GAP 2 status, and only 9 % of species had > 50 % overlap of their critical habitat with such lands. Fig. 2 shows a density distribution of the percent of critical habitat overlapping with CRC lands that are also in GAP 1, 2, or 3 status, arranged by climate sensitivity scores, as previously determined for endangered plant species ( Wrobleski et al., 2023 ), endangered animal species ( Delach et al., 2019 ), and threatened animal species . For all three groups, and across all sensitivity scores, very little critical habitat overlapped with CRC lands in GAP 1-3 status, as indicated by the density distribution peaks at the left side of each graph, in the < 25 % range ( Fig. 2 ). ...
Designated critical habitats for U.S. imperiled species are not protected from climate and land-use change
Article
Full-text available
  • Jun 2024
Designation of critical habitat is an important conservation tool for species listed as threatened or endangered under the United States (U.S.) Endangered Species Act (ESA). While this is an important protective mechanism, lands designated as critical habitat could still be subject to degradation and fragmentation if they are not also in a protected status that prioritizes biodiversity conservation. Additionally, most designations of critical habitat do not explicitly take climate change into account. The objective of our study was to determine whether and to what extent critical habitats for species listed under the ESA are located within protected areas and areas previously identified as climate refugia or climate corridors, to inform management strategies to better conserve and recover these species. We mapped the designated critical habitats of 153 ESA-listed species and measured their overlap with previously-identified areas of climate refugia and corridors (CRC), and also with lands designated as nature-protected by U.S. Geological Survey’s Gap Analysis Project (GAP Status 1 or 2) and working lands with wildlife habitat potential (GAP Status 3). Only 18 % of all designated critical habitat is located on lands that are both in CRC and nature-protected, and only 9 % of species had over half of their designated critical habitats in such lands. 84 % of species had <25 % overlap of their critical habitats with these areas. Critical habitats may therefore not fulfill their essential role of helping imperiled species persist and recover.
View
... In the United States, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is the federal law directing the conservation and recovery of species at risk of extinction (US Congress, 1973), and management and recovery for these species is in the jurisdiction of the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). Delach et al. (2019) assessed the climate change sensitivity for all 459 animals listed as "endangered" under the ESA with ranges at least partly within the US. They also evaluated whether climate change is discussed as a threat and whether agencies described climate-related management action in official documents published by FWS and NMFS from 1973 to 2018. ...
... They found that 99.8 % of the animals listed as endangered species were sensitive to one or more of eight sensitivity factors, but the agencies considered climate change as a threat to only 64 % of species, and planned management actions for only 18 %. Delach et al. (2019) assessed only animal species listed as "endangered", statutorily defined as "in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range" (US Congress, 1973). The authors did not assess plants, foreign species, or the 197 US-based animals listed as "threatened," defined as "any species which is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range" (US Congress, 1973). ...
... To examine this, we replicated the methodologies of Delach et al. (2019), focusing on species' life history and biological characteristics to assess sensitivity to climate change (Table 1) and the recognition (or lack thereof) of management plans in addressing species vulnerability to the effects of climate change. We abbreviated vulnerability protocols by assessing climate sensitivity due to its management relevance (Butt and Gallagher, 2018), and the difficulty of predicting exposure at the fine scale of imperiled species populations (Case et al., 2015). ...
View
... The last major amendment to the ESA was in 1988 [39]. The first ESA listed animal to evaluate climate change as a primary threat for their listing was the polar bear (Ursus maritimus) in 2008, followed by many more species that same year [40]. Since this 2008 listing, there has not been an amendment to the ESA, so climate change continues to be generally considered either as a contributor to "Habitat destruction" or as one of the "Other factors" in a species assessment. ...
... In 2019, Delach et al. assessed the sensitivity of 459 endangered animals to climate change, if climate change was listed as a threat, and if any actions were implemented to mitigate climate change. They found that almost all animal species are sensitive to climate change, but only 64% listed climate change as a threat and even fewer (18%) had management actions in place [40]. This more recent evaluation has not been carried out for plants. ...
... Using Delach et al. 2019 as a reference, we modified a trait-based assessment to determine how sensitive a plant or lichen species is to climate change [40]. Sensitivity is defined as the "innate characteristics of a species or system and considers tolerance to changes in such things as temperature, precipitation, fire regimes, and other key processes" [55]. ...
