News from SCB Europe Section Board December 2016

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News Highlights

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2018 European Congress of Conservation Biology in Jyväskylä, Finland!

Next Policy Committee meeting - February 11-12, 2017 in Eberswald, Germany!

Student Blogging Contests at SCCS Cambridge, ICCB Cartagena and SCCS Tihany 2017!

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We have had an exciting year within the Society for Conservation Biology Europe Section (SCB-ES)! Thanks to all who have contributed to SCB-ES in 2016! We would like to extend a special thank you to all the students and early career researchers who applied and contributed to our initiatives this year! 2016 has been an extremely active year and we hope to continue this into 2017 and beyond!

Ending on a high point we would like to take this opportunity to announce that the next European Congress for Conservation Biology is planned for 2018 in Jyväskylä, Finland! The board is busy working with the local organizing committee, and conference dates and venue will be announced in early 2017! We look forward to seeing you all in Jyväskylä!

Starting this December, we will be sharing bi-monthly updates from the SCB-ES board here on the blog, and plan to continue these updates into the future. We hope this initiative will help with keeping members better up-to-speed with what the board is up to and what current initiatives are in the works or available to our members. This month we are sharing updates from SCB-ES President, Piero Visconti as well as the Policy, Communications, and Membership committees.

Thank you again to all our members for a wonderful year! We look forward to 2017 and onward to 2018 for ECCB 2018 in Jyväskylä, Finland!

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Message from the outgoing SCB-ES President

As they say, all good things come to an end, and so it is also for my time as president of the SCB Europe Section. I have been in the SCB-ES board for 5 years, first as governor and later as president. It is now time for me to leave the helm in the capable hands of President-Elect, Bengt-Gunnar Jonsson who will step into the presidency from January 1^st, and lead SCB-ES for the next four years. It is sad to leave the SCB-ES board as it has been an important part of my life for many years, but it is important that the section has an active leader that can dedicate 20-30% of their time that is required to keep-up good work. At the same time, it is important to have a rotating board, to bring fresh energy and new ideas. When leaving a leadership role, it is custom to look back at what was achieved and reflect on what was done and what awaits. I won’t be an exception, as this gives me the opportunity to thank those that made these achievements possible.

In 2014 and 2015 we joined forces with other professional societies, conservation organizations and research institutions to ensure that scientific evidence was taken into account during the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the fitness check of the EU Habitat and Birds directives and the management of Bialowieza National Park. We contributed to a positive outcome to protect the directives but more needs to be done to ensure the next CAP is biodiversity friendly and that natural ecological processes are safeguarded in the broader Bialowieza ecosystem.

The leadership and organization of the joint European and International Congresses of Conservation Biology (ICCB-ECCB) in Montpellier in 2015 was certainly the main achievement of the SCB-ES board since its birth in 2002. This was the largest conference ever organized by SCB, dwarfing all the others with its 2063 attendees, 782 poster presentations and 943 oral presentations organized in 74 contributed sessions and 73 symposia sessions. ICCB-ECCB was not only a success in attendance numbers but also in scientific and social content. The degree of satisfactions of the attendees was overwhelming, with people talking about the closing party and the plenary talks for months after the congress.

I would like to highlight a few of the achievements that were made in the design of ICCB-ECCB. First, special attention was put into ensuring that the proposals and abstract review process to ensure it was rigorous and fair. Second, we introduced normalization of abstract scores and a third reviewer for abstracts with controversial scores. Third, we maximized the number of talks at ICCB-ECCB by having 10 parallel sessions. Indeed, as head of the scientific committee, I was responsible for deciding how many abstracts were rejected from ICCB-ECCB, and I did my best to minimize rejections. It was extremely rewarding to offer more than 2000 scientists and practitioners an opportunity to disseminate their knowledge and experiences, and to learn and form collaborations with one another. The SCB-ES board strives to make conferences affordable for everyone, but thanks to generous grants from the Swedish government, we could subsidize tens of early career attendees with a fair and transparent process that prioritized those most in need of support and those for whom attending the conference would make the most difference. I am most proud of the networking opportunity that ICCB-ECCB created; perspective students meeting their future supervisors, job-seekers finding jobs, research ideas being generated and professional collaborations being formed. This is the main legacy that my presidency and the current board has left. 

