The Congress theme, “conservation biology and beyond: from science to practice” reflects the fact that delivering effective conservation requires a range of actors. Conservation still suffers from these different actors being poorly coordinated and there is work to do to ensure a concerted effort. Conservation science needs to cover a broader range of disciplines than just biology to be relevant to practice and needs feedback from application on successes, problems faced and research needs. In addition, conservation biologists often remain poor at communicating the importance of their science to policy and practice; mechanisms for better communication exist but need to be agreed upon and invested in.
Symposia
1 Biodiversity monitoring at european scale
Organisers: Piotr Nowicki & Klaus Henle
2 Climate change, a challenge for conservation
Organisers: Mar Cabeza & Heini Kujala
3 Communicating scientific uncertainty across the science-policy interface
Organisers: Andrew Pullin & Gavin Stewart
4 Concepts, methods and software for conservation prioritization
Organisers: Atte Moilanen & Anni Arponen
5 Conservation genetics of ex situ and reintroduction projects
Organisers: Axel Hochkirch & Kathrin A. Witzenberger
6 Disturbance of wildlife through recreation: from research to implementation
Organisers: Raphaël Arlettaz & Susi Eiermann-Jenni & Veronika Braunisch
7 Economics for biodiversity conservation
Organisers: Martin Dieterich
8 Ex situ plant conservation
Organisers: Michael Burkart & Cornelia Löhne
9 Exotic species in nature reserves
Organisers: W. L. M. Tamis, Rob Leewis
10 From sit and watch to anticipate and manage – building an adaptive climate change-proof conservation strategy
Organisers: Pierre L. Ibisch & Stefan Kreft & Peter Hobson
11 Nature conservation on farmland: linking ecology with social sciences
Organisers: G. R. de Snoo & H. Staats & C. J. M. Musters
12 Paths to Integration: Exploring the interface between social science and conservation biology
Organisers: Sandra Bell
13 Practicing adaptive management across Europe
Organisers: Ilke Tilders & Gernant Magnin
14 Promoting grassland insect conservation and diversity
Organisers: Nick Littlewood & Alan Stewart
15 Scavengers in a modern world: from top-predators’ subsidies to carrion dumps
Organisers: Nuria Selva & José Antonio Donázar
16 Set-aside: conservation value in a changing agricultural landscape
Organisers: András Báldi & Anikó Kovács & Tony Morris
17 The natural range of variability as a guide for sustainable forest management in boreal forests
Organisers: Bengt Gunnar Jonsson
Special Session:
18 Natura 2000: a successful tool?
Organisers: Policy Committee SCB-ES
IIn the European Union, nature conservation – policy, implementation and research – has been dominated by the provisions of the 1979 Birds Directive (79/409/EWG), the 1992 Habitats Directive (92/43/EWG), and the Natura 2000 network of protected sites, which is based on these directives. Natura 2000 and the requirements listed in the European conservation directives to ensure long term “favourable conservation status” of species and habitat types (e. g. coherence, monitoring) are also a testing ground for an effective interaction of conservation science and implementation (policy, stakeholders, general public).
If properly implemented and managed, the European conservation directives and the Natura 2000 network of protected sites are a milestone for nature conservation in the EU and beyond. They can function as a global model for protection of biodiversity in increasingly human dominated landscapes. However, there are aspects in their implementation that merit objective and scientific evaluation to assess how they can be subsequently improved. There are new challenges that call for strengthening the network and for additional measures to ensure their resilience and adaptation for the future, especially in the light of climate change.
The Natura 2000 Special Session will be organized by the SCB-ES Policy Committee and is intended to build on the Natura 2000 workshop held during the ECCB2006 in Eger. The symposium will cover a broad range of topics relating to the European directives,explaining basics, revealing strengths and gaps, providing best practice examples and identifying future challenges. The symposium will consist of invited contributions, supplemented by contributed papers. The organizers strive for poster sessions paralleling the key topics to be addressed in the symposium. Slots for discussion will be an integral part of the symposium proposed.
Workshops
Workshops facilitate presentation and application of new concepts, perhaps allowing audience participation and/or round-table discussion for exploration of new or controversial issues. Dates and times will be structured so that they have minimal conflict with paper sessions (evenings and lunchtimes are preferred). All workshops organisers must be registered for the meeting.
Joint European Censuses for Conservation
Organisers: Henk de Vries, Ruud Foppen
Goal: To establish a European platform for NGO’s where census and atlas activities can be joined and discussed
The EBCC (European Bird Census Council) and the BCE (Butterfly Conservation Europe) are both young European organizations with a joint purpose of gathering information about distribution of respectively birds and butterflies. When these two associations meet, possibly together with other organizations, they can join some of there efforts and thus contribute to measuring biodiversity on a European scale. Other purposes of the proposed workshop are: (1) to generate support for an European portal for records of observations of fauna and flora. (2) to plan/discuss the opportunity for starting with the assemblage of data for a new atlas of European breeding birds. (3) to present and discuss ongoing national and international projects contributing to European databases. (4) to get interest from other European associations or organizations with similar objectives to join this platform (5) to establish a network of people from national organizations who want to contribute to European databases.
