Assigning trend-based conservation status despite high uncertainty

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Conservation Biology
• Environmental Science

Background:

• Estimating temporal trends in species occupancy is crucial for conservation policy.
• Model and data limitations frequently lead to high uncertainty in trend estimates.
• Disagreement among studies or models is a significant source of uncertainty, impacting scientific credibility.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore how different methods of estimating and communicating species trend uncertainty affect conservation status decisions.
• To evaluate the impact of uncertainty disclosure on conservation planning for freshwater fishes.
• To align uncertainty communication with established decision-making frameworks.

Main Methods:

• Utilized ensemble models to propagate trend uncertainty within and across different models.
• Communicated uncertainty using categorical distributions of trend direction and magnitude.
• Designed approaches to integrate with the New Zealand government's species conservation status assignment system.

Main Results:

• Incomplete disclosure of uncertainty, despite simplification, can negatively impact species conservation outcomes.
• Ineffective communication of uncertainty can lead to suboptimal or flawed conservation decisions.
• The study demonstrated how specific communication methods influence conservation status assessments.

Conclusions:

• Full disclosure of uncertainty is critical for the effective translation of scientific findings into conservation policies and plans.
• Approaches that simplify or omit uncertainty can hinder conservation efforts and lead to poor decision-making.
• Recommends a specific approach for communicating trend uncertainty, successfully applied to New Zealand freshwater fish conservation status assessments.