Message from Glasgow - statement and press releases

We collected the press releases on hot topics form the ECCB and the policy statement voted by the participants in one document:  ECCB2012  message and press releases can be downloaded from here.

“It takes only 5 days to get to Glasgow… by bike!” - Swarovski Optik Green Travel Price awarded during the 3rd European Congress of Conservation Biology

At the end of the European Congress of Conservation Biology, the Swarovski Optik Green Travel Price was awarded to Willem Laermans from Belgium, who made his way up from Belgium to Glasgow using a boat and his bike. In five days he travelled 550 km and was challenged by varying Scottish weather conditions.

The Society for Conservation Biology - Europe Section, has established this green travel prize in order to encourage members not only to invest in science that can inform better management and policy for the conservation of biodiversity, but also to set a good example on how to reduce their individual footprint. Swarovski Optik was happy to support this initiative by providing two prices, the first of which was a pair of Swarovision binoculars. Carina Schiestl-Swarowski, chairman of the executive board of Swarovski Optik: “We work in harmonious symbiosis with nature and environment because this forms the basis for the use of our products. Only nature that is in good order, and the biodiversity of flora and fauna help our customers to enjoy breathtaking, unforgettable visual experiences”.

Paul Beier, Global President of the Society of Conservation Biology noted that “Although carbon offsets are necessary, the mantra for reducing emissions is “reduce, replace, offset.” These actions are listed in order of priority, starting with reducing our energy use. No form of offset stores carbon as reliably as keeping fossil fuels in the ground. SCB is proud to put the spotlight on avoiding emissions rather than correcting the damage.”.

Swarovski Prize Awarded in ECCB2012
(l to r: P. Ibisch, P. Beier, W. Laermans, G. Lövei and  G. Lupp)

Willem Laermans, a committed member of the SCB Europe Section stressed the importance of permanently reflecting about how we, personally, affect our surroundings. “We need to take the necessary time to think about how to change this society to help it becoming more sustainable”. Willem, actually, just wanted to give a good example. He himself suggested the establishment of the Swarovski Green Travel Price and will therefore pass the prize to the former president of the European section, Martin Dieterich, who is very well known for his great care, efforts, and setting personal example in how to reduce our ecological footprint on Earth. 

The second prize was awarded to Gerd Lupp, who arrived by train from Sweden to Glasgow via Copenhagen, Basel, Paris and London.

Contact:

Pierre Ibisch -  Centre for Econics and Ecosystem Management, Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, http://www.centreforeconics.org/contact/, ++49-3334-657 178

Willem Laermans - Parklaan 75, 9000, Gent, Belgium, +3293 51 74 66, willem.laermans@gmail.com

Scientists ready to engage policy-makers in the new Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

PRESS RELEASE – 2.9.2012

“IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, is established and we welcome the initiative”, said Carlo Rondinini of the Global Mammal Assessment program at the European Congress on Conservation Biology in Glasgow. “We believe that IPBES could provide the global coordination that according to our forecasting studies will be fundamental for avoiding future biodiversity loss”, continued Piero Visconti of Sapienza University of Rome. Henrique Pereira from University of Lisbon, illustrated what are these cutting-edge methodologies to forecast scenarios of global change in socio-economic and biophysical factors. “These, in conjunction with biodiversity indicators, are the most advanced tools that scientist can provide to make socio-economic decisions and develop biodiversity conservation strategies” concluded Rondinini.

The consensus among the participant to the symposium is that the scientific community is ready to engage with IPBES to draft a road map of socio-economic and conservation policies for addressing present and future challanges for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

For more details, contact Dr. Piero Visconti: pierovisconti@gmail.com, www.globalmammal.org

Why is ECCB2012 interesting for a social scientist?

Conservation biology belongs to natural sciences however, conservation biology intends to go beyond being a pure scientific field and seeks to have an impact on nature conservation.

There are many questions relevant to conservation biologists, which need the participation of social scientists, e.g.: What is behind the conflicts of hunters, other land users and nature conservationists? What is the motivation of farmers to engage in agri-environmental schemes? Can we calculate the benefits of ecosystem services, such as pollination in a certain biodiversity rich area in economic terms? 

In this conference many presentations referred to social-ecological systems which  can be a powerful conceptual framework to discuss nature conservation issues both from scientific and from management point of view. It opens room for interdisciplinary research and science-policy plus science-society dialogue.  Involvement of stakeholders in conservation management and good governance were also among the frequently used terms.

Many sessions included social science perspectives as well: e.g. conservation in the socio-economic context, land sharing-land sparing, ecosystem services, nature conservation in agricultural areas, just to mention a few. Some of the speakers in these sessions were  social scientists.

