ORCID Profile
0000-0002-4855-6409
Does something not look right? The information on this page has been harvested from data sources that may not be up to date. We continue to work with information providers to improve coverage and quality. To report an issue, use the Feedback Form.
In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Environmental management | Global change biology | Environmental Science and Management | Environmental management | Conservation and Biodiversity | Conservation and biodiversity | Biological Adaptation
Climate Change Mitigation Strategies | Ecosystem Assessment and Management at Regional or Larger Scales | Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences |
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-07-2023
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 20-06-2020
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 20-09-2018
DOI: 10.1111/COBI.13195
Abstract: Effective conservation management interventions must combat threats and deliver benefits at costs that can be achieved within limited budgets. Considerable effort has focused on measuring the potential benefits of conservation interventions, but explicit quantification of the financial costs of implementation is rare. Even when costs have been quantified, haphazard and inconsistent reporting means published values are difficult to interpret. This reporting deficiency hinders progress toward a collective understanding of the financial costs of management interventions across projects and thus limits the ability to identify efficient solutions to conservation problems or attract adequate funding. We devised a standardized approach to describing financial costs reported for conservation interventions. The standards call for researchers and practitioners to describe the objective and outcome, context and methods, and scale of costed interventions, and to state which categories of costs are included and the currency and date for reported costs. These standards aim to provide enough contextual information that readers and future users can interpret the cost data appropriately. We suggest these standards be adopted by major conservation organizations, conservation science institutions, and journals so that cost reporting is comparable among studies. This would support shared learning and enhance the ability to identify and perform cost-effective conservation.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 05-09-2020
DOI: 10.1111/COBI.13580
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 26-07-2023
Abstract: Conservation practitioners commonly work together in management teams, contributing expertise to the planning and decision‐making associated with threatened species management. These groups may include in iduals with different perspectives around if, when and how to implement management. Yet, rarely do we consider the value of discussion in shaping these perspectives, and thus management. Decision triggers can be used to formalise decisions around management and encourage teams to explore these decisions proactively. Previous research has identified how in idual experts set decision triggers but there are no accepted approaches for capturing the expertise that exists across management teams when setting decision triggers. To address this gap, we developed an approach to formalise team deliberations about when and how to intervene if a decline in the condition of a threatened species were to be observed. Using a modified Delphi process, in idual experts within a threatened species management team were asked to independently set trigger points and assign actions for the species. Then, as a group, experts discussed anonymised responses, enabling us to understand how group dynamics influenced the decision‐making process. Experts had the opportunity to update their responses based on the group discussion, providing a rationale to support their decisions. We tested the approach with experts from teams managing threatened species across conservation organisations in Australia and New Zealand. We found that experts often updated their responses to incorporate issues raised by the group, demonstrating a willingness to integrate the perspectives of other team members. Experts tended to become more cautious after discussing their responses, setting additional trigger points and actions, and triggering actions sooner. Synthesis and applications : Our approach provides a structured process to formally integrate the range of perspectives and experience of groups of experts when setting trigger points and actions. This can help to address common biases that arise during unstructured decision‐making, and ensure decision‐making processes are transparent.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 30-08-2022
DOI: 10.1111/COBI.13963
Abstract: Performance thresholds are an important tool for determining successful conservation outcomes. They provide an objective means of defining good ecological condition and have been endorsed as an essential part of best practice in protected area (PA) management within the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas Standard. With a growing number of PAs attaining Green List status globally, thresholds developed by PAs on the Green List present an excellent resource with which to identify the attributes of well‐defined performance thresholds. We examined 349 thresholds associated with PAs on the Green List to determine whether they were specific and measurable (i.e., factors recognized as essential for setting well‐defined targets). We assessed whether thresholds were defined quantitatively and whether definitions included ambiguous terms (e.g., stable numbers ). We identified six different ways thresholds were expressed and found that many thresholds were expressed as management objectives, rather than ecological condition thresholds, although this trend improved over time. Approximately one‐half of the performance thresholds lacked the necessary specificity to delineate successful outcomes. Our results enabled us to develop a checklist of information required to set robust performance thresholds. Recommendations include that thresholds should be quantitatively defined, including quantitative estimates of the limits of acceptable change (LAC) around the target condition. To ensure transparency, a rationale and associated evidence should be provided to support the threshold and the LAC. When accompanied by a rationale and quantitative estimate of the current condition of the value, unambiguously defined thresholds with a quantitative LAC provide an objective means of demonstrating that successful conservation outcomes have been achieved. These recommendations will help conservation managers apply the Green List Standard and improve the measurement of conservation outcomes more broadly.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 29-08-2018
