ANGULO&ANDREONE_Bridging the gap between science and policy

Alytes, 2012, 29 (1¢4): 3-7.

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Bridging the gap between science and policy in amphibian conservation Ariadne Anguloa & Franco Andreoneb a

Departamento de Herpetología, Museo de Historia Natural de San Marcos, Apartado 140434, Lima 14, Peru; Current address: P.O. Box 48544, 3605 Lakeshore Blvd. W., Toronto, ON, M8W 1P5, Canada; <ariadne.angulo@utoronto.ca> b Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali, Via G. Giolitti, 36, 10123 Torino, Italy; <franco.andreone@regione.piemonte.it>

Amphibian declines and extinctions have been the subject of numerous scientific publications and reports over the last two decades (e.g., Pounds et al., 1997; Stuart et al., 2004; Wake & Vredenburg, 2008) and have also captured an increased media attention globally; given what is known of the global amphibian scenario it is probably fair to say that amphibian declines are at the forefront of the biodiversity crisis.

The year 2010 became a landmark year when the United Nations declared it as the International Year of Biodiversity (<http://www.cbd.int/2010/welcome/>), in the context of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)’s 10th Conference of the Parties (COP) held in Nagoya, Japan, in October 2010. It was a year to celebrate the planet’s living systems and how they improve our lives, but it was also an opportunity to take stock of what had been achieved to curb biodiversity loss and to report against the 2010 biodiversity target.

Under these circumstances, it seemed opportune and timely to address developments and perspectives on amphibian conservation in an amphibian conservation special issue, with a focus on the interface between science and policy. Why focus on this interface, the reader may ask? Besides the obvious opportunity provided by the CBD’s 10th COP, there is an additional, simpler answer: because it is usually the weakest link for effective conservation to take place, and more often than not it is a gap (if not a precipice) rather than an interface.

Science has established frameworks and processes for disseminating results that are designed to work within the scientific community; however, the framework and process of how scientific results percolate down to policy-makers and policy forums is not quite as clear, especially as they refer to amphibian conservation. We hope that by attempting to address this subject in a special issue we may be able to engage scientists, policy-makers and other stakeholders into exploring ways of narrowing this gap.

The International Society for the Study and Conservation of Amphibians (ISSCA), the only scientific society devoted exclusively to amphibians, provided us with a unique medium to publish this special issue: its journal Alytes. Established in 1982, Alytes has been an open medium to all fields of batrachology, including conservation. Since the beginning of its publication, Alytes reported opinions and information on amphibian conservation. For example Dubois (1983, 1985) addressed issues relating to frog legs’ consumption and breeding

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attempts of alien species, such as Lithobates catesbeianus. In particular, Alytes published contributions to the February 1990 Irvine meeting, which was at the origin of the Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force (Wake et al., 1991; Tyler, 1991), and it supported DAPTF by free distribution of the journal Froglog (from its first issue) to all Alytes subscribers. As amphibian conservation has become much more relevant, prominent and urgent, we hope that this issue will highlight Alytes as a potential medium for other amphibian conservation-related studies.

This special issue of Alytes compiles two editorials and nine solicited papers addressing: (1) progress towards translating scientific developments into conservation policy and action; (2) the interactions between humans and amphibians, and/or anthropogenic effects on amphibians; and (3) perspectives on science, policy and amphibian conservation. The special issue assesses both the positive (e.g., scientific and conservation communities’ efforts to protect/save amphibians) and negative (international food and pet trade, pollution, introduced species, climate change, etc.) interactions between humans and amphibians, and what concrete recommendations are drawn from these.

Following from the above, then, this special issue is broadly arranged into the following three sections: action plans (frameworks to help translate science into conservation policy), threat factors (interactions between humans and amphibians) and points of view (perspectives).

Stuart (2012) opens the amphibian conservation special issue with an editorial summarizing the evolution of the scientific community’s understanding of amphibian declines as well as a history of global amphibian conservation efforts, and notes the significant time delay that it has taken to address the amphibian decline and extinction crisis.

The action plan section follows, delving into the development of regional and national frameworks. Amphibian conservation action plans are at the crux of the interface between science and policy, and could be considered as part of the foundation for policy, as they provide direction for on-the-ground conservation. In 2005, IUCN and Conservation International convened scientists and conservationists in the Amphibian Conservation Summit to come up with a global plan for amphibian conservation. The Amphibian Conservation Action Plan (ACAP) was published by Gascon et al. in 2007, and outlined the key elements needed for effective global amphibian conservation, as well as their associated costs. With a global plan in place, it was now necessary to take action plans one step further, into the national and regional realms. Significant progress was made in the advancement of national action plans in a number of countries, most notably Madagascar (Andreone & Randriamahazo, 2008) and Venezuela (Molina et al., 2009), which have already published their action plans, but there are also ongoing developments elsewhere, as we shall see. Gascon et al. (2012) provide a review of progress on strategy development at the regional (East and Central Africa, Mesoamerica, South Asia and Southeast Asia) and national (Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Madagascar, New Zealand, USA and Venezuela) levels. Verdade et al. (2012) provide us with an overview of the Brazilian Amphibian Conservation Action Plan, currently under development, and cover some of the plan’s history, achievements and challenges, whereas Andreone et al. (2012) expand on progress for Madagascar, reviewing the actions undertaken since the launch of the Malagasy Action Plan and quantifying progress in implementation of the different components of the plan.

