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| This paper evaluates how long-term records could and should be utilized in conservation policy and
practice. Traditionally, there has been an extremely limited use of long-term ecological records
(greater than 50 years) in biodiversity conservation. There are a number of reasons why such records
tend to be discounted, including a perception of poor scale of resolution in both time and space, and
the lack of accessibility of long temporal records to non-specialists. Probably more important,
however, is the perception that even if suitable temporal records are available, their roles are purely
descriptive, simply demonstrating what has occurred before in Earth’s history, and are of little use in
the actual practice of conservation. This paper asks why this is the case and whether there is a place
for the temporal record in conservation management. Key conservation initiatives related to
extinctions, identification of regions of greatest diversity/threat, climate change and biological
invasions are addressed. Examples of how a temporal record can add information that is of direct
practicable applicability to these issues are highlighted. These include (i) the identification of species
at the end of their evolutionary lifespan and therefore most at risk from extinction, (ii) the setting of
realistic goals and targets for conservation ‘hotspots’, and (iii) the identification of various
management tools for the maintenance/restoration of a desired biological state. For climate change
conservation strategies, the use of long-term ecological records in testing the predictive power of
species envelope models is highlighted, along with the potential of fossil records to examine the
impact of sea-level rise. It is also argued that a long-term perspective is essential for the management
of biological invasions, not least in determining when an invasive is not an invasive. The paper
concludes that often inclusion of a long-term ecological perspective can provide a more scientifically
defensible basis for conservation decisions than the one based only on contemporary records. The
pivotal issue of this paper is not whether long-term records are of interest to conservation biologists,
but how they can actually be utilized in conservation practice and policy. | |
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