The impact of climate change on endangered plants and lichen
Article
Full-text available
  • Jul 2023
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was a landmark protection for rare organisms in the United States. Although the ESA is known for its protection of wildlife, a majority of listed species are actually plants and lichen. Climate change will impact species populations globally. Already-rare species, like those listed in the ESA, are at an even higher risk due to climate change. Despite this, the risk climate change poses to endangered plants has not been systematically evaluated in over a decade. To address this gap, we modified previously existing qualitative assessment toolkits used to examine the threat of climate change in federal documentation on listed wildlife. These modified toolkits were then applied to the 771 ESA listed plants. First, we evaluated how sensitive ESA listed plants and lichens were to climate change based on nine quantitative sensitivity factors. Then, we evaluated if climate change was recognized as a threat for a species, and if actions were being taken to address the threats of climate change. We found that all ESA listed plant and lichen species are at least slightly (score of 1) sensitive to climate change, and therefore all listed plants and lichens are threatened by climate change. While a majority of ESA listing and recovery documents recognized climate change as a threat, very few had actions being taken in their recovery plans to address climate change directly. While acknowledging the threat that climate change poses to rare plants is an important first step, direct action will need to be taken to ensure the recovery of many of these species.
View
... No Canadá, 44% das espécies oficialmente listadas como ameaçadas registram as mudanças climáticas como ameaça, porém, 43% dos PANs naquele país omitem a ameaça em suas ações [23]. Em contraponto, na Austrália, 60% dos PANs reconhecem o driver mudanças climáticas como ameaça para as espécies listadas [39], e nos Estados Unidos, 64% das espécies listadas pelo Endangered Species Act registram esse driver como ameaça [40] [41]. Nossa análise aponta que, no Brasil, as mudanças climáticas são indicadas como ameaça para um número baixo de espécies. ...
Ameaças e especificidade de ações dos Planos de Ação Nacional para Conservação da Fauna no Brasil
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2024
O aumento das ameaças à biodiversidade e de extinções de espécies está diretamente associado às atividades antrópicas. O enfrentamento desse problema requer a priorização de ações conservacionistas e os Planos de Ação Nacional para Conservação da Fauna são documentos que sintetizam essas ações. Aqui utilizamos planos de ação nacional (PANs) disponíveis para o Brasil para: 1) categorizar os drivers de ameaças diretas que recaem sobre as espécies de vertebrados contempladas; 2) analisar padrões de frequência de drivers dentre e entre grupos taxonômicos, e categorias de ameaça; 3) analisar a especificidade das ações elaboradas nos PANs; e 4) analisar a influência do tempo decorrido entre a espécie ser asinalada como ameaçada, a publicação de um PAN que a contemple, e uma eventual mudança de status de ameaça. Identificamos que o agronegócio e a superexploração de espécies são os drivers que impactam o maior número de mamíferos, aves, répteis e anfíbios. Encontramos nas matrizes de planejamento e nas matrizes de monitoria do primeiro ano de cada PAN um total de 3.747 ações, das quais 30% eram específicas para ameaças identificadas, porém tendenciosas para o driver superexploração. Um grupo de 14 espécies apresentou melhora no status de conservação ao longo do período de listagem de espécies ameaçadas no Brasil, e de implementação dos PANs (1989 – 2020). Eventuais melhoras no status de ameaça podem ser comprometidas pela baixa especificidade das ações propostas nos planos de ação, pelo longo tempo para implementação dessas ações, ou pelos obstáculos que impedem o início e a conclusão das ações.
View
... Karner blue butterfly (Plebejus samuelis) are dependent on the native sundial lupine, which has been eliminated from much of its range due to habitat loss and replacement in the northeast by Lupinus polyphyllus, a western species that has been introduced in the east. Conservation of Karner blue butterfly cannot be assured without aggressive measures to reduce ultimate population stressors and protect the microsites on which large fractions of the population depend 61 . Decades of warnings failed to prevent the functional extinction of northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) due to hunting and poaching, while conservation organizations and governments debated if, when, how, and who should act 62 . ...