Invasive species: key priorities for science, policy and practice
Organisers: Helen Bayliss, Nicola Randall
Goals: To identify key priorities for invasive species research across Europe; To identify the factors affecting the use of research on invasive species by policy makers and practitioners; To form new collaborations and networks for future work.
Invasive species are an important global issue due to their ecological and economic impacts. Control, prevention and costs to industry are estimated to run to billions of dollars each year. Many ecosystem services are affected by invasive species, in particular biodiversity, a key policy driver across Europe. Recently, much work has been carried out to facilitate the sharing and evaluation of current information relating to invasive species in Europe, such as DAISIE and the Biological Invasions module of ALARM. The effects of climate change and other anthropogenic impacts may lead to increasing problems from invasive species as occupiable ranges shift and community dynamics change.
In order to understand, control and mitigate against invasive species during this time of global change, additional information is required. It is important that policy makers, practitioners and researchers are all involved in the process of identifying information needs and shaping the research agenda for invasive species. To be of real value, resulting research evidence must be able to influence policy makers and ultimately conservation practitioners, and its impact be assessed.
Due to the many mainly anthropogenic effects impacting on the global environment, scope for future research on invasive species is wide, and may consider control and monitoring of existing invasives, as well as Identification of, and mitigation against, potential future invasive species. In this workshop we will discuss the key priorities for invasive species research across Europe and whether these are being met through existing research activity. We also aim to identify factors which affect the uptake of research evidence by policy makers and practitioners, whilst providing an informal networking opportunity for anyone with an interest in invasive species.
Scavengers in a modern world: from top-predators’ subsidies to carrion dumps
Organisers: Nuria Selva, José Antonio Donázar
Scientific evidence shows that the current management strategy has extremely negative consequences for the wild fauna and that there is an urgent need to improve it. On the other hand, there is a clear incompatibility between these regulations and the EU nature conservation Directives. The goals of the symposium on the same topic were (1) to highlight the importance of carrion resources, both natural and human-provided, in the functioning of ecosystems and for the conservation of many species, ranging from carrion beetles, to brown bears; and, (2) bring together a multidisciplinary group of experts in the topic to provide recent scientific evidence and discuss the current situation and associated conservation problems. Ideally, the symposium will be followed by a workshop on the same topic. The workshop pretends to (1) examine and discuss in more detail the issues related to the conservation of scavengers and scavenging process; (2) set the basis to establish a working group on scavengers; and, (3) draw out conclusions and formulate conservation measures and proposals for a sensible management of carrion resources in order to inform policy makers. It is important to come out with strong conclusions about European sanitary regulations, which may have very detrimental consequences for biodiversity.
Using the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria to assess the extinction risk of species
Organisers: Caroline Pollock
Goal: To improve understanding of the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria and how to apply these criteria to produce good-quality Red List assessments suitable for inclusion in Red Lists at regional (e.g., at Europe, national) or global (i.e., the IUCN Red List) levels.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened SpeciesTM is generally considered the most authoritative and objective system for classifying species’ extinction risk at the global level. The IUCN Red List is integral to meeting CBD commitments (e.g. Article 7; Annex 1), particularly for reducing the rate of global biodiversity loss. In addition, biodiversity conservation policies are most often implemented at national (e.g. state, province) and regional (e.g. European Union) levels, and accurate extinction risk assessment at national and regional level is a vital part of this process.
Current approaches to developing national Red Lists vary widely. This hinders comparison between Red Lists and development of robust indicators for measuring progress towards CBD’s biodiversity target (e.g., the Red List Index (RLI) requires at least two comparable and well-documented Red List assessments to give a reliable measure of trends in biodiversity status). Discussions are also underway to adopt the RLI as a biodiversity indicator under the United Nations Millennium Development Goal 7 (MDG7); implementation of this indicator will require more rigorous and standardized national Red Lists than are currently available.
Through an extensive process of workshops, testing and open debate, IUCN has already developed a set of criteria as the foundation for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN 2001), and guidelines for applying the criteria at regional and national levels (IUCN 2003). The IUCN Red List Unit has over 10 years experience of facilitating Red List training courses around the world; demand for Red List training is increasing as more countries begin to tackle the problem of effectively monitoring and addressing the status of their biodiversity.
By providing this training opportunity at the European Congress of Conservation Biology, we openly invite participants from all countries represented at this meeting to learn how to apply the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria to assess the extinction risk of species in their country and region.
The Zonation conservation prioritization framework and software – Q&A session
Organisers: Atte Moilanen
Goal: To summarize the basic operational principles of the latest version of the Zonation conservation prioritization framework and software. To answer questions concerning any aspects of the software and its operation.
Training Sessions
Training sessions will provide opportunities for registered delegates to receive expert tuition on a key topic in conservation. Training sessions will be timetabled as pre-congress events and may last up to one full day. All training session organisers must be registered for the meeting.
We offer to participants folowing training courses and training workshops:
Training courses
1) Scientific writing and communication
2) The Zonation conservation prioritization framework and software - hands on
3) Curriculum Design in Conservation Biology
Training workshop
2) Using the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria to assess the extinction risk of species
The ECCB does not provide financial support for Symposia, Workshops or Training sessions but is willing to help with applications for funding where possible. In cases where financial assistance will be required, proposers should make it clear how they expect to obtain the necessary funding (e.g. training session fees).
