EEB Tuesday Lunch Seminar: Improving the ecological foundations of conservation and resource management

Current approaches to natural resource management are not likely to maintain productive ecosystems in the face of burgeoning human impacts, because they focus on single species, which has unintended consequences for other benefits provided by ecosystems (e.g., harvesting trees for timber reduces habitat for wildlife). It is now widely recognized that these tradeoffs need to be considered in more holistic ecosystem-based management approaches. A critical challenge is identifying the links among species that lead to strong tradeoffs among competing management objectives. In this talk, I will examine whether incorporating ecological relationships into a framework to manage an exploited fishery system for multiple objectives will lead to fundamentally different management strategies. I will also share how I am now building on this research to advance management in coral reef ecosystems by identifying critical tradeoffs between fisheries and reef health.