Warning sign of an accelerating decline in critically endangered killer whales (Orcinus orca)
Article
Full-text available
  • Apr 2024
Wildlife species and populations are being driven toward extinction by a combination of historic and emerging stressors (e.g., overexploitation, habitat loss, contaminants, climate change), suggesting that we are in the midst of the planet’s sixth mass extinction. The invisible loss of biodiversity before species have been identified and described in scientific literature has been termed, memorably, dark extinction. The critically endangered Southern Resident killer whale (Orcinus orca) population illustrates its contrast, which we term bright extinction; namely the noticeable and documented precipitous decline of a data-rich population toward extinction. Here we use a population viability analysis to test the sensitivity of this killer whale population to variability in age structure, survival rates, and prey-demography functional relationships. Preventing extinction is still possible but will require greater sacrifices on regional ocean use, urban development, and land use practices, than would have been the case had threats been mitigated even a decade earlier.
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... Our findings suggest that sensitivity does not strongly differ among most conservation status categories and that intrinsic sensitivity to climate change may not be fully captured by current listing criteria (Delach et al., 2019). A mismatch between sensitivity to climate change and protected status has been documented for other freshwater taxa (fishes, Pritt & Frimpong, 2010;crayfish, Hossain et al., 2018), as well as for broader taxonomic groups (snakes, Reed & Shine, 2002;birds, Gardali et al., 2012;trees, Fremout et al., 2020;anurans, DuBose et al., 2023). ...
Spatial extent drives patterns of relative climate change sensitivity for freshwater fishes of the United States
Article
Full-text available
  • Mar 2024
Assessing the sensitivity of freshwater species to climate change is an essential component of prioritizing conservation efforts for threatened freshwater ecosystems and organisms. Sensitivity to climate change can be systematically evaluated for multiple species using geographic attributes such as range size and climate niche breadth, and using species traits associated with climate change sensitivity. These systematic evaluations produce relative rankings of species sensitivity to aid conservation prioritization and to identify relatively sensitive species that may otherwise be understudied or overlooked. Due in part to biogeographic constraints, species assemblages change across regions and spatial extents; yet, the degree to which spatial factors influence relative rankings of species sensitivity is unclear. The spatial extent of multispecies analyses may alter relative rankings of species climate sensitivity; alternatively, relative climate sensitivity may be conserved among spatial scales, resulting in consistent identification of sensitive species among regions and spatial extents. We investigated how spatial extent influences our understanding of relative climate sensitivity for 137 native freshwater fishes of the United States that were representative of taxonomic, trait, and geographic diversity. Using publicly available occurrence data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, we calculated a systematic, geographically derived index of climate change sensitivity for study species at national and regional extents, including within four major hydrologic subregions of the United States. We examined the effects of spatial extent on the relative ranking of climate sensitivity among species, and we explored relationships among climate sensitivity, species traits, and conservation status at regional and national extents. We found that climate sensitivity rankings of species were influenced by spatial extent in some specific instances, but that relative rankings were largely conserved across spatial scales. However, correlations among geographically derived climate sensitivity rankings and species traits associated with climate sensitivity were variable across scales and regions, suggesting that links between geographic rarity and species traits may be scale‐dependent in some cases. Finally, we found few associations between climate sensitivity and current conservation status among species. Systematic approaches to quantifying climate sensitivity may offer an opportunity to identify sensitive but overlooked species for pre‐listing actions such as monitoring or conservation agreements.
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... Clarifying where rare species live and how they change over time is critical for timely and effective conservation actions. For example, evaluate the outcomes of previous conservation actions, establish new conservation areas with local residents, predict potential species distribution, and plan adaptation strategies for future climate change (Moritz and Agudo, 2013;Delach et al., 2019). With the development of new sensors, it is necessary to enhance the precision of our species survey systems in terms of species density and geographical range. ...
Automatedly identify dryland threatened species at large scale by using deep learning
Article
  • Jan 2024
  • SCI TOTAL ENVIRON
Dryland biodiversity is decreasing at an alarming rate. Advanced intelligent tools are urgently needed to rapidly, automatedly, and precisely detect dryland threatened species on a large scale for biological conservation. Here, we explored the performance of three deep convolutional neural networks (Deeplabv3+, Unet, and Pspnet models) on the intelligent recognition of rare species based on high-resolution (0.3 m) satellite images taken by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). We focused on a threatened species, Populus euphratica, in the Tarim River Basin (China), where there has been a severe population decline in the 1970s and restoration has been carried out since 2000. The testing results showed that Unet outperforms Deeplabv3+ and Pspnet when the training samples are lower, while Deeplabv3+ performs best as the dataset increases. Overall, when training samples are 80, Deeplabv3+ had the best overall performance for Populus euphratica identification, with mean pixel accuracy (MPA) between 87.31 % and 90.2 %, which, on average is 3.74 % and 11.29 % higher than Unet and Pspnet, respectively. Deeplabv3+ can accurately detect the boundaries of Populus euphratica even in areas of dense vegetation, with lower identification uncertainty for each pixel than other models. This study developed a UAV imagery-based identification framework using deep learning with high resolution in large-scale regions. This approach can accurately capture the variation in dryland threatened species, especially those in inaccessible areas, thereby fostering rapid and efficient conservation actions.
