Emerging conflict between conservation programmes: when a threatened vertebrate facilitates the dispersal of exotic species in a rare plant community
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract As an ever‐increasing variety of conservation programmes are applied in human‐altered environments, there is a growing risk that different conservation actions with conflicting objectives may impede one another. Preventing and resolving the negative impacts of such conflicting conservation programmes could become a key challenge for conservationists. To date, however, the issue of conflicting conservation programmes has been largely overlooked. We explored a potential conflict between the preservation of threatened free‐ranging plains bisonBison bison bisonand the conservation in a National Park of a rare plant community – native rough fescueFestuca halliigrasslands. We investigated the dispersal of exotic seeds by examining 283 samples of bison faeces and the spatial distribution of exotic plant species in relation to bison behaviour. We showed that bison facilitated the long‐distance dispersal of exotic plant species into the park by transporting seeds. Our analysis indicated there was a high probability (>75%) of occurrence of cloverTrifoliumspp. and timothyPhleum pratenseon bison trails across 38% and 27%, respectively, of fescue grassland area. There was also a high probability of occurrence of timothy on bison wallows across 20% of fescue grasslands area. Furthermore, we demonstrated that exotic plant species were most likely to occur within 3 km of potential introduction points, and identified specific grassland patches most at risk of exotic plant species introduction by bison. By revealing the ecological mechanism underlying the emergence of a potential conflict, we were able to delineate spatial variation in the relative threat that bison might pose to the integrity of native fescue plant communities, allowing managers to optimize the allocation of conservation effort. Our study highlights the value of understanding the ecological mechanisms driving conflict between conservation programmes in order to set evidence‐based priorities for guiding future conservation decision‐making.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".