Back on Track species prioritisation framework - Links
Development of the Back on Track species prioritisation framework application
The Back on Track species prioritisation framework is based on the methods of Professor Helene Marsh and colleagues from their paper Optimizing Allocation of Management Resources for Wildlife (Marsh et al. 2007).
The development of the Back on Track species prioritisation framework was funded by the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management and the Australian Government’s Natural Resource Management program.
Identifying conservation priorities
Cooktown orchid Photo: C. Dollery/DERM
Conservation practitioners have always made decisions on their work priorities, as resources for conservation are finite and therefore it is not possible to address every issue.
In recent years a number of different approaches to identifying conservation priorities have been developed. These include:
The prioritisation of species
- Using decision theory to determine the level of investment that is required to reduce the number of threatened species (McCarthy et al. 2008).
- Setting priorities for the conservation of Irish bees (Fitzpatrick et al. 2007).
- Setting priorities for the conservation of Venezuela’s threatened birds (Rodríguez et al. 2004).
- Prioritising species for monitoring and management in California (Regan et al. 2007).
The prioritisation of projects to secure a viable population of each threatened species
- The prioritisation of projects for New Zealand’s threatened species (Joseph et al. 2008).
The prioritisation of the location and design of reserves
- The development of Marxan, which is a computer program to support conservation planning that uses an understanding of conservation threats and priorities (Ball et al. 2009)
- A systematic approach to the location and design of reserves (Margules and Pressey 2000).
Links to Natural Resource Management bodies
Back on Track species prioritisation framework is working with the 14 Natural Resource Management (NRM) bodies across Queensland, they are:
- Burnett Mary Regional Group for NRM Inc
- Cape York Natural Resource Management Ltd
- Condamine Alliance Inc
- Desert Channels Queensland Inc
- Fitzroy Basin Association
- Northern Gulf Resource Management Group
- North Queensland Dry Tropics
- Queensland Murray-Darling Committee Inc.
- Reef Catchments
- South East Queensland Catchments Ltd
- Southern Gulf Catchments Ltd
- South West NRM Ltd
- Terrain NRM Ltd
- Torres Strait Regional Authority
References
Ball IR, Possingham HP &Watts M. 2009. Marxan and relatives: Software for spatial conservation prioritisation. Chapter 14: Pages 185-195 in Spatial conservation prioritisation: Quantitative methods and computational tools. Eds Moilanen A, K.A. Wilson, and H.P. Possingham. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
Fitzpatrick U, Murray TE, Paxton RJ, & Brown MJF. 2007. Building on IUCN regional red lists to produce lists of species of conservation priority: a model with Irish bees. Conservation Biology, 21 (5), 1324-1332.
Joseph LN, Maloney RF & Possingham HP. 2008. Optimal allocation of resources among threatened species: A project prioritization protocol. Conservation Biology, 23 (2), 328-338.
Margules CR & Pressey RL. 2000. Systematic conservation planning. Nature, 405, 243-253.
Marsh H, Dennis A, Hines H, Kutt A, McDonald K, Weber E, Williams S & Winter J. 2007. Optimizing allocation of management resources for wildlife. Conservation Biology, 21, 387-399.
McCarthy MA, Thompson CJ, & Garnett ST. 2008. Optimal investment in conservation of species. Journal of Applied Ecology, 45 (5), 1428-1435.
Regan HM, Hierl LA, Franklin J, Deutschman DH, Schmalbach HL, Winchell CS & Johnson BS. 2008. Species prioritization for monitoring and management in regional multiple species conservation plans. Diversity and Distributions, 14 (3), 462-471.
Rodríguez JP, Rojas-Suárez F, & Sharpe CJ. 2004. Setting priorities for the conservation of Venezuela’s threatened birds. Oryx, 38 (4), 373-382.
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Last updated 26 May 2011