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... [7][8][9] Understanding and addressing current gaps in planning can help ensure effective recovery action. Delach et al. (2019) assessed the climate change sensitivity for all 459 animals listed as "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) with ranges at least partly within the US or its territories. They also evaluated whether climate change is discussed as a threat and whether agencies described climaterelated management action in o cial documents published by the two federal agencies that implement conservation and recovery actions under the ESA-the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)-from the Act's inception in 1973 through the end of 2018. ...
Climate Assessment of US Endangered Species Improves, Actions Still Lag
Preprint
Full-text available
  • Apr 2023
We updated previous research on inclusion of climate change in listing and conservation planning for animals listed as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act, to include documents published through 2022. Inclusion of climate change as a threat has improved from 64% to 85% and action planning more than doubled, from 18% to 38%. Despite improvement, the majority of our most imperiled species still lack climate adaptation actions.
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... several challenges for their persistence due to manifold local stressors, rapid anthropogenic climate change is driving them even closer to extinction (Delach et al., 2019;IPCC, 2014). Under a fast-shifting climate, the identification of species under a higher risk to changes in climatic conditions constitutes a first step toward prioritizing our conservation actions (Foden et al., 2019). ...
Are Mediterranean marine threatened species at high risk by climate change?
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  • Dec 2022
  • GLOBAL CHANGE BIOL
Rapid anthropogenic climate change is driving threatened biodiversity one step closer to extinction. Effects on native biodiversity are determined by an interplay between species' exposure to climate change and their specific ecological and life-history characteristics that render them even more susceptible. Impacts on biodiversity have already been reported, however, a systematic risk evaluation of threatened marine populations is lacking. Here, we employ a trait-based approach to assess the risk of 90 threatened marine Mediterranean species to climate change, combining species' exposure to increased sea temperature and intrinsic vulnerability. One-quarter of the threatened marine biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea is predicted to be under elevated levels of climate risk, with various traits identified as key vulnerability traits. High-risk taxa including sea turtles, marine mammals, Anthozoa and Chondrichthyes are highlighted. Climate risk, vulnerability and exposure hotspots are distributed along the Western Mediterranean, Alboran, Aegean, and Adriatic Seas. At each Mediterranean marine ecoregion, 21% to 31% of their threatened species have high climate risk. All Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas host threatened species with high risk to climate change, with 90% having a minimum of 4 up to 19 species of high climate risk, making the objective of a climate-smart conservation strategy a crucial task for immediate planning and action. Our findings aspire to offer new insights for systematic, spatially strategic planning and prioritization of vulnerable marine life in the face of accelerating climate change.
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Moving beyond the pathology of policies pushing species toward extinction: The case of spectacled flying foxes in Australia
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Full-text available
  • Jun 2024
The rate of extinction is increasing with little reversal of negative trends, prompting a need for conservation scientists and practitioners to rethink approaches to aid the recovery of threatened species. Many extinctions could be prevented if impediments to protecting these species were addressed effectively. This article considers how current policies and practices are failing an endangered species and how biodiversity conservation is fraught with barriers such as rhetorical adoption, policy dismantling, circumvention of legislative obligations, and the deliberate disregard of scientific evidence. These issues became evident while researching the endangered Spectacled Flying‐fox (Pteropus conspicillatus Gould 1850), which, despite over a decade of recognized decline, received little attention from authorities who could have acted to stabilize or recover its populations. Recovery plans are often the primary means used by many countries to help threatened species recover and typically fall under government responsibility for implementation. For these plans to be effective, they should be mandatory, well‐funded, and subject to stringent monitoring and reporting requirements. However, the implementation of such plans is often inconsistent, with many not meeting these criteria. The scientific basis for recovery actions is usually well‐researched, although uncertainties around outcomes remain since these actions are experimental and success is not guaranteed. The failure to implement recovery plans can be highly frustrating for conservation scientists and practitioners, often stemming from policy failures. For those involved in conservation research and practice, learning how to identify and overcome policy impediments would help to ensure the successful implementation of recovery plans. Vigilance is required to ensure that recovery teams function effectively, that recovery actions are executed, that decision‐makers are held accountable for endangering species, and that legislation includes merits review provisions to challenge poor decision‐making. Conservation scientists who monitor species of concern are often best placed to track the progress of recovery actions. When they detect insufficient action, they have a responsibility to intervene or to notify the responsible authorities. Ultimately, government policies should prioritize the protection of threatened species over economic and political interests, recognizing that extinction is irreversible and the stakes are high for biodiversity conservation.
