Josh Donlan is selected as a 2008 Kinship Conservation Fellow. He will join 17 others from around the world to explore business and economic tools for biodiversity conservation gains.

Josh Donlan accepts an invitation from SEED Media Group to blog on the Science Blog Shifting Baselines, which is dedicated to providing cures to ecological amnesia. Go there regularly for interesting perspectives and news.

Josh Donlan and Chris Wilcox publish the report “A path to a return on investment framework for island restoration with a focus on seabirds” for the Commonweal Ocean Policy Program.

Josh Donlan and Burr Heneman publish the report “Maximizing return on investments for island restoration with a focus on seabird conservation” for the Commonweal Ocean Policy Program.

Josh Donlan was awarded a Practitioner Fellowship with the Alcoa Foundation Conservation & Sustainability Program to work with the World Conservation Union to explore biodiversity offsets as a tool for fisheries bycatch management. Josh will be working with IUCN staff on policy surrounding offsets and bycatch management.

Josh Donlan and Chris Wilcox exchange words with Dan Doak and colleagues and David Priddel on the challenges and opportunities of biodiversity offsets for fisheries bycatch in the pages of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

Josh Donlan and Chris Wilcox publish an essay “Integrating invasive mammal eradications and biodiversity offsets for fisheries bycatch: conservation opportunities and challenges for seabirds and sea turtles” in the upcoming issue of Biological Invasions.

Eric Jaffe writes about biodiversity offsets for fisheries bycatch in Smithsonian Magazine based on Chris Wilcox and Josh Donlan’s paper “Compensatory mitigation as a solution to fisheries bycatch-biodiversity conservation conflicts” in the August 2007 issue in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Environment.

The Wilderness Conservation Society-Ecuador and Advanced Conservation Strategies hosted a conservation strategies workshop for Ecuadorian students and conservationists in Maquipucuna Field Station in Ecuador. WCS-Ecuador Director Esteban Suárez and ACS Director Josh Donlan co-taught the four-day workshop, which was attended by 15 conservation biologists.

ACS Directors Chris Wilcox and Josh Donlan publish a new paper “Compensatory mitigation as a solution to fisheries bycatch-biodiversity conservation conflicts” in the upcoming August 2007 issue in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Environment outlining new thinking on the management of seabird and sea turtle bycatch. 

See summary below and click here for more information.

Click here for a copy of the paper.

Also click here for a Podcast with an interview with Chris Wilcox.

Removing invasive predators from island breeding colonies could save more seabirds for less cost than reductions in fishing, a study of Australia’s Eastern Tuna and Billfish Fishery (ETBF) has found.“A major challenge for fisheries worldwide is to reduce their impact on non-target or ‘bycatch’ species such as seabirds,” Dr Chris Wilcox of CSIRO says.“Methods of reducing bycatch include modifying fishing gear and restricting areas and periods of fishing, but these measures are not always effective, leading to costly interventions such as fishery closure.”“While the priority should always be for fishers to avoid bycatch, they could also ‘offset’ bycatch that does occur by funding conservation measures that tackle other, often greater, threats to bycatch species.”Dr Wilcox and C. Josh Donlan of Cornell University explored the offset approach in a study of flesh-footed shearwater bycatch in the ETBF, which catches yellowfin and bigeye tuna, albacore and billfish.Practices used in the ETBF to reduce the capture of seabirds on longlines are costly and not always effective for all species. A species of concern is the flesh-footed shearwater, which in eastern Australia breeds only on Lord Howe Island where rats are potentially a major predator.Wilcox and Donlan compared the impact of fishing with that of rat predation on Lord Howe Island flesh-footed shearwater populations, and the costs and benefits of rat control and fishery closures.They found that banning fishing in a 750-kilometre radius of the island would result in a 6% increase in growth rate of the shearwater population, at a cost of about US$3 million. The eradication of rats would result in a 32% increase in the population growth rate, at a cost of about US$500,000.Rat eradication therefore could yield a conservation return on investment 23 times greater than a fishery closure, and could have broader ecosystem benefits.“Vessel levies could be set at the cost of offsetting their bycatch,” Dr Wilcox says. “As well as funding actions that effectively offset the bycatch that does occur, the levy would encourage fishers to seek innovative ways of avoiding bycatch.”Dr Wilcox says the environmental community has made great strides in drawing attention to fisheries bycatch. Fishers, technologists and scientists in turn have reduced bycatch substantially through fishing-method innovation.“For fisheries to have a zero impact on bycatch, however, they will need to use the full suite of cost-effective tools available, in a responsible and integrated way,”he says. Wilcox and Donlan believe that given the number of seabirds and other mammals affected by fisheries and invasive species, the offset approach could prove effective in many scenarios worldwide.

ACS Director Josh Donlan writes about Pleistocene Rewilding - a proposal to bring back animals that disappeared from North America 13,000 years ago - in the June issue of Scientific American. The editors of Scientific American also weigh in on the idea.

At the request of the Chilean and Argentinean governments, Josh Donlan joined a feasibility team to investigate the possibility of removing invasive beavers from Tierra del Fuego Island and the surrounding wildlands in southern South America. The Chilean and Argentinean governments and the Wildlife Conservation Society are running the project.