I think social scientist could learn a lot from natural scientists in this conference, and I hope that the presentations given by social scientists were also useful for natural scientists. The dialogue has started.

Eszter Kovács, PhD

Economist

Szt István University, Hungary

Biodiversity rich grasslands stock atmospheric carbon

PRESS RELEASE - 31.08.2012, ECCB2012, Glasgow

The spring meadow in flower is one of the most pleasant views of "nature" for many people in Europe. Unfortunately, biodiversity-rich meadows are also in decline, and at an alarming rate, throughout Europe. Recent research, presented at the 3^rd European Conference of Conservation Biology in Glasgow, demonstrates such species-rich meadows are much more efficient for storing carbon dioxide than the "improved" (i.e. fertilized), but species-poor grasslands that predominate in modern agriculture.

Photo by R. Arlettaz

Meadows with limited fertiliser input and pastures grazed at low stocking density contain a much richer flora and fauna than intensively managed grasslands. Yet they are in retreat over much of Europe – traditionally so in Western Europe, and now also in the new member countries of the European Community.

New research – presented at the European Congress of Conservation Biology (ECCB) held this week in Glasgow – demonstrates that such "unimproved" grasslands play a much greater role than previously thought in the capture of atmospheric carbon.

“We surveyed a wide range of grasslands across England and consistently found that grasslands with low fertilizer inputs store carbon much more efficiently than more intensively-managed grasslands” says Dr Sue Ward of the Lancaster Environment Centre.

There is a growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating that low-intensity grasslands are key suppliers of a range of ecosystem services. They boost pollinators that play a crucial role in agricultural production. Now it is clear that they have a stunning carbon storage capacity as well, thus helping the fight against climate change.

Dr David Buckingham, one of the organisers of the grassland session at the conference, highlights that “These findings demonstrate that new European agri-environmental policies need to take into account this novel crucial function and should be used to promote low-input grasslands all over the continent”.

European decision makers are currently debating EU agricultural policy – one of the key policies that already has and will continue to influence the state of grasslands across Europe. Attendants of the symposium on grasslands at the ECCB therefore are calling for policymakers to take the findings from scientific research seriously and adapt the EU agricultural policy to become much more environmentally sustainable. This will not only assure safe future of currently vulnerable European extensive grasslands but will make a considerable input into reaching EU carbon targets.

More information (symposium conveners):

·        Dr David Buckingham, tel: 07753775219

·        Prof. Raphaël Arlettaz: 0041 79 637 51 76

About the study on carbon sequestration:

·        Dr Sue Ward, tel: 01524 592 931 s.e.ward@lancaster.ac.uk

·        Prof. Richard Bardgett, r.bardgett@lancaster.ac.uk

We can all contribute to better knowledge of nature!

PRESS RELEASE – 31.08.2012

Citizens scientists become increasingly central to conservation knowledge and action

Photo by Ulf Gärdenfors

Volunteers collecting and submitting biological records have long been an important aspect of conservation. With the advent of social networks and smartphones, more and more people can contribute to our understanding of nature without any specialist training, and help us understand the decline of endangered species and how they may respond to threats such as climate change.

Public participation extends the geographic and temporal ranges of the data that can be collected and engage people directly in conservation. Citizen scientists thus become increasingly important in providing key information for society, science and decision making. At the European Congress on Conservation Biology (ECCB) today, scientists will explore how to best use these records. Studies include the use of social media to collect biodiversity data in a fun and enjoyable way; how internet surveys on people’s gardening practices can aid hedgehog conservation; how citizen scientist’s data can be used in forest conservation planning; and how we can measure the effects of climate change on birds by using the GPS features on smartphones.

The international nature of the conference also explores how people’s attitudes to nature and wildlife data collection differ across Europe compared to the UK’s animal loving public, and how we can all make a difference to conserving the world’s precious living resources.

Contacts:

Mari Jönsson – mari.jonsson@slu.se +46706684400 – Citizen Science (symposium organizer)

Tord Snäll – tord.snall@slu.se +46767662612 – Citizen Science and Conservation Planning (symposium organizer)

Rick Stafford – rick.stafford7@gmail.com 07813526099 – Smartphones and Climate Change

Rachel Williams – rachel.willams_31@hotmail.com – 07895476875 – Hedgehogs in Gardens

Christina Catlin-Groves - c.catlin.groves@googlemail.com – Social media and data collection

Land sparing - land sharing debate at ECCB 2012

Yesterday we held the symposia entitled 'Land sharing versus land sparing - a European perspective' organised by András Báldi and me.