In 2016, we continued our support for Early Career professionals by contributing financial resources to two Student Conferences for Conservation Science, one in Tihany and one in Cambridge. We subsidize attendance costs, provided training through workshops, and offered students insights into the many opportunities that early career conservation professionals can obtain through SCB and other professional societies. We also, for the first time, awarded the Early Career European Conservation Award. This went to Attila Nemeth to recognize his contribution to knowledge and conservation of blind mole rats in Europe. This will hopefully start a tradition of early career awards given by the section. In 2016, we also started a training grant to support early career conservationists’ attendance at training events. We also funded the Greek Summer School of Conservation Biology to provide training to a dozen students from all of Europe.  

The last two years have also seen a step change in the social media activity of the Section thanks to the opening of a Twitter account and the strong activity of the Communication Committee on this blog and on our Facebook page. We also opened 12 opportunities for students to share about their research or recent conference experiences through guest posts here on the SCB-ES blog.

The merit for all goes mostly to others, the section board and all its committees with whom I was fortunate enough to work with, I’d like to thank all board and committee members for their important contributions to the section. These are exciting times for SCB Europe, up to six new members could join the board next year and I expect the new board to be the youngest and most diverse SCB Europe has ever had. I wish the new board all the best for the future, and continued growth for SCB-ES to increase its support for conservation professionals.

See you all in Jyväskylä, Finland for ECCB 2018!

Post written by Piero Visconti, SCB-ES president 2015-2016

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Updates from Policy Committee 

Sub-regional and local policy statements: A recent topic of interest to our members deals with sub-regional and local policy statements. Based on a request from the Society for Conservation Biology’s Europe Section (SCB-ES) Board of Directors, the European Policy Committee has prepared a set of eligibility criteria for policy statements with sub-regional or local geographical scope. Statements by the SCB-ES generally address conservation issues on the European or EU level. While relatively few chapters continue to feed into SCB-ES, the section is responsible for handling sub-regional or local policy issues. However, we cannot currently attend to all those conservation issues of smaller scope. Accordingly we drafted text to clarify our current position and capabilities with regards to sub-regional or local policy statements: “for an activity of sub-regional or local scope to be eligible for an SCB-ES statement should highlight issues relating to outstanding biodiversity, address conservation issues of wider relevance, and have the potential to serve as a ground-truthing exercise, influence decision-making and provide local capacity and increase credibility, visibility and outreach of SCB’s work”. The SCB-ES Board of Directors recently approved this statement and criteria about sub-regional and local policy statements, and if any SCB-ES members have questions about this process, you can contact Stefan Kreft, Chair of the Policy Committee at stefan(dot)kreft(at)hnee(dot)de.

Lower Odra Valley National Park, Germany,

situated close to Eberswalde and bordering Poland (background). 

(Photo by: Stefan Kreft)

What’s coming up? The next few months will be busy for the Policy Committee. We are currently preparing for our next PC meeting on February 11-12, 2017. We will gather in Eberswalde (Germany) for a workshop about biodiversity and conservation in Europe. This workshop will allow us to systematically derive a strategic framework for SCB-ES Policy Committee work in the coming years. Furthermore, our Roadless Initiative is running on high momentum, in expectation of an upcoming important publication we have been working on fopr years. On December 16th, the Roadless Initiative will publish a press release. There will also be an entirely new website and coverage on SCB's homepage, so check it on December 16th! We are very excited about the Roadless Initiative reaching this important milestone, and look forwarding to sharing all news with members in 2017! 

