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Reintroducing Species When Threats Still Exist: Assessing the Suitability of Contemporary Landscapes for Island Endemics

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Reintroducing Species When Threats Still Exist: Assessing the Suitability of Contemporary Landscapes for Island Endemics Reintroducing species when threats still exist: assessing the suitability of contemporary landscapes for island endemics N ICOLE F RANCES A NGELI and L EE A USTIN F ITZGERALD Abstract Reintroducing species into landscapes with per- Supplementary material for this article is available at sistent threats is a conservation challenge. Although historic doi.org/./S threats may not be eliminated, they should be understood in the context of contemporary landscapes. Regenerating land- scapes often contain newly emergent habitat, creating op- portunities for reintroductions. The Endangered St Croix Introduction ground lizard Pholidoscelis polops was extirpated from the main island of St Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, as a result of he majority of island endemics lost to invasive exotic habitat conversion to agriculture and predation by the Tmammals over the past years have been reptiles, small Indian mongoose Herpestes auropunctatus. The spe- amphibians and birds (Sax & Gaines, ). Many endemic cies survived on two small cays and was later translocated species were lost relatively quickly from small islands, and to two islands. Since the s, new land-cover types have have often persisted only on small offshore islands and in emerged on St Croix, creating a matrix of suitable habitat captive colonies (Manne et al., ). A conservation goal throughout the island. Here we examined whether the is to reintroduce species to the islands from which they new habitat is sufficient for a successful reintroduction of were extirpated. Even where threats such as invasive preda- the St Croix ground lizard, utilizing three complementary tors continue to persist on islands, reintroduction may approaches. Firstly, we compared a map from to the be possible. The Guidelines to Reintroductions and Other ‘ current landscape of St Croix and found statistical similarity Conservation Translocations (IUCN, ,p. ) state There of land-cover types. Secondly, we determined habitat suit- should generally be strong evidence that the threat(s) ability based on a binomial mixture population model de- that caused any previous extinction have been correctly ’ veloped as part of the programme monitoring the largest identified and removed or sufficiently reduced . Original extant population of the St Croix ground lizard. We esti- threats need to be addressed, but they should be understood mated the habitat to be sufficient for . , lizards to in the present context. Often original threats such as the inhabit St Croix. Thirdly, we prioritized potential reintro- presence of mongooses on large islands cannot be com- ’ duction sites and planned for reintroductions to take place pletely eliminated with current technologies. The Guideline s ‘ ’ during –. Our case study demonstrates how chan- phrasing sufficiently reduced implies that large-scale res- ging landscapes alter the spatial configuration of threats to toration efforts are a prerequisite for reintroductions. How- species, which can create opportunities for reintroduction. ever, an alternative way of addressing persistent threats is Presuming that areas of degraded habitat may never again to understand them in the context of contemporary land- be habitable could fail to consider how regenerating land- scapes that have emerged since losses originally occurred. scapes can support species recovery. When contemporary Extinction/extirpation takes place in a landscape context, landscapes are taken into account, opportunities for rein- and changes of those landscapes over time result in altered troducing threatened species can emerge. threats to biodiversity. Restoration efforts in newly develop- ing ecosystems will thus benefit from fresh approaches and Keywords Conservation planning, landscape regeneration, new norms (Hobbs et al., ). There may be opportunities Pholidoscelis polops, reintroduction biology, rewilding, spe- for reintroductions into emergent habitats and natural refu- cies repatriation, St Croix ground lizard, Teiidae: Ameiva gia that were not present during historic extirpation events. This can apply to islands where landscapes are regenerating, even when some historic drivers of extinction such as inva- sive predators are still present. NICOLE FRANCES ANGELI* (Corresponding author, orcid.org/0000-0003-3890- 1413)andLEE AUSTIN FITZGERALD ( orcid.org/0000-0001-5648-9480) Biodiversity Human land use changes the configuration of landscape Research and Teaching Collections, Applied Biodiversity Science Program, features, influencing species’ distributions. Changing polit- Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology, 2258 TAMU, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, 77843, USA. E-mail [email protected] ical and economic factors also alter prospects for landscape restoration (Wintle et al., ). In eastern North America, *Current address: Division of Fish and Wildlife, Government of U.S. Virgin Islands, St Croix, USA reduction in agricultural activities allowed regeneration of Received March . Revision requested May . forests that sustain populations of numerous species, in- Accepted August . First published online December . cluding the red wolf Canis rufus and red-legged salamander This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, Downloaded fromdistribution, https://www.cambridge.org/core and reproduction in any medium,. IP address: provided 170.106.34.90 the original, work on 28 is Sep properly 2021 cited. at 05:04:02, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/termsOryx, 2021, 55(3),. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605319001091 344–351 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319001091 Reintroduction when threats still exist 345 Plethodon shermani (Connette & Semlitsch, ; Karlin create new opportunities for the reintroduction of the St et al., ). Recovery of large carnivores such as the lynx Croix ground lizard. Lynx lynx, grey wolf Canis lupus lupus and wolverine Gulo We predicted that areas appropriate for reintroduction gulo in Europe is largely a result of advances in the man- exist based on similarities between the historic () and agement of functional landscapes (Chapron et al., ). re-emergent () land-cover types on St Croix. We as- Successional forests are allowing previously overexploited sessed the suitability of potential lizard habitat using land- animals that suffered habitat loss, such as the Puerto scape parameters (topography, land cover, elevation) dev- Rican parrot Amazona vittata and white-crowned pigeon eloped with data collected from the largest extant population Patagioenas leucocephala, to recover in Puerto Rico and on an offshore island (Angeli et al., ). We collected data throughout the Caribbean (Earnhardt et al., ; Rivera- on the distribution of mongooses across St Croix, and used Milán et al., ). Networks of suitable habitat have been a prioritization scheme to rank suitable reintroduction areas modelled for the Iberian ibex Capra pyrenaica in western (Dawson et al., ). Our work demonstrates how changing Iberia (Torres et al., ) and for the North Island robin landscapes present new opportunities for restoration in Petroica longipes in New Zealand (Armstrong & Davidson, historic ranges, especially on islands, even when threats still ). These cases highlight how landscape change over exist on a broader landscape scale. time can support species reintroduction and recovery. New ideas are emerging for the reintroduction of species to their historic ranges when threats are still perceived to be Study area and species present (Stier et al., ). For example, the milu Elaphurus davidianus became extirpated as a result of hunting and St Croix is a km island in the Caribbean Sea and one habitat conversion for land reclamation in China in the of the U.S. Virgin Islands. It is a single land bank, erupting early th century, but a wild population became established from the ocean where tectonic plates merged, surround- in from animals that escaped from a nature reserve ed by trenches . , m deep (Case & Holcombe, ). during a flooding event. Now, . milu descended from The island is covered by subtropical dry coastal forest, those founders persist in the wild (Yang et al., ). The with annual rainfall of , mm in the west and mm Formosan clouded leopard Neofelis nebulosa, considered in the east (Bowden, ). Easterly trade winds blow across extinct in Taiwan, is now thought to be a candidate for re- the island throughout the year. In addition to the main is- introductions in regenerating forests with rebounding prey land, there are four small offshore islands, with a total area bases (Chiang et al., ). A reported sighting in and of ha, off the north and south shores: Protestant Cay, other unconfirmed sightings strengthen the case for rein- Green Cay, Ruth Island and Buck Island. troductions (Everington, ). The main island has been mapped since , but only We suggest that suitable habitats and networks of refugia one land-cover map from still exists (Hopkins, ). may exist as a result of landscape regeneration on Caribbean The acreage of plantations increased island-wide during islands that historically lost –% of native land cover to – (Westergaard, ), transitioning from cotton agricultural conversion. This historic land-cover change, since to sugar cane during – (Tyson, ). Mongooses the s, coincided with introductions of
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