The symposia was opened by Ben Phalan from Cambridge who was followed by five other speakers. The symposia was finished by a discussion between the speakers and the audience. This was led by William Sutherland.

The echoes suggest that the debate was very pleasant and constructive.

What is the right choice for biodiversity and agricultural production? Land sparing, where agricultural areas are intensively used for production while the nearby species rich areas are protected, or land sharing where farming is done in larger areas in an environmental friendly way?

This debate highlighted many dimmensions of these questions: scale matters, context matters, and the results may not be transferred from one region to another. Europe is a diverse place where some areas are still used in an environmental friendly way, while others are intensively farmed. Areas with low intensity farming are typically rich in biodiversity and have high nature value. Intensifying agricultural production would likely result in species and population loss in these areas.

A good summary of the presentations is given by Joern Fischer here. 

(This is how I perceived this symposia. If this text is skewed - it is because my culture and Eastern European origin. Balancing comments are welcome).

Tibor Hartel

Biodiversity conservation depends on scale: lessons from the science–policy dialogue

Biodiversity conservation depends on scale: lessons from the science–policy dialogue

PRESS RELEASE - 30.08.2012

Summary

A paper published in the open access journal Nature Conservation examines the mismatches between the scales at which ecological processes take place and the levels at which policy decisions and management interventions are made.  Various societal actors involved in the process, such as policy makers, land use planners, members of NGOs, and researchers may themselves be operating at various scales, which create additional complications in knowledge transfer between conservation scientists and practitioners.

Text

The year 2010 marked the deadline for the political targets to significantly reduce and halt biodiversity loss. The failure to achieve the 2010 goal stimulated the setting up of new targets for 2020. In addition, preventing the degradation of ecosystems and their services has been incorporated in several global and the EU agendas for 2020. To successful meet these challenging targets requires a critical review of the existing and emerging biodiversity policies to improve their design and implementation, say a team scientists in a paper published in the open access journal Nature Conservation.

These and other questions of increasing the “scale-awareness” of policy makers have been actively discussed at a special SCALES symposium at the 3^rd European Congress of Conservation Biology (ECCB) in Glasgow on 28^th-31^st of August 2012. The lead author Dr  Riikka Paloniemi from the Environmental Policy Centre, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), in Helsinki, Finland, said: “The policies that regulate biodiversity protection and management operate at many administrative levels, employ a range of instruments at different scales, and involve a variety of governmental and non-governmental actors. These actors often have different insights as to what constitutes a scale-challenge and how to deal with it, inevitably leading to contrasting opinions.”

“The question of scale has never been so acute before. Neglecting the spatial and  temporal scale at which ecosystems functions when designing conservation measures may lead to long-standing negative consequences, and the failure of the 2010 target is one of the best examples of that” added Dr Klaus Henle from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ in Leipzig, Germany and coordinator of SCALES.

The main conclusion of the scientists is that scale-related problems, and their potential solutions, are all about improving our understanding of complexity of the processes. Dealing with a number of different scales and scale-mismatches in biodiversity conservation is challenging; it requires an analytical and political framework that is able to assess the  adverse impacts of global change,  and to implement the relevant policies at the relevant scale.

Multimedia

1.     Logo of SCALES project

2.     Cover of the Nature Conservation

Original source

Paloniemi R, Apostolopoulou E, Primmer E, Grodzinska-Jurcak M, Henle K, Ring I, Kettunen M, Tzanopoulos J, Potts S, van den Hove S, Marty P, McConville A, Simila J (2012) Biodiversity conservation across scales: lessons from a science–policy dialogue. Nature Conservation 2: 7-19. doi: 10.3897/natureconservation.2.3144

Contact

Dr Riikka Paloniemi

Environmental Policy Centre, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Helsinki, Finland

Email:  riikka.paloniemi@ymparisto.fi

Dr. Klaus Henle

http://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=1868

Tel. +49-151-122 00472

Additional information

SCALES (2009–2014) stands for “Securing the Conservation of biodiversity across Administrative Levels and spatial, temporal, and Ecological Scales” and is a European research project. Financed by the 7^th EU framework programme for research and development (FP7), SCALES seeks ways to better integrate the issue of scale into policy and decision-making and biodiversity management in the EU. For more information please see: www.scales-project.net

Posted by Pensoft Publishers

Conservation science's future in good hands - Student Award in ECCB2012

Yesterday ECCB had the Student Awards finals, we had 8 students from United Kingdom, Italy, Switzerland, South Africa, and Portugal.

