Do We Protect The Strong Or Protect The Weak?

No, this post is not an argument for social reform. However it was the underlying question at the heart of a presentation I attended today by Eddie Game (et al.) with The Ecology Centre, University of Queensland, at the Society for Conservation Biology meeting. He presented a paper which had received a lot of buzz at the International Coral Reef Symposium, though I didn't manage to hear him last week in Fort Lauderdale.

With only 18% of the world's coral reefs protected by marine protected areas (MPAs) and only 2% of these in areas of adequate conservation capacity, we need a means to prioritize an approach to protection and MPA strengthening. But how to proceed? Game's paper, Should We Protect The Strong Or Weak? An Analysis Of Risk And Resilience In Marine Protected Areas, asks whether we should prioritize protection for those reefs at greater risk of unfavorable disturbances we can not control, or instead should we invest our limited resources in consolidating the health of those reefs at least risk of disturbance. In other words, should we protect the strong or the weak?

The answer it turns out really depends on what your conservation objective is. Are you looking to protect one reef or are you protecting a network of reefs? This question stirred up some heat at ICRS last week when I suggested during a reef resilience session that this question is not just academic, but a potentially useful conservation approach. Coral reef biologist and author Sue Wells actually got herself worked-up into a bit of a tizzy that I raised the issue. In her opinion, we shouldn't even be asking questions of either/or, but instead protecting all reefs we can.

With all due respect, Ms Wells... No Duh! But if you read Game's paper, that's his point. We can't protect them all and the current situation requires somewhat more pragmatic ideas. And why shouldn't we question our return on conservation investment? I always have to consider potential projects for likelihood of success or even weigh relative "value or importance" of some reef resources against alternate sites.

But that was ICRS. Back to SCB.

Game's finding provide a clever and simple mathematical formula that can provide a rubric for selecting between competing potential protected areas. If our conservation objective is to maximize the chance at least one reef is in a healthy state, then the best strategy is always to protect the reefs at lower risk of catastrophic disturbance. On the other hand, if we wish to maximize the expected number of healthy reefs in our system, then the optimal strategy is more complex.

As Game states,"If protected reefs are likely to spend a significant amount of time in a degraded state, either through high disturbance or slow recovery rates, then it is best to protect low risk sites. Alternatively, if our reefs are generally in a healthy state due to fast recovery and low disturbance, then we should (counter-intuitively) protect the sites at higher risk of uncontrollable disturbance."

After Game's presentation today, I asked him how he sees ecological connectivity playing into his "strong or weak" considerations. Shouldn't "strong" or "weak" reefs also be weighed against their connections to sources of productivity or, alternatively, as exporters of productivity? After all, we rarely get to select just a single reef system to protect. Doesn't connectivity favor multiple protected areas by default?

He agreed that considerations of connectivity are absolutely important to consider, but also wanted to be clear that our current understanding of reef connectivity may be at too early a stage to be useful to resource managers alone. He suspects that considerations of resilience and connectivity together will play an important role in the future of marine protected area management. As such, the "strong or weak" analysis still provides predictive value.

I think Game's paper is important for the abundance of chatter it has catalyzed. If frequency of appearance in corridor discussions is any indication, he's provided an important contribution to future marine conservation thinking.