Post written by Stefan Kreft, SCB-ES Policy Committee Chair

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Updates from Communications and Membership Committee


Student guest blogging on SCB-ES Blog: The SCB-ES communications and membership committee has had a busy year, including rewarding 12 students the opportunity to share a guest blog post on the SCB-ES blog! The most recent guest blog post was about marine protected areas and local ecological knowledge, a post by Adam Rees. There are two more planned posts from students who attended SCCS Tihany, and those will be live in mid-December. We look forward to sharing these last few posts and to the opportunity to continue supporting student blogging on the SCB-ES blog. We will be continuing the student blogging contests into 2017, and will host contests at the Student Conference on Conservation Science in Cambridge and Tihany, and at the International Congress for Conservation Biology! Students attending any of these three conferences, and who are SCB-ES members, will be eligible to apply for our blogging contests! The SCB-ES student blogging contest aims to offer students a platform to share about their research or recent experiences at conferences or workshops with a broad audience, and to extend them the opportunity and experience to work with SCB science communication professionals to refine their writing skills. We look forward to sharing more student's stories in 2017!


What's coming up? In 2016 we gained a new committee member, Isabel Vique. Isabel has already contributed to our on going improvements in social media and communications, but in 2017 she and board member Petra Mihalic will be taking on a new activity for women in science! In 2017, Isabel and Petra are leading the organization of a series of talks by women in science in Europe to complement the Ted Women 2017 event in San Francisco! We are very excited about the development of this initiative, which will take place in late fall 2017! We will work closely with our members to identify speakers, and invite members to share their ideas about additional events they would like to see and might be willing to support in their region! More information on the Women in Science speaker series will be released in early 2017; keep an eye on our blog and social media outlets for details! 

Post written by Stephanie Januchowski-Hartley, SCB-ES Communications and Membership Committee Chair

Conservation science as an antidote to EU conservation politics (mis-) guided by interests

Bonn, Nairobi, New York, Washington, Gland, Paris - the geography of decision-making in international conservation policy is complex, and one of the most influential hubs is Brussels. It is the birthplace of the EU Birds and the Habitats Directives that underlie Natura 2000, the world’s most ambitious site-based conservation project. Their implementation, however, has been accompanied by a background noise of political struggles. And this ado is currently growing. With his rise to power in 2014, the new Commission President Juncker programmed a “Fitness Check” for the two EU conservation directives. Among conservation advocates, this assessment is feared to serve as an excuse for softening the directives and reversing important achievements made under considerable efforts. The Policy Committee (PC) of the Society for Conservation Biology’s Europe Section thinks scientific information is badly needed in the ongoing battle of interests and opinions. Thus, we decided this year’s PC meeting should make the Society visible on the spot as a unique stakeholder that can feed tested “top runner” scientific evidence into this and other important debates.

On 26 and 27 May, facilitated by Belgian PC member Willem Laermans’ brilliant logistical coordination, we met with delegates of the European Parliament, Commission representatives as well as Brussels-based conservation advocates from the NGO sphere. As we had hoped, Micheal O’Briain, Deputy Head of the Nature Unit at Directorate-General Environment, was willing to give us a comprehensive overview of the “Fitness Check” and its uses and misuses. We agreed the Society’s Europe Section should participate in the ongoing public consultation, possibly including an in-depth comment on the different Fitness Check questions under scrutiny. The value of such a contribution was confirmed by a delegation of BirdLife International, led by its Head of EU Policy, Ariel Brunner. With BirdLife, we also discussed cornerstones of a possible strategic collaboration between our institutions. We are glad Trees Robijns, Birdlife’s Senior EU Agriculture and Bioenergy Policy Officer, will be able to attend the upcoming ICCB-ECCB 2015 in August this year.

