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Relating tradable credits for biodiversity to sustainability criteria in a dynamic landscape

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Abstract

Tradable biodiversity credit systems provide flexible means to resolve conflicts between development and conservation land-use options for habitats occupied by threatened or endangered species. We describe an approach to incorporate the influence of habitat fragmentation into the conservation value of tradable credits. Habitat fragmentation decreases gene flow, increases rates of genetic drift and inbreeding, and increases probabilities of patch extinction. Importantly, tradable credit systems will change the level of fragmentation over time for small and/or declining populations. We apply landscape equivalency analysis (LEA), a generalizable, landscape-scale accounting system that assigns conservation value to habitat patches based on patch contributions to abundance and genetic variance at landscape scales. By evaluating habitat trades using two models that vary the relationship between dispersal behaviors and landscape patterns, we show that LEA provides a novel method for limiting access to habitat at the landscape-scale, recognizing that the appropriate amount of migration needed to supplement patch recruitment and to offset drift and inbreeding will vary as landscape pattern changes over time. We also found that decisions based on probabilities of persistence alone would ignore changes in migration, genetic drift, and patch extinction that result from habitat trades. The general principle of LEA is that habitat patches traded should make at least equivalent contributions to rates of recruitment and migration estimated at a landscape scale. Traditional approaches for assessing the “take” and “jeopardy” standards under the Endangered Species Act based on changes in abundance and probability of persistence may be inadequate to prevent trades that increase fragmentation.

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Acknowledgments

Funding for this research was provided by a US EPA S.T.A.R. Fellowship, a MSU College of Agriculture, a MSU Natural Resources Dissertation Completion Fellowship, an EEBB Summer Fellowship, U.S. Department of Defense, through the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) to DJB. We thank K. Millenbah, and S. Friedman for comments on earlier drafts. We also thank Eric Gustafson and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Douglas J. Bruggeman & Michael L. Jones

  2. Department of Zoology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Kim Scribner

  3. Department of Agricultural Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Frank Lupi

Authors
  1. Douglas J. Bruggeman
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  2. Michael L. Jones
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  3. Kim Scribner
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  4. Frank Lupi
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Correspondence to Douglas J. Bruggeman.

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Bruggeman, D.J., Jones, M.L., Scribner, K. et al. Relating tradable credits for biodiversity to sustainability criteria in a dynamic landscape. Landscape Ecol 24, 775–790 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-009-9351-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-009-9351-y

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