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In the threats section, threat factors such as alien species, climate change, mining activities and international trade are explored. The impact of alien species is explored in two papers, Loyola et al. (2012) and Ficetola et al. (2012). Loyola et al. (2012) explore the impact of an important invasive species, Lithobates catesbeianus, the American bullfrog, but they do so in the context of climate change, i.e., they assess the potential impact of climate change in driving the American bullfrog into established reserves in the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot. By using a modelling approach, the authors produce projected distribution ranges for the American bullfrog, concluding that under climate change this species is likely to colonize reserves more efficiently in the future, and provide policy recommendations to mitigate the potential impact on native amphibians.

Ficetola et al. (2012) address the spatial relationship between the invasive red swamp crayfish, Procambarus clarkii, and amphibians in northern Italy. The authors recorded several enviromental parameters in their study and analyzed their data with generalized additive models; their findings indicate that the richest amphibian communities occur in mid-sized wetlands with intermediate hydroperiods, whereas P. clarkii was associated to the largest, permanent wetlands, and provide management recommendations based on these findings.

Aguilar et al. (2012), on the other hand, report on the results of baseline studies conducted within the framework of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) in nine mining concessions in Peru. Their results indicate that, whereas many of the species found in mining concessions are considered to be common and/or widespread, about half a dozen are currently assessed in a threatened category sensu the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Furthermore, in two of three concessions where there had already been ongoing mining activity, there has been a decrease in species richness, suggesting that mining activities are having an impact on some amphibian species.

Amphibians in international trade have recently been the subject of research enquiries (Warkentin et al., 2009), bringing the topic to the spotlight. Gerson (2012) provides us with a rare customs insight into the amphibian international trade. Using Canadian customs documentation, she identifies species in trade, their origins and quantities, as well as some of the issues with trade data and recommendations to address these issues.

The points of view section features two papers, one by Navas et al. (2012) and another one by Lannoo (2012). Navas et al. (2012) address issues surrounding the approach to amphibian decline research and how this can impact on-the-ground conservation. In this paper the authors focus on the different interpretations surrounding the amphibian disease chytridiomycosis, and provide several recommendations involving the approach to research and investment in amphibian decline science.

Lannoo (2012) provides a perspective on amphibian conservation in the United States, exploring the reasons why amphibian science has not translated fully into on-the-ground amphibian conservation. He argues that adopting a broader, ecosystemic approach to amphibian conservation and establishing alliances with groups that share similar interests, such as commercially important game and fish, would improve the chances of continuity of conservation efforts in different political climates, and would ultimately be beneficial to amphibian conservation in the United States.

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We hope that the papers contained in this issue can act as catalysts for further discussion and debate on how science can best inform and translate into amphibian conservation action.

Furthermore, we hope that they may prompt the development of other papers addressing issues pertaining to the science-policy gap, bringing into focus what needs to be done and the challenges ahead, and that they may help to increase engagement with policy-makers. It is clear that, even though we have come a long way in our understanding of amphibian declines, we still have a very long way to go in the development of policies tailored to address amphibian declines and extinctions. It is a long road ahead, but we hope that by adding steps in the right direction these steps can ultimately turn into strides towards science-based policy in amphibian conservation.

Acknowledgements We are grateful to the Alytes editorial team (A. Dubois, S. Grosjean, A. Ohler) for the opportunity to produce this special issue. We thank all the reviewers of the special issue for their constructive feedback to authors. Special thanks to S. Boccardi for assistance in the editorial activity and proof-reading.

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Andreone, F., Carpenter, A. I., Copsey, J., Crottini, A., Garcia, G., Jenkins, R. K. B., Köhler, J., Rabibisoa, N., Randriamahazo, H., & Raxworthy, C. J., 2012. ¢ Saving the diverse Malagasy amphibian fauna: where are we four years into the Sahonagasy Action Plan? Alytes, 29 (1¢4): 44-58.

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Ficetola, G. F., Siesa, M. E., Padoa-Schioppa, E. & De Bernardi, F., 2012. ¢ Wetland features, amphibian communities and distribution of the alien crayfish, Procambarus clarkii. Alytes, 29 (1¢4): 75-87.

Gascon, C., Collins, J. P., Church, D. R., Moore, R. D., Andreone, F., Bishop, P., Biju, S. D., Bolaños, F., Xie, F., Li, P., Li, Z., Haitao, S., Lötters, S., Matamoros, Y., Meegaskumbura, M., Molur, S., Nanjappa Mitchell, P., Mora-Benavides, J. M., Garcia-Moreno, J., Randriamahazo, H., Reardon, J., Molina, C., Ron, S., Rowley, J. J. L., Silvano, D., Valdujo, P. H., & Verdade, V. K., 2012. ¢ Scaling a global plan into regional strategies for amphibian conservation. Alytes, 29 (1¢4): 15-27.

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Gerson, H., 2012. ¢ International trade in amphibians: A customs perspective. Alytes, 29 (1¢4): 103-115.

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Disclaimer The citation format used throughout this special issue reflects the Instructions for Authors and format approved by the ISSCA and used in the journal Alytes; however, this use may not necessarily reflect the editors’ and authors’ views, especially with regards to the format used for organizations or collective bodies.

© ISSCA 2012