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Demographic Effects of Habitat Restoration for the Grey-Crowned Babbler Pomatostomus temporalis, in Victoria, Australia

BACKGROUND: Considerable resources are spent on habitat restoration across the globe to counter the impacts of habitat loss and degradation on wildlife populations. But, because of time and resourcing constraints on many conservation programs, the effectiveness of these habitat restoration programs...

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Autores principales: Vesk, Peter A., Robinson, Doug, van der Ree, Rodney, Wilson, Caroline M., Saywell, Shirley, McCarthy, Michael A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4503698/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26177497
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130153
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author Vesk, Peter A.
Robinson, Doug
van der Ree, Rodney
Wilson, Caroline M.
Saywell, Shirley
McCarthy, Michael A.
author_facet Vesk, Peter A.
Robinson, Doug
van der Ree, Rodney
Wilson, Caroline M.
Saywell, Shirley
McCarthy, Michael A.
author_sort Vesk, Peter A.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Considerable resources are spent on habitat restoration across the globe to counter the impacts of habitat loss and degradation on wildlife populations. But, because of time and resourcing constraints on many conservation programs, the effectiveness of these habitat restoration programs in achieving their long-term goals of improving the population viability of particular wildlife species is rarely assessed and many restoration programs cannot demonstrate their effectiveness. Without such demonstration, and in particular demonstrating the causal relationships between habitat restoration actions and demographic responses of the target species, investments in restoration to achieve population outcomes are of uncertain value. APPROACH: Here, we describe an approach that builds on population data collected for a threatened Australian bird – the Grey-crowned Babbler Pomatostomus temporalis - to evaluate how effectively targeted habitat restoration work improves its viability. We built upon an extensive historical survey by conducting surveys 13 years later at 117 sites stratified by presence/absence of restoration works and by detection or not of birds in the first survey. Our performance metric was the number of individuals in a social group, which is both a measure of local abundance and directly related to breeding success. We employed an occupancy model to estimate the response of Grey-crowned Babbler social group size to the effects of time, restoration works, local habitat as measured by the density of large trees, and distance to the nearest other known group of babblers. RESULTS AND IMPLICATIONS: Babbler group size decreased over the survey period at sites without restoration works, but restoration works were effective in stemming declines where they were done. Restoration was responsible for a difference of about one bird per group of 3-5 individuals; this is an important effect on the reproductive success of the social group. Effectiveness of restoration works targeted at the Grey-crowned Babbler was only demonstrable by sampling through time and including control sites without restoration works. This work demonstrates that while calls for better monitoring of restoration are valid, scope exists to recover a signal of effectiveness from opportunistic retrospective analyses.
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spelling pubmed-45036982015-07-17 Demographic Effects of Habitat Restoration for the Grey-Crowned Babbler Pomatostomus temporalis, in Victoria, Australia Vesk, Peter A. Robinson, Doug van der Ree, Rodney Wilson, Caroline M. Saywell, Shirley McCarthy, Michael A. PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Considerable resources are spent on habitat restoration across the globe to counter the impacts of habitat loss and degradation on wildlife populations. But, because of time and resourcing constraints on many conservation programs, the effectiveness of these habitat restoration programs in achieving their long-term goals of improving the population viability of particular wildlife species is rarely assessed and many restoration programs cannot demonstrate their effectiveness. Without such demonstration, and in particular demonstrating the causal relationships between habitat restoration actions and demographic responses of the target species, investments in restoration to achieve population outcomes are of uncertain value. APPROACH: Here, we describe an approach that builds on population data collected for a threatened Australian bird – the Grey-crowned Babbler Pomatostomus temporalis - to evaluate how effectively targeted habitat restoration work improves its viability. We built upon an extensive historical survey by conducting surveys 13 years later at 117 sites stratified by presence/absence of restoration works and by detection or not of birds in the first survey. Our performance metric was the number of individuals in a social group, which is both a measure of local abundance and directly related to breeding success. We employed an occupancy model to estimate the response of Grey-crowned Babbler social group size to the effects of time, restoration works, local habitat as measured by the density of large trees, and distance to the nearest other known group of babblers. RESULTS AND IMPLICATIONS: Babbler group size decreased over the survey period at sites without restoration works, but restoration works were effective in stemming declines where they were done. Restoration was responsible for a difference of about one bird per group of 3-5 individuals; this is an important effect on the reproductive success of the social group. Effectiveness of restoration works targeted at the Grey-crowned Babbler was only demonstrable by sampling through time and including control sites without restoration works. This work demonstrates that while calls for better monitoring of restoration are valid, scope exists to recover a signal of effectiveness from opportunistic retrospective analyses. Public Library of Science 2015-07-15 /pmc/articles/PMC4503698/ /pubmed/26177497 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130153 Text en © 2015 Vesk et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Vesk, Peter A.
Robinson, Doug
van der Ree, Rodney
Wilson, Caroline M.
Saywell, Shirley
McCarthy, Michael A.
Demographic Effects of Habitat Restoration for the Grey-Crowned Babbler Pomatostomus temporalis, in Victoria, Australia
title Demographic Effects of Habitat Restoration for the Grey-Crowned Babbler Pomatostomus temporalis, in Victoria, Australia
title_full Demographic Effects of Habitat Restoration for the Grey-Crowned Babbler Pomatostomus temporalis, in Victoria, Australia
title_fullStr Demographic Effects of Habitat Restoration for the Grey-Crowned Babbler Pomatostomus temporalis, in Victoria, Australia
title_full_unstemmed Demographic Effects of Habitat Restoration for the Grey-Crowned Babbler Pomatostomus temporalis, in Victoria, Australia
title_short Demographic Effects of Habitat Restoration for the Grey-Crowned Babbler Pomatostomus temporalis, in Victoria, Australia
title_sort demographic effects of habitat restoration for the grey-crowned babbler pomatostomus temporalis, in victoria, australia
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4503698/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26177497
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130153
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