Rethinking the monitoring criteria of umbrella species will enhance biodiversity conservation efforts, leading to more efficient and cost-saving programmes, researchers have found.
By evaluating the performance of eight umbrella species in a community of mammals in a tropical rainforest in Sumatra, the study found that species that are frequently overlooked by conservation decision-making better represent the overall biodiversity.
This suggests that a multi-species umbrella approach may be more effective for wildlife monitoring.
The study, published in journal Biological Conservation, was conducted by a group of researchers from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the University of Indonesia, in collaboration with Gunung Leuser National Park of Sumatra, Indonesia.
Umbrella species are traditionally considered relevant in conservation strategies, as their protection indirectly encompasses the preservation of many other species that live in the same habitat.
“As some species are more representative of particular aspects of biodiversity than others, we advocate the adoption of an ‘umbrella fleet’, which integrates multiple top umbrella species to benefit the overarching purpose of conserving biodiversity and the ecosystem,” the study said.
“The fleet approach ensures the protection of crucial aspects of biological diversity that might be overlooked by prioritising the needs of single taxa, and can be integrated into current species-based programmes.”
The umbrella species concept differs from the so-called indicator species, which are instead defined as species that help measure the environmental conditions – the habitat – in which they live.
Both umbrella and indicator species have been used to inform different biodiversity credit methodologies.
Cercarbono, a Colombia-based credit standard, released a methodology based on the Indicator Species Biodiversity Methodology (ISBM) developed by US-based Savimbo. The Brazilian company Ecosystem Regeneration Associates (ERA) developed a proposal via Regen Network for projects that protect umbrella species, and published specific guidelines for applying it to jaguars in South America.
MONITORING OPTIMISATION
The study stressed that one of the main issues is that some species, such as “large-bodied charismatic ones”, are typically selected as umbrellas based on public interest or their capacity to generate conservation funding, rather than a correlation between their distribution and those of other species.
In Sumatra, for example, researchers found out that Sumatran tigers and rhinos – typically selected as conservation umbrellas – were poor representatives of the habitat condition.
Conversely, sambar deers, clouded leopards, and sun bears stood out as high-performing umbrellas for mammal biodiversity.
“While no single species can represent all facets of biological diversity, identifying species with habitat preferences that reflect important areas for other wildlife is imperative for protected area managers so they can optimise monitoring under restricted budgets,” the researchers said.
They recognised that remotely-operated technologies, such as camera traps, are key to conducting better analysis on umbrella species for conservation strategies. However, this technology is often inaccessible due to its costs.
“Camera trap surveys provide detection data for multiple species simultaneously, but valuable information on species occupancy status, community-level biodiversity patterns, and the interconnecting relationships between them are often unavailable in the Global South due to funding priorities placed on single species and limited capacity to analyse biodiversity data,” the study said.
“Our study evaluated the robustness of umbrella species performance and provides an alternative to community studies when there are limited resources by focusing the scope of assessment to a few representative species.”
By Giada Ferraglioni – giada@carbon-pulse.com
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