Student Award Session

 The winner was Bernard Coetzee, South Africa who's talk  was titled: "Protected areas achieve significant conservation outcomes". The second classified was Sonja Braaker from Switzerland: "Are green roofs stepping stones for arthropods in an urban landscape?" The third classified was Moreno Di Marco, Italy with the presentation: "Detecting priority mammal species for reassessment to improve Red List estimates of extinction risk".

Piero Visconti: "And the winner is..."

The Student Award session and ceremony were both crowded and we heard interesting stories about shrimps clutching on ducks, how to make Red List reassessment more efficient, how to cultivate critically endangered mussels, or whether green roofs can aid connectivity for spiders and carabid beetles. We thank the judges for their thorough work and all the participants for their high level contribution. Congratulation!




Piero Visconti, Nuno Curado
Student Affairs Committee, SCB-ES

Make Biodiversity Worth to Save - ES plenary on Thursday

Today's plenary was buzzing around the hot topic of ecosystem services and their mappings. "Is ES concept a fair concept?" - asked A. Báldi in his introduction."No, it is anthropocentric and selfish, but we need this concept to make biodiversity visible to the society. As society does not consider biodiversity per se important, we have to build up ES concept to make it more apparent for the socie-economic systems". After Andras's talk,  Henrique M. Pereira shared thelessons from the Portugal Ecosystem Service Assessment. This work was included as regional assessment in the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment. How it all began - strictly with involving the end-users (practitoners, decision-makers)  in the initial scoping phase - raising the same point  as Sir R. Watson yesterday: being demand-driven is a substantial feature of these assessments.

After the Portugal experiences, Georgina Mace talked about the novelilty of the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UK-NEA). Important points of the UK NEA  highlighted: 1) separating goods from ecosystem services and 2) considering biodiversity NOT as an ecosystem service, rather an aspect taken into account on many levels- ecosystem functions, ecosystem services and goods levels.
The scenario exercise showed that an ecosystem service-centred scenario is the optimal to reach human well-being while maximizing the preserved biodiversity.

Finally, Anne Teller from the DG Environment summarized the current EU processes.  According to the EU Biodiversity Strategy: “By 2020, ecosystems and their services are maintained and enhanced by establishing green infrastructure and restoring at least 15% of degraded ecosystems”. Members states should complete their national ecosystem assessment by 2014 - well, an ambitious aim, but also a tool for pushing national governments.

Anne Teller and András Báldi at the SCB-ES booth

ECCB2012 Deadline for Symposia, Workshop and Training Session Proposals – 30th September 2011

Submission deadline for symposia, workshop and training session proposals is 30th September. Submission guidelines are available on the congress website: www.eccb2012.org. ECCB 2012 Organising Committee

www.eccb2012.org

ECCB2012 - Call for symposia is open

 The 3rd European Congress of Conservation Biology will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, from 28 August to 1 September 2012, and is organised by the Society for Conservation Biology -Europe Section and
the University of Cumbria's National School of Forestry.

The Call for symposia, workshops and training sessions is now open with a deadline for proposals of 30 September 2011.  Details are posted on the congress website:
http://www.facebook.com/l/1980d3f8JUoi0OijHX3ujzr5Ivw/www.eccb2012.org

This cornerstone international event will bring academics, students, policy makers, natural resource managers and NGO representatives from all over Europe to address all aspects of conservation biology from research to application, from terrestrial to marine issues. Already three renowned plenary speakers confirmed their participation, Ian Boyd, Ilkka Hanski and Peter Vitousek.

We do hope that the conference is of interest to you; please distribute this letter for other interested parties.

Kind regards,

The Organisers

ECCB 2012 - Glasgow - Call for Symposia

http://www.facebook.com/l/1980dCckCLHuEGPgWBBKnAwGnFQ/www.eccb2012.org/call-for-symposia.asp

BOD Meeting in Glasgow

The BOD and the Local Organizing Committee in front of the SECC, February 25 2011

The Board of the Europe Section held its semi-annual meeting in Glasgow at the end of February.
During the 3 day-meeting, the BoD met the Local Organizing Committee of the 2012 ECCB (www.eccb2012.org) and visited the venue of the congress:
After the discussions regarding the organization of the ECCB 2012, the BoD listed the advancements and tasks for the future months. A new mechanism for formulating and issuing statements was approved. The possibilities to establish chapters in Europe was also discussed along with our possible role in the IPBES. The BOD was happy to welcome the chair of the Ad Hoc Student Affairs Committee, Nuno Curado in the meeting who reported on the ongoing student initiatives and further plans. After the long days, the BoD did not miss the opportunity to taste the famous Scottish haggis!