DOI: 10.1111/COBI.13127
Abstract: The conservation and management of natural resources operates in social-ecological systems in which resource users are embedded in social and environmental contexts that influence their management decisions. Characterizing social networks of resource users can be used to inform understanding of social influences on decision making, and social network analysis (SNA) has emerged as a useful technique to explore these relationships. We synthesized how SNA has been used in 85 studies of natural resource management. We considered how social networks and social processes (e.g., interactions between in iduals) influence each other and in turn influence social outcomes (e.g., decisions or actions) that affect environmental outcomes (e.g., improved condition). Descriptive methods were used in 58% of the studies to characterize social processes, and 42% of the studies compared multiple networks or multiple points in time to assess social or environmental outcomes. In 4 studies, authors assessed network interventions intended to affect social processes or environmental outcomes. The heterogeneity in case studies, methods, and analyses preclude general lessons. Thus, to structure and further learning about the role of social networks in achieving environmental outcomes, we created a typology that deconstructs social processes, social outcomes, and environmental outcomes into themes and options of social and ecological measures within each. We suggest shifts in research foci toward intervention studies to aid in understanding causality and inform the design of conservation initiatives. There is a need to develop clearer justification and guidance around the proliferation of network measures. The use of SNA in natural resource management is expanding rapidly thus, now is the time for the conservation community to build a more rigorous evidence base to demonstrate the extent to which social networks can play a role in achieving desired social and environmental outcomes.
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing
Date: 2023
DOI: 10.1071/PC23011
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 28-11-2019
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 07-2023
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-10-2020
DOI: 10.1111/CSP2.307
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 11-01-2022
DOI: 10.1111/COBI.13865
Abstract: Successful, state‐dependent management, in which the goal of management is to maintain a system in a desired state, involves defining the boundaries between different states. Once these boundaries have been defined, managers require a strategic action plan with thresholds that initiate management interventions to either maintain or return the system to a desired state. This approach to management is widely used across erse industries from agriculture, to medicine, to information technology, but it has only been adopted in conservation management relatively recently. Conservation practitioners have expressed a willingness to integrate this structured approach in their management systems, but they have also voiced concerns, including lack of a robust process for doing so. Given the widespread use of state‐dependent management in other fields, we conducted an extensive review of the literature on threshold‐based management to gain insight into how and where it is applied and identify potential lessons for conservation management. We identified 22 industries using 75 different methods for setting management thresholds in 843 studies. Methods spanned six broad approaches, including expert driven, statistical, predictive, optimization, experimental, and artificial intelligence methods. The objectives of each of these studies influenced the approaches used, including the methods for setting thresholds and selecting actions, and the number of thresholds set. The role of value judgments in setting thresholds was clear studies across all industries frequently involved experts in setting thresholds, often accompanied by computational tools to simulate the consequences of proposed thresholds under different conditions. Of the 30 conservation studies examined, two‐thirds used expert‐driven methods, consistent with prior evidence that experience‐based information often drives conservation management decisions. The methods we identified from other disciplines could help conservation decision makers set thresholds for management interventions in different contexts, linking monitoring to management actions and ensuring that conservation interventions are timely and effective.
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Date: 06-12-2022
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0321.08
Abstract: Having collaborated with the community to decide upon the objectives, identified the major threats to be addressed, considered the possible options and assessed the evidence, the next stage is to decide what to do. Many decisions can be decided easily, as either obvious or trivial, thus requiring no additional assessment of different stages of the process. The harder decisions then require assessing the likely consequences of options and determining the preferred trade off. There is a range of approaches for making each of these stages more rigorous, reducing the likelihood of making inefficient decisions. These approaches are described with an account of the situations under which is most appropriate to address the conservation problem.
