Migratory Connectivity and the Conservation of Migratory Animals
Migration is the repeated seasonal movement to and from a breeding area. The linking of individuals or populations of a given species within its range, including its breeding, migration, and wintering areas, is known as migratory connectivity. In this Article, we discuss how new technologies and approaches are enhancing our knowledge of migratory connectivity, which in turn can improve our legal and policy approaches to the conservation of migratory animals. Advances in studying and documenting migratory connectivity require new approaches to the design and implementation of both domestic and international conservation efforts. Understanding migratory connectivity of different populations of species between specific geographic locations can also help build “social connectivity” for conservation—the cultural, educational, economic, and institutional linkages between these same locations that are a necessary foundation for effective and sustainable conservation efforts.
Assessing migratory connectivity for a long-distance migratory bird using multiple intrinsic markers.
Patterns of migratory connectivity are a vital yet poorly understood component of the ecology and evolution of migratory birds. Our ability to accurately characterize patterns of migratory connectivity is often limited by the spatial resolution of the data, but recent advances in probabilistic assignment approaches have begun pairing stable isotopes with other sources of data (e.g., genetic and mark-recapture) to improve the accuracy and precision of inferences based on a single marker. Here, we combine stable isotopes and geographic variation in morphology (wing length) to probabilistically assign Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustilena) captured on the wintering grounds to breeding locations. In addition, we use known-origin samples to validate our model and assess potentially important impacts of isotopic and morphological covariates (age, sex, and breeding location). Our results show that despite relatively high levels of mixing across their breeding and nonbreeding ranges, moderate levels of migratory connectivity exist along an east-west gradient. In addition, combining stable isotopes with geographic variation in wing length improved the precision of breeding assignments by 10% and 37% compared to assignments based on isotopes alone or wing length alone, respectively. These results demonstrate that geographical variation in morphological traits can greatly improve estimates of migratory connectivity when combined with other intrinsic markers (e.g., stable isotopes or genetic data). The wealth of morphological data available from museum specimens across the world represents a tremendously valuable, but largely untapped, resource that is widely applicable for quantifying patterns of migratory connectivity.
A sustainable development indicator for NGOs and international organisations
The article offers an easy-to-use indicator for measuring whether NGOs, international organisations and government policies and projects meet the criteria for sustainable development that have been established by the Rio Declaration in 1992 and that are recognised by experts in the field. Use of this indicator reveals that most of the major actors in the field of development are actually failing to promote sustainable development and points to the specific areas where they need to improve in order to fulfil sustainability criteria. We also offer a sample test of the indicator using UNICEF as a case study.