Agriculture was also in the focus of our meeting with the German Members of Parliament Maria Heubuch (Greens), Susanne Melior and Maria Noichl (both Socialists & Democrats). Our exchange addressed the failed “greening” reform of the EU Common Agricultural Policy. The exchange proved so fruitful that this can certainly be considered the start of a continued dialogue in the future. We are also deeply grateful to Maria Heubuch for hosting us and helping us to make our Brussels trip a success.

Another meeting brought us together with Karin Zaunberger and Nicholas Hanley (both DG Environment) as well as Arnold Jacques de Dixmude (DG International Cooperation and Development). They are involved in efforts directed at a better conservation and sustainable development in the EU’s Overseas Territories and Outermost Regions, a conglomerate of small to large territories that cover the same area as the “core” EU, but which are spread across the globe. We explored options how the Society and its worldwide expert network may add value to these European activities. Mrs Zaunberger confirmed she will take part in a round-table discussion on EU Overseas Territories at the ICCB-ECCB 2015.

The Roadless Areas Initiative, initiated by our Policy Committee in 2007, was another important item of our agenda in Brussels. While the Roadless Areas Initiative has flourished into an activity across SCB sections since then, we think it is also time to reach out beyond the scientific community to policy-makers. Our Brussels visit thus marked the onset of a dialogue with DG Mobility and Transport. With Judit Bertrand, who is involved in coordination of the Trans-European Transport Networks TEN-T, we had a promising brainstorming exercise how transport planning in the EU may start to take into account the remaining roadless areas.

We are looking forward to our next meeting at the ICCB-ECCB 2015 in two months in Montpellier. Symposia organised by the Policy Committee of SCB’s Europe Section will follow up on Natura 2000, the Common Agriculture Policy, roadless areas and more. Be there and check them out!

Stefan Kreft

(Chair of the Policy Committee of the Society for Conservation Biology - Europe Section)

The Policy Committee at the main entrance to the European Parliament in Brussels, 26 May 2015. From right to left: Willem Laermans, Martin Dieterich, Zdenka Křenova, Per Sjögren-Gulve, Guy Pe’er, Stefan Kreft
Photo:Guy Pe’er

Bialowieza: Far East or the centre of Europe? The Policy Committee checks in person.

Białowieża.

Dead wood in a living forest
(left to right: Adam, Nuria, Stefan, Anna, Francisco, Willem.
Picture: Guy)

At the sound of the name, naturalists’ minds reverberate with pictures of temperate European jungle, roamed by bison, wolves, and other representatives of what “wilderness” is. Last week (26-30 Aug), the Policy Committee of SCB’s Europe Section had the chance to check imagination against reality, right at the border between Poland and Belarus. Five of us were welcomed by our charming colleague Nuria Selva, long-standing PC member and a former PC chair, as well as a resident of Białowieża for over 15 years. Nuria is a specialist on large carnivores and carcasses, and both Nuria and her partner Adam (naturalist, journalist) have an excellent knowledge of “their” forest. Adam and Nuria took us for three hikes into the forest, including the core zone of Białowieża National Park that was recently expanded to more than 5,000 hectares: It is by far the largest remnant of primeval temperate forest in European lowlands. Together, we could see in our eyes how a fully-functioning forest looks like, with hardly any management. We found wolf tracks, and were brought by Adam at fresh bison droppings (of impressive size) - even before the dung beetles had found them! All in all, we were happy to learn that Białowieża is, finally, at quite a good conservation status. At the moment no immediate action seems needed for its protection, but we need to remain alert, active and proactive.

 

Białowieża serves an excellent case study for many issues that are at the core conservation agenda in Europe and elsewhere: Wilderness versus management and forestry; strictly protected areas in a matrix of land use; large predators versus hunting; and the blessings and curses of EU policy – Białowieża surely provided inspiration for the true mission of our 2014 PC meeting.

