Abstract for presentation at Biodiversity Extinction Crisis Conference - A Pacific Response

A common approach for conserving biodiversity is to develop priorities based on protecting natural ‘assets’, such as threatened species or depleted ecosystems. This essential approach has a major limitation: asset protection alone cannot conserve biodiversity unless the ecological processes that sustain assets are also maintained. In this presentation we describe a complementary approach that emphasizes the essential role of ecological processes in sustaining biodiversity. In 2006, a group of 20 research scientists convened to identify: the key ecological processes that sustain biodiversity in Victoria, current status, trends and threats to ecological processes arising from human impacts, and approaches to maintain ecological processes. Seven key processes were identified: (1) climate, (2) primary productivity, (3) hydrological processes, (4) biophysical habitats, (5) interactions between organisms, (6) movements of organisms, and (7) natural disturbance regimes. These key processes are being affected by five major threats: climate change, degradation and loss of biophysical habitats, altered hydrological flows, nutrient and chemical additions to ecosystems, and introduced species. Each of these threats extends across terrestrial, freshwater and marine systems, and interacts with or modifies multiple ecological processes. The full consequences of these threats may not be experienced for lengthy periods, their effects extend across all land tenures, they commonly have off-site effects and many changes may be irreversible. A wide range of policy and management approaches will be required to maintain key ecological processes, including: developing ecological visions, targets and monitoring schemes specifically for processes; addressing socioeconomic drivers underlying threats; incorporating varied perspectives on valuing ‘nature’; refining resource harvesting approaches; and prioritizing preservation and restoration activities to strengthen ecological processes across landscape scales. We suggest that conservation strategies that are explicitly directed toward maintaining the integrity of ecological processes will have greater potential to sustain biodiversity and evolutionary processes in the long-term.