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Climate readiness of recovery plans for threatened Australian species
Article
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The rapidly changing climate is posing growing threats for all species, but particularly for those already considered threatened. We reviewed 100 recovery plans for Australian terrestrial threatened species (50 fauna and 50 flora plans) written from 1997 to 2017. We recorded the number of plans that acknowledged climate change as a threat and of these how many proposed specific actions to ameliorate the threat. We classified these actions along a continuum from passive or incremental to active or interventionist. Overall, just under 60% of the sampled recovery plans listed climate change as a current or potential threat to the threatened taxa, and the likelihood of this acknowledgment increased over time. A far smaller proportion of the plans, however, identified specific actions associated with ameliorating climate risk (22%) and even fewer (9%) recommended any interventionist action in response to a climate‐change‐associated threat. Our results point to a disconnect between the knowledge generated on climate‐change‐related risk and potential adaptation strategies and the extent to which this knowledge has been incorporated into an important instrument of conservation action.
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Endangered species recovery: A resource allocation problem
Article
Full-text available
  • Oct 2018
We discuss here the merits of an explicit resource allocation framework and introduce a prototype decision tool that we developed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to facilitate transparent and efficient recover allocation decisions.
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Using species traits to guide conservation actions under climate change
Article
Full-text available
  • Nov 2018
  • CLIMATIC CHANGE
Few assessments of species vulnerability to climate change used to inform conservation management consider the intrinsic traits that shape species’ capacity to respond to climate change. This omission is problematic as it may result in management actions that are not optimised for the long-term persistence of species as climates shift. We present a tool for explicitly linking data on plant species’ life history traits and range characteristics to appropriate management actions that maximise their capacity to respond to climate change. We deliberately target data on easily measured and widely available traits (e.g. dispersal syndrome, height, longevity) and range characteristics (e.g. range size, climatic/soil niche breadth), to allow for rapid comparison across many species. We test this framework on 1237 plants, categorising species on the basis of their potential climate change risk as related to four factors affecting their response capacity: reproduction, movement capability, abiotic niche specialisation and spatial coverage. Based on these four factors, species were allocated risk scores, and these were used to test the hypothesis that the current protection status under national legislation and related management actions capture species response capacity to climate change. Our results indicate that 20% of the plant species analysed (242 species) are likely to have a low capacity to respond to climate change based on the traits assessed, and are therefore at high risk. Of the 242 high risk species, only 10% (24 species) are currently listed for protection under conservation legislation. Importantly, many management plans for these listed species fail to address the capacity of species to respond to climate change with appropriate actions: 70% of approved management plans do not include crucial actions which may improve species’ ability to adapt to climate change. We illustrate how the use of easily attainable traits associated with ecological and evolutionary responses to changing environmental conditions can inform conservation actions for plant species globally.
