Josh Donlan, Fisheries bycatch, invasive species, & the business of making seabirds: a trans-boundary solution?

Globally, fisheries catch of non-target species is having major environmental impacts, resulting in social conflict, litigation, and fisheries closures.  We use a bio-economic analysis to demonstrate that compensatory mitigation – an innovative, market-influenced approach to fishery-conservation conflicts – can facilitate high value uses of biological resources and cost-effective conservation gains for species of concern.  We illustrate the strategy with a seabird example: levying fishers for their bycatch and using the funds to remove invasive mammals from breeding islands.  Removal of invasive predators is 16 times more effective from return-on-investment perspective (i.e., percent increase in lamda per dollar invested) in comparison with fisheries closures, and is more socio-politically feasible.  Bycatch fees, which could increase with endangerment, provide incentives for avoiding bycatch, the most effective mechanism for sustainable management of fisheries.  Compensatory mitigation provides an opportunity to address a global concern, optimise conservation interventions, and forge an alliance between conservation and fisheries organizations.

Josh Donlan is the founder and director of the NGO Advanced Conservation Strategies, which is dedicated to staunching biodiversity loss through the development of innovative, self-sustaining, and economically efficient solutions derived from the integrated analyses of biological, economic, political, sociological, and technological threats and opportunities. Josh works on a variety of issues, all relevant to biodiversity conservation, including 1) understanding how species interact and the ecosystem consequences of those interactions, 2) reversing the impact of invasive species, particularly on islands, 3) incorporating ecological history into our conservation strategies, and 4) developing trans-boundary and cost-effective solutions to biodiversity conservation issues. For the past four years, Josh served as the science and conservation advisor for Galápagos National Park where he helped run Project Isabel/, the world’s largest island conservation project. He is currently finishing his Ph.D. in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary biology at Cornell University. Mr. Donlan works closely with the international NGO Island Conservation, which he helped start ten years ago. Josh works in Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. Mr. Donlan holds a B.S. from Northern Arizona University, a M.A. form University of California, and is a senior fellow at the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation and with the Environmental Leadership Program. He has published over 40 scientific and public articles on a variety of conservation topics, some of which have received widespread media attention. Mr. Donlan was highlighted in New York Times Magazine’s Big Ideas of 2005 issue and named 25 of 2005 Saving the Planet/by Outside Magazine. While not traveling, Josh loves to hide out and ski in the backcountry of Utah’s Wasatch Mountains.

Chris Wilcox
CSIRO Australia
Chris Wilcox is a senior research scientist in the Pelagic Fisheries and Ecosystem Unit with CSIRO Marine Research, Australia’s governmental research agency. Much of Dr. Wilcox’s research focuses on the dynamics of declining species, and particularly in expanding the focus of conservation studies to include interactions with other species, including human resource users. More recently his research has focused on fisheries and marine resource management. With the expanding focus on sustainable use and its application to fisheries policies, there are many issues that cross over the traditional divide between conservation biology and fisheries management. Dr. Wilcox’s research addresses these issues using an integrated approach that combines modeling, empirical investigations, and analysis of historical data. In this framework, Dr. Wilcox stimulates new modeling approaches, leading to a more complete solution for the conservation problem at hand and deeper understanding of the system. Much of his work strives to integrate economics and ecological dynamics to look for solutions that allow limited resource extraction that is both economically efficient and ecologically sustainable in the long term. Dr. Wilcox holds two degrees from University of Kansas, and a Master’s and Ph.D. degree in Conservation Biology from University of California. He has published over 30 papers in a variety of fields related to conservation and is a senior fellow with the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation. He lives in Tasmania, Australia with his wife Rosmary and two kids Keenan and Ava. Chris paddles to work. or more information on Chris, click here >