Two days of intensive work were just enough to discuss consider a range of activities and questions which the Policy Committee deals with:

-          Activities around the Common Agricultural Policy with a recent Science article led by SCB-ES members – successfully echoing among decision makers but requiring further actions at the European Parliament;

-         the Roadless Areas Initiative, which started in our committee and is now going global – with a variety of activities including an upcoming plenary talk, session, and a concluding declaration at the upcoming Infra Eco Network Europe (IENE) Congress  2014 in Malmö, Sweden; and´

The Policy Committee at work
(Left to right: Francisco, Nuria, Willem, Guy, Martin.
Picture (and an empty Chair on the left): Stefan)

-         the status of other activities that the PC has engaged with, such as "conservation for peace", the state of Šumava National Park, etc.

One of the most important topics we discussed was the next ICCB-ECCB (International and European Congress for Conservation Biology), which will take place in August 2015 in Montpellier, France. We made various observations, among others, on the preparation process (website, cooperation with the City of Montpellier etc.) and the schedule (e.g. on plenary talks and side events), and brought up numerous ideas (to be reported soon), and we are confident that our work will contribute to the success of the congress.

 

Final note: if you think we travelled to the “Far East” of Europe for that meeting, check the map again. Our continent is tiny, but not THAT tiny. While our respected colleague Francisco made a huge distance from Portugal (by plane, train and taxi), he merely covered half the continent – to reach the very centre of Europe, geographically speaking. Did you know the European part of Russia has about the same size as the rest of the continent? Our trip to the eastern border of the EU should thus serve an important reminder for SCB’s “Europe Section” (not EU!) that we should continue ‘discovering’ the ‘other half’ of Europe. The forthcoming meeting of the Section Board of Directors will take place in two weeks in St. Petersburg and Lake Ladoga, Russia – to further remind us of our whole-European duties.

 

Stay tuned!

 

Stefan Kreft* and Guy Pe’er

Policy Committee of the Society for Conservation Biology - Europe Section (*Chair)

ROADLESS AREAS NEED PROTECTION - RECENT PAPER BY THE SCB-ES POLICY COMMITTEE MEMBERS

You cannot get further than 1 km from a road in some European countries. In others, about one fourth of the country surface is ecologically affected by roads.

Areas without roads or with low traffic can bring much more benefits to modern societies than one may imagine.

A recent publication by members of the Policy Committee of the Europe section of the Society for Conservation Biology in the journal Environmental Management highlights the importance of roadless and low-traffic areas.

Large patches of unfragmented areas represent relatively undisturbed and functioning ecosystems that render important services to society: clean water, clean air, control of soil erosion, protection against invasive species, pests and diseases, pollination services. More generally, they support biodiversity, a basic element for ecosystems to function. Roadless areas are especially important for buffering the effects of climate change, as they mitigate climate extremes, protect against fires, landslides, hurricanes or floods. They also facilitate the movements of plants and animals, induced by warmer temperature, drier conditions or extreme weather events. Some countries, like the USA, have recognized the importance of roadless areas and given them legal protection.

The few roadless areas still left in Europe are mostly unprotected by law, the study shows. In Germany, 75% of them lie outside the Natura 2000 network of protected areas. Europe continues to cut and fragment its landscape at a high pace, and the rate of road construction has reached unprecedented levels. Roads bring pollution, noise, change of water flows, animals killed by collisions; they also enhance the spread of invasive species, cause habitat loss and fragmentation. Roads also promote human access to previously undisturbed areas, together with urbanization and land use changes, resulting in major disturbance and degradation of ecosystems. With roads, some ecosystem services, so vital for human societies, may vanish. The study urges to consider these areas in future landscape and transport planning and to avoid further road development in these still unfragmented areas. The authors also recommend legal protection for the remaining European roadless areas as means to ensure that the Natura 2000 network of protected areas can function more effectively and coherently in the face of climate change.

