Eastern New York Scientists Present their Findings at the Society for Conservation Biology Annual Meeting

The Society for Conservation Biology held its 18^th Annual Meeting this summer in New York City. The meeting, hosted by the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at the Earth Institute at Columbia University brought together conservation biology scientists, practitioners and students from around the world to address this year's theme "Conservation in an Urbanizing World." Science staff from the Eastern New York (ENY) Chapter figured prominently among the speakers and presenters at the meeting with topics of discussion including alien and invasive species, clayplain and flood plain forest restoration, ecologically sustainable water management and setting conservation objectives. In addition, the chapter sponsored field trips to the Albany Pine Bush, the summit of Hunter Mountain in the Catskills and the Shawangunk Ridge.

Kent Redford, ENY Chapter Board Member and member of the event's Organizing Committee remarked "Papers given by scientists from the ENY Chapter were very well received and represented a range of cutting-edge topics in conservation biology. The quality of the science done in by chapter scientists stands in the top ranks of what was presented -- but more important that just the science is the laser focus on delivering conservation results based on good science. This makes this work extraordinary".

Presenting posters at the meeting were Michelle Brown, Eastern New York Chapter Conservation Assistant and Mary Droege, Director of Ecological Management and Restoration for the chapter's Southern Lake Champlain Valley (SLCV) Program, both of whom addressed conservation issues arising within the SLCV Program. Michelle's work, titled "Evaluating the Role of Inventory and Restoration as Conservation Strategies: Setting Local Priorities from Regional-Scale Conservation Assessments" examined how conservation areas (like SLCV) can use quantitative goals set in these large-scale, ecoregional plans to guide very specific on-the-ground conservation actions. The Nature Conservancy is unique among conservation groups in setting such quantitative goals for all the conservation targets they identify in these regional assessments. These goals are quantitative statements of "how much is enough," such as the number of populations a given species needs for it to be considered "conserved" across the ecoregion.

The poster described how specific inventory and restoration strategies may emerge after careful assessment of the progress all the conservation targets have made toward meeting these goals. Given the large cost, long time period, and high risk associated with many large-scale restoration projects, restoration is a strategy that should be pursued only when it is clear that no other opportunities exist. For example, roughly half of the fifty ecoregionally significant natural community conservation targets within SLCV would likely get closer to meeting their goals for long-term persistence if we invested in additional resource inventory. On the other hand, three natural community types were identified as priorities for restoration because no other examples exist within this section of the ecoregion. In particular, the valley clayplain forest emerged as one of community type where restoration provides the only viable option for meeting its goal.

Valley clayplain forest was the dominant natural community on the clay soils of the Lake Champlain Valley before European settlement. Because clay soils are highly prized for agriculture, the natural community has been almost entirely cleared and now persists on approximately 10% of its potential land base in the Vermont portion of the valley. Based on this assessment, Mary has been working with partners to determine at the watershed scale, what the strategy of clayplain restoration would be. Her poster, entitled "Clayplain and Floodplain Forest Restoration Planning in the Hubbardton and Lower Poultney River Watersheds, Vermont and New York" describes the intensive year long restoration planning process undertaken by Conservancy scientists and conservation partners with the goal of identifying stressors to natural succession; articulating restoration goals and objectives; prioritizing restoration at the landscape and site scale, and designing baseline and measures of success monitoring.

A collection of staff from the ENY (Tim Tear, George Schuler, and Colin Apse) organized a major symposium titled "Ecologically Sustainable Water Management: Meeting Human and Ecological Needs for Water in the Twenty First Century." The symposium brought together seven of the leading practitioners across the US to speak on this topic. Freshwater Resource Specialist Colin Apse gave one of the presentations titled "Defining Ecological Flows in the Upper Delaware: Progress Toward Balancing Human and Ecological Needs in the Delaware Basin." His talk outlined the work being done by the Conservancy's Delaware River Basin Program, New York City, state and federal government agencies and other partners to define the ecological flow needs in the Delaware Basin. His work highlighted the challenges surrounding balancing human needs for water and the need to ensure river flows that protect the ecological integrity of the region. Colin presented his work as the chair of the newly created Subcommittee on Ecological Flows for the Delaware Basin, a group which is responsible for leading studies and providing recommendations to New York City, the Basin States, and the Delaware River Basin Commission which together determine basin water management rules. One of the critical ecological studies described in detail in this presentation is a state-of-the-art 2-dimensional model of representative sections of the Upper Delaware being created in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey. This study, funded by a federal appropriation that Congressman Maurice Hinchey and the Conservancy worked together to obtain, will help define ecological flow needs for target species and communities like the American shad and the dwarf wedgemussel.

Kay Sadighi, Science Specialist with the chapter's Berkshire-Taconic Program (a cooperative Program between the Eastern New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts chapters) gave a presentation titled "Analysis of Non-Native Plant Invasions of a Landscape-Scale Site." The Berkshire-Taconic Program is currently involved in an initiative called "Weed it Now," a federally funded 5-year landscape-wide strategy to remove invasive plants from the forest core area of the landscape, which has a goal of achieving 10,000 forest acres with less than 5% mean average cover by invasive plant species (to date, more than 3000 acres have been cleared to meet this threshold). This presentation outlined the findings of studies conducted to examine the correlation between the presence of invasive plant species and such factors as the presence/absence of roads and trails, soil type, elevation, bedrock geology and historic land use. Conclusions presented for reducing the presence of invasive species and protecting the integrity of the forest core include t monitoring for the spread of invasives, removal of non-native infestations in key areas, monitoring of new infestations and the encouraging of use of native species by local gardeners.

Tim Tear, the chapter's Director of Conservation Science presented a paper titled "How Much is Enough? in Conservation: the Need for Clarity when Setting Conservation Objectives." Speaking within a symposium that examined the potential for establishing a network of protected areas to conserve biological diversity across the United States, Tim's work focused on establishing a framework for establishing quantitative conservation objectives. This research proposed a set of general guidelines and prescriptive standards designed to steer conservation biologists and conservation practitioners through the process of objective-setting. In particular, this process focused on explicitly describing the appropriate role of feasibility in the objective setting process, a source of significant debate in conservation.

The Eastern New York Chapter is extremely proud of the cutting edge science work taking place throughout our chapter and would like to recognize the accomplishments of Michelle, Mary, George, Colin, Kay, Tim and their colleagues. For more information, visit the Society for Conservation Biology's website at http://conbio.net.