Prioritising research and management of key threatening processes and listed species using value of information

[摘要] As part of the Saving our Species program, the Office of Environment and Heritage is developing a research strategy for Key Threatening Processes (KTPs) that aims to maximise the persistence of threatened species and ecological communities in the wild for the next 100 years. This report contributes to this strategy by quantifying the expected gain in persistence of listed species that would result from KTP management. We considered two scenarios for our analysis. Firstly, we determined which KTPs and functional groups of species had the greatest expected gains in persistence if management is applied using current knowledge.This is useful for deciding immediate management priorities, i.e. where to best improve species persistence using current knowledge. Secondly, we used a value of information analysis to determine which KTPs and functional groups of species had the greatest expected gains in persistence if uncertainty about management effectiveness could be eliminated. This provides information about how much management could potentially be improved by research to eliminate uncertainty, i.e. which KTPs are good candidates for research investment.The project used an expert elicitation approach to evaluate the value of information for 20 listed KTPs in NSW. A total of 261 experts were invited to contribute by email, of which 65 experts provided estimates. We elicited three pieces of information from experts: (1) the likelihood that best-practice management would effectively remove the KTP; and (2) the average probability that functional groups of species would persist if no management was undertaken; and (3) the average probability that functional groups of species would persist if best practice management was applied. Estimates were fitted with probability distributions representing the likelihood of effective management and the likelihood of functional group response for a given level of management effectiveness. These distributions were used to calculate the expected gain in persistence from managing each functional group with existing knowledge and the expected gain if uncertainty about management outcomes was eliminated. The expected value of perfect information (EVPI) was then computed for each functional group; this quantifies the likely gains from removing uncertainty about management outcomes. The functional groups most likely to benefit from immediate KTP management were threatened plant species affected by invasive plant KTPs, particularly exotic perennial grasses and lantana. The exception to this trend was species affected by competition with rats on Lord Howe Island, which had the highest per-species gain in persistence.The rankings of the KTPs based on potential per-species gains from removing uncertainty were roughly reversed compared to the gains from immediate management using existing knowledge. Functional groups affected by feral animals, particularly feral cats and red fox, had the highest per-species EVPI and the highest potential gain from learning. These results were driven by extreme expert uncertainty about the impacts of foxes and cats on specific functional groups. Results for the aggregate persistence across all species in the functional group were similar, except that the two most beneficial KTPs to manage were dominated by the functional groups with the largest number of species (i.e. Phytopthora cinnamomi and feral goats).Some general trends arose from the analysis that can help to predict which functional groups or KTPs have high EVPI. The key factor was the degree of overlap between the distributions of persistence with and without management. Although the shape of the response function and the management effectiveness distribution also had an impact, most of the observed trends in EVPI could be explained using the difference between the persistence distributions with and without management.

[发布日期] 2018-10-12 [发布机构] CSIRO

[效力级别] Operations Research [学科分类] 地球科学(综合)