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing
Date: 2020
DOI: 10.1071/WR18170
Abstract: Abstract ContextManaging small, isolated populations requires conservation practitioners to weigh up the risks of inbreeding depression and outbreeding depression when assessing alternative management actions aimed at preventing species extinction. Accordingly, it is important that research intended to guide these management decisions provides the relevant evidence to inform them. AimsTo determine the extent to which studies that use genetic analyses to characterise population units for conservation consider the key theoretical concepts necessary for making sound management recommendations regarding the desirability of gene flow among units, notably the consequences and relative risks of inbreeding depression and outbreeding depression. MethodsA systematic search was conducted of peer-reviewed literature for studies that attempted to identify population units of threatened birds and mammals. Using content analysis, the theoretical framing of these studies was assessed, based on the discussion of key concepts concerning differences among populations. Key resultsThere has been a significant increase over time in the number of published studies that use genetics to identify population units for conservation. Many do not consider theoretical concepts relevant to the effective management of fragmented populations of threatened species. Mammals were more common than birds as focal species of studies, but the number of concepts used in the framing of the studies was similar for these two taxa, despite differences in their ecology and biology that might be expected to affect perceptions of distinctiveness. Nevertheless, species of greater conservation concern tended to have a slightly more comprehensive theoretical framing. ConclusionsThere is great potential for more studies to implement theoretical guidelines and practical decision support tools when considering the best course of action for identifying appropriate population units for conservation management. ImplicationsThe gap in the identified literature is likely to be impacting the ability of conservation practitioners to make evidence-informed decisions about how to manage the genetic health of threatened species it would be valuable to improve this situation.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 28-01-2019
DOI: 10.1111/ANS.14997
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-06-2017
DOI: 10.1111/COBI.12904
Abstract: The use of total area protected as the predominant indicator of progress in building protected area (PA) networks is receiving growing criticism. Documenting the full dynamics of PA networks, both in terms of the gains and losses in protection, provides a much more informative approach to tracking progress. To this end, documentation of PA downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD) has increased. Studies of PADDD events generally fail to place these losses in the context of gains in protection therefore, they omit important elements of PA network dynamics. To address this limitation, we used a spatially explicit approach to identify every parcel of land added to and excised from the Australian terrestrial PA network and PAs that had their level of protection changed over 17 years (1997-2014). By quantifying changes in the spatial configuration of the PA network with time-series data (spatial layers for nine separate time steps), ours is the first assessment of the dynamics (increases and decreases in area and level of protection) of a PA network and the first comprehensive assessment of PADDD in a developed country. We found that the Australian network was highly dynamic there were 5233 changes in area or level of protection over 17 years. Against a background of enormous increases in area protected, we identified over 1500 PADDD events, which affected over one-third of the network, which were largely the result of widespread downgrading of protection. We believe our approach provides a mechanism for robust tracking of trends in the world's PAs through the use of data from the World Database on Protected Areas. However, this will require greater transparency and improved data standards in reporting changes to PAs.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-07-2021
DOI: 10.1111/EVA.13266
Abstract: There is an imperative for conservation practitioners to help bio ersity adapt to accelerating environmental change. Evolutionary biologists are well‐positioned to inform the development of evidence‐based management strategies that support the adaptive capacity of species and ecosystems. Conservation practitioners increasingly accept that management practices must accommodate rapid environmental change, but harbour concerns about how to apply recommended changes to their management contexts. Given the interest from both conservation practitioners and evolutionary biologists in adjusting management practices, we believe there is an opportunity to accelerate the required changes by promoting closer collaboration between these two groups. We highlight how evolutionary biologists can harness lessons from other disciplines about how to foster effective knowledge exchange to make a substantive contribution to the development of effective conservation practices. These lessons include the following: (1) recognizing why practitioners do and do not use scientific evidence (2) building an evidence base that will influence management decisions (3) translating theory into a format that conservation practitioners can use to inform management practices and (4) developing strategies for effective knowledge exchange. Although efforts will be required on both sides, we believe there are rewards for both practitioners and evolutionary biologists, not least of which is fostering practices to help support the long‐term persistence of species.
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Date: 06-12-2022
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0321.12
Abstract: Delivering a revolution in evidence use requires a cultural change across society. For a wide range of groups (practitioners, knowledge brokers, organisations, organisational leaders, policy makers, funders, researchers, journal publishers, the wider conservation community, educators, writers, and journalists), options are described to facilitate a change in practice, and a series of downloadable checklists are provided.
No related organisations have been discovered for Carly Cook.
Start Date: 02-2024
End Date: 01-2028
Amount: $974,296.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 2018
End Date: 08-2022
Amount: $356,761.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded Activity