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Climate change vulnerability assessment of species
Article
Full-text available
  • Oct 2018
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 climate change vulnerability assessment (CCVA) and describe key concepts, terms, steps and considerations. We stress the importance of identifying the full range of pressures, impacts and their associated mechanisms that species face and using this as a basis for selecting the appropriate assessment approaches for quantifying vulnerability. We outline four CCVA assessment approaches, namely trait‐based, correlative, mechanistic and combined approaches and discuss their use. Since any assessment can deliver unreliable or even misleading results when incorrect data and parameters are applied, we discuss finding, selecting, and applying input data and provide examples of open‐access resources. Because rare, small‐range, and declining‐range species are often of particular conservation concern while also posing significant challenges for CCVA, we describe alternative ways to assess them. We also describe how CCVAs can be used to inform IUCN Red List assessments of extinction risk. Finally, we suggest future directions in this field and propose areas where research efforts may be particularly valuable. This article is categorized under: • Climate, Ecology, and Conservation > Extinction Risk
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Decision Support Frameworks and Tools for Conservation
Article
Full-text available
  • Jun 2017
The practice of conservation occurs within complex socioecological systems fraught with challenges that require transparent, defensible, and often socially engaged project planning and management. Planning and decision support frameworks are designed to help conservation practitioners increase planning rigor, project accountability, stakeholder participation, transparency in decisions, and learning. We describe and contrast five common frameworks within the context of six fundamental questions (why, who, what, where, when, how) at each of three planning stages of adaptive management (project scoping, operational planning, learning). We demonstrate that decision support frameworks provide varied and extensive tools for conservation planning and management. However, using any framework in isolation risks diminishing potential benefits since no one framework covers the full spectrum of potential conservation planning and decision challenges. We describe two case studies that have effectively deployed tools from across conservation frameworks to improve conservation actions and outcomes. Attention to the critical questions for conservation project planning should allow practitioners to operate within any framework and adapt tools to suit their specific management context. We call on conservation researchers and practitioners to regularly use decision support tools as standard practice for framing both practice and research.
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Climate change vulnerability for species-Assessing the assessments
Article
Full-text available
  • Jun 2017
  • GLOBAL CHANGE BIOL
Climate change vulnerability assessments are commonly used to identify species at risk from global climate change, but the wide range of methodologies available makes it difficult for end users, such as conservation practitioners or policymakers, to decide which method to use as a basis for decision-making. In this study, we evaluate whether different assessments consistently assign species to the same risk categories and whether any of the existing methodologies perform well at identifying climate-threatened species. We compare the outputs of 12 climate change vulnerability assessment methodologies, using both real and simulated species, and validate the methods using historic data for British birds and butterflies (i.e. using historical data to assign risks and more recent data for validation). Our results show that the different vulnerability assessment methods are not consistent with one another; different risk categories are assigned for both the real and simulated sets of species. Validation of the different vulnerability assessments suggests that methods incorporating historic trend data into the assessment perform best at predicting distribution trends in subsequent time periods. This study demonstrates that climate change vulnerability assessments should not be used interchangeably due to the poor overall agreement between methods when considering the same species. The results of our validation provide more support for the use of trend-based rather than purely trait-based approaches, although further validation will be required as data become available.
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Species recovery in the United States: increasing the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act
Article
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  • Jan 2016
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has succeeded in shielding hundreds of species from extinction and improving species recovery over time. However, recovery for most species officially protected by the ESA - i.e., listed species-has been harder to achieve than initially envisioned. Threats to species are persistent and pervasive, funding has been insufficient, the distribution of money among listed species is highly uneven, and at least 10 times more species than are actually listed probably qualify for listing. Moreover, many listed species will require ongoing management for the foreseeable future to protect them from persistent threats. Climate change will exacerbate this problem and increase both species risk and management uncertainty, requiring more intensive and controversial management strategies to prevent species from going extinct.
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Political ideology and views about climate change in the European Union
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2015
There is a strong political divide on climate change in the US general public, with Liberals and Democrats expressing greater belief in and concern about climate change than Conservatives and Republicans. Recent studies find a similar though less pronounced divide in other countries. Its leadership in international climate policy making warrants extending this line of research to the European Union (EU). The extent of a left–right ideological divide on climate change views is examined via Eurobarometer survey data on the publics of 25 EU countries before the 2008 global financial crisis, the 2009 ‘climategate’ controversy and COP-15 in Copenhagen, and an increase in organized climate change denial campaigns. Citizens on the left consistently reported stronger belief in climate change and support for action to mitigate it than did citizens on the right in 14 Western European countries. There was no such ideological divide in 11 former Communist countries, likely due to the low political salience of climate change and the differing meaning of left–right identification in these countries.
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Conservation triage or injurious neglect in endangered species recovery
Article
  • Mar 2016
Significance Although government funding available for species protection and recovery is one of the best predictors of successful recovery, government spending is both insufficient and highly disproportionate among groups of species. Here I demonstrate that expenditures for recovery in excess of the recommended recovery budget would not necessarily translate into better conservation outcomes. More importantly, elimination of the budget surplus for “costly yet futile” recovery plans can provide sufficient funding to offset funding deficits for more than 180 species. Using a return on investment analysis, I show that triage by budget compression provides better funding for a larger sample of species, and that a larger sample of adequately funded recovery plans should produce better outcomes even if by chance.
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