Relating tradable credits for biodiversity to sustainability criