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David A. Nor­ton and Bruce War­bur­ton have pub­lished a new paper enti­tled “The poten­tial for bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting to fund effec­tive inva­sive species con­trol” in Con­ser­va­tion Biol­ogy (Vol­ume 29, Issue 1, pages 5–11, Feb­ru­ary 2015). Read more on the Jour­nal web­site (pay-walled). For more infor­ma­tion see also a the abstract below.

Abstract

Com­pen­sat­ing for bio­di­ver­sity losses in 1 loca­tion by con­serv­ing or restor­ing bio­di­ver­sity else­where (i.e., bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting) is being used increas­ingly to com­pen­sate for bio­di­ver­sity losses result­ing from devel­op­ment. We con­sid­ered whether a form of bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting, enhance­ment off­set­ting (i.e., enhanc­ing the qual­ity of degraded nat­ural habi­tats through inten­sive eco­log­i­cal man­age­ment), can real­is­ti­cally secure addi­tional fund­ing to con­trol bio­log­i­cal invaders at a scale and dura­tion that results in enhanced bio­di­ver­sity out­comes. We sug­gest that bio­di­ver­sity off­set­ting has the poten­tial to enhance bio­di­ver­sity val­ues through fund­ing of inva­sive species con­trol, but it needs to meet 7 key con­di­tions: be tech­ni­cally pos­si­ble to reduce inva­sive species to lev­els that enhance native bio­di­ver­sity; be afford­able; be suf­fi­ciently large to com­pen­sate for the impact; be adapt­able to accom­mo­date new strate­gic and tac­ti­cal devel­op­ments while not com­pro­mis­ing bio­di­ver­sity out­comes; acknowl­edge uncer­tain­ties asso­ci­ated with man­ag­ing pests; be based on an explicit risk assess­ment that iden­ti­fies the cost of not achiev­ing tar­get out­comes; and include finan­cial mech­a­nisms to pro­vide for in-perpetuity fund­ing. The chal­lenge then for con­ser­va­tion prac­ti­tion­ers, advo­cates, and pol­icy mak­ers is to develop frame­works that allow for durable and effec­tive part­ner­ships with devel­op­ers to real­ize the full poten­tial of enhance­ment off­sets, which will require a shift away from tra­di­tional preservation-focused approaches to bio­di­ver­sity management.