ACS publishes WRI Issue Brief

In collaboration with World Resources Institute and as part of their Southern Forests for the Future Incentive Series, ACS publishes an issue brief on Insights from the Field: Forests for Species and Habitat. Todd Gartner and Josh Donlan report on their progress on developing candidate conservation species incentive programs and a pilot program with the imperiled gopher tortoise in the southern United States.

Interest in candidate conservation incentive programs is rapidly growing in the private, public, and nongovernmental organization sectors as changes in land use across the country spark new challenges in balancing ecosystem management with residential and commercial development, national security, energy infrastructure, and climate change. This issue brief reports on the mechanics of and lessons learned from an initial pilot candidate conservation incentive program focused on the gopher tortoise. Its aim is to inform the successful design and implementation of other candidate programs emerging throughout the southern forests and greater United States.

For more information, visit WRI Insights.

Download a copy of the brief here.

Island Invasives: Eradication and Management

ACS contributes to a new book focused on invasive species and islands by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The papers and abstracts published in this book are the outcome of the conference on Island Invasives: Eradication and Management held at Tamaki Campus, University of Auckland, New Zealand, from 8 to 12 February 2010, hosted by the Centre for Biodiversity and Biosecurity (University of Auckland and Landcare Research), in collaboration with the IUCN/SSC Invasive Species Specialist Group.

ACS's chapter "Advantages and challenges of government, non-profit and for-profit approaches to eradications: leveraging synergies by working together" is availible here.

A Coastal-Marine Conservation Assessment in Chile

ACS conducts a coastal-marine conservation assessment in Chile for the David & Lucile Packard Foundation. The  coast  of  Chile  stretches  some  7,400  km  from  its  border  with  Peru  to  Cape  Horn.  Chile’s   coastal  waters  represent  some  of  the  world’s  most  diverse  and  productive  marine   environments.  We  provided  an  assessment  of  coastal-­‐marine  conservation  in  Chile,  focused   on  the state  of  marine  biodiversity,  its  current  impacts  and  threats, and the organizations and programs focused on marine conservation and management. Download a copy of the report.

Mozambique

ACS works with UNEP/CMS and local NGOs in Mozambique to design an environmental conservation program that incentivizes environmental stewardship in local fishing communities. The program focuses on illegal gill-net fishing and endangered dugongs, a marine mammal that is caught by gill-nets.

Biodiversity Offsets At-sea

Josh Donlan and colleagues at CSIRO-Australia published a paper in the journal PLOS-One that suggests that biodiversity offsets could help ease conflicts between fishing and seabirds. Click here for a free copy of the paper. Also, Conservation Magazine wrote about the idea.