Premium
Un Marco de Referencia para Decisiones para el Manejo Adaptativo de una Especie Explotada con Implicaciones para Reservas Marinas
Author(s) -
GERBER LEAH R.,
WIELGUS JEFFREY,
SALA ENRIC
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
conservation biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.2
H-Index - 222
eISSN - 1523-1739
pISSN - 0888-8892
DOI - 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2007.00824.x
Subject(s) - population , grouper , adaptive management , marine conservation , marine protected area , sustainability , environmental resource management , geography , fishery , ecology , environmental science , biology , demography , sociology , habitat , fish <actinopterygii>
Marine reserves have both conservation and fishery benefits. Nevertheless, there are no general criteria about when and where to establish new reserves, how to evaluate their efficacy, and how to conduct adaptive management to achieve conservation goals. We applied a decision‐theory framework to optimally allocate conservation resources between improving data on population status and establishing a reserve for species conservation. Our goal was to maximize reserve benefits given the constraints of a population growth rate that would permit sustainability of resources. We illustrate our decision framework with a retrospective analysis of a 7‐year time series on abundance of the leopard grouper ( Mycteroperca rosacea ) in the Sea of Cortés, Mexico. We used the lower bound of the distribution of the population growth rate (λ) as a decision rule for determining how many years of monitoring are needed to detect reserve effects. We determined the minimum time frame needed to estimate λ based on a stated level of risk tolerance for four sites. As expected, the coefficient of variation for the λ declined with the number of years of data. This increased precision with additional years of data resulted from the high degree of annual variability in the system. Where populations were slow to respond to reserves, more data were needed to detect a positive λ value. For the leopard grouper case study, confidence in the estimate of λ increased with the number of years of data. Our decision framework may be used to identify the minimum number of years of data needed before a management decision about reserve establishment could be made that is reasonably likely to meet its management objectives.