Link to the article

http://www.springerlink.com/content/60v27n8501822247/fulltext.pdf

Contact to authors:

Nuria Selva (Poland, Spain; first author) nuriselva@gmail.com (+48-600135676)

Pierre L. Ibisch (Germany; coordinator of German working group and also leading further research on road impacts) Pierre.Ibisch@hnee.de

Vassiliki Kati (Greece) info@cbcd.eu (+30-6944842873)

Bengt-Gunnar Jonsson (Sweden) Bengt-gunnar.Jonsson@miun.se

Barbara Mihok (Hungary) barbaramihok@gmail.com

EEA proposed forest biodiversity indicators fail to meet their objectives

Given the upcoming year 2010, when progress towards the 2010-target is to be assessed, relevant and credible indicators of European biodiversity are of outmost importance. On important aspects of European forest biodiversity the indicators suggested by the European Environment Agency (EEA) fails to provide the needed evaluation.

In a recent report from the EEA (Anon 2007), sets of indicators are presented for European biodiversity aiming at evaluating the 2010-target. Concerning forest biodiversity three indicators are suggested; Ecosystem coverage, Forest growing stocks and Dead wood. Of these only the last has any relevance for the biodiversity trends in European forests.

- Ecosystem coverage of 13 different ecosystem types is suggested and any kind of tree covered area is one of these indicators. The claim is that this indicator "has a high relevance for biodiversity because it indicates the area of available habitats and ecosystems across Europe". This is simply not true. We have seen major ecosystem shifts within European forests through the logging of old-growth natural forests, use of exotic tree species, fertilization, drainage and various types of pollution. A simple measure of tree covered areas masks all these factors having profound negative effects on forest biodiversity.

- For indicator “Forest growing stock” is stated that "Growing stock is an important and well‑accepted proxy for biodiversity". The increase in growing stock seen in several European countries has come as a consequence of intensive forest management including, clear-cutting, thinning, exotic tree species, fertilization, drainage and plant breeding. These activities all have negative consequences for forest biodiversity as they cause loss of natural forest habitats and genetic variation. In no respect does “growing stock” serve as a valid “proxy for biodiversity”

The clear failure to identify relevant indicators of European forest biodiversity is surprising and raises the question behind this failure. I assume that the intentions have been the very best and that something in the process has gone wrong. With due respect to the individual experts taking part in the process, I do note that with a few exceptions the experts are officials from various organizations, authorities and ministries. The limited involvement of scientist is obvious. I cannot evaluate if this is a deliberate choice of the EEA or a lack of interest from the scientific community to participate. For whatever reason, the result is that the SEB 2010 lack relevant and credible indicators on forest biodiversity and hence should not be used to evaluate the 2010-target.

Anon 2007. Halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010: proposal for a first set of indicators to monitor progress in Europe. EEA Technical report No 11/2007.

PC meeting with European Commission and MEPs

In December the PC led a visit of 20 conservation biologists to the European Parliament in Brussels. Meetings were arranged with 4 Directorates-General from the European Commission:

- DG Environment (Directorates Nature & Biodiversity and LIFE)
- DG Agriculture and Rural Develpoment
- DG Maritime Affairs and Fisheries
- DG Research

Afterwards the group met with few Members of the European Parliament and representatives of the European Environmental Bureau.

The visit was quite successful and relevant conservation issues were discussed, for example, the Natura 2000 network and the protection of biodiversity in the climate change context, the European strategy on invasive species, the establishment of Marine Protected Areas or the representation of conservation science in the framework programmes. Specifically, the protection od roadless areas, an initiative launched by the PC, was received with great enthusiasm.

Policy Committee going to Brussels

On 9-11th december 2008, the Policy Committee will take part in an official visit of conservation biologists to the European Parliament . The group is being coordinated by the chair of the Policy Committee and the office of the member of European Parliament, David Hammerstein. The goal of the visit is to make a first contact with policy makers at European level and inform them about relevant conservation issues and priorities. Some topics, like Natura 2000 or the protection of Roadless Areas in Europe, are considered by the Policy Committee of special importance to be discussed in the meeting.