Calculating Credits In A Conservation Bank To Minimize The Effects Of Habitat Loss And Fragmentation On Endangered Metapopulations
Doug Bruggeman, 13 Natural Resources, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824; (517) 974-3277; FAX (517) 432-1699; bruggem3@msu.edu
Mike Jones, 13 Natural Resources, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824
Frank Lupi, 13 Natural Resources, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824
Kim Scribner, 13 Natural Resources, Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824
Recent Federal guidance stipulates that locating a Conservation Bank within the landscape should minimize the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on an endangered metapopulation. Many endangered populations exist as metapopulations, or a population made up of small subpopulations that interact through migration and gene flow. Decisions of individual landowners to develop habitat for an endangered subpopulation will affect patterns of migration and gene flow, and therefore can increase extinction risk for the entire metapopulation. Some habitat patches or migration corridors may contribute more to metapopulation persistence than others. This study describes a method to calculate the number of credits available from a proposed Conservation Bank to determine where to site the bank in the landscape to reduce changes in migration and gene flow. Ecologists have suggested that tradeoffs between habitat area and connectivity can be made to minimize the effect of habitat loss and fragmentation. The resource-based compensation approach often used in Natural Resource Damage Assessment could be used to estimate credits based on ecological service flows including abundance, genetic diversity, and genetic divergence. A criterion of maintaining these ecological service flows could be used to determine tradeoffs between habitat area and connectivity. The approach is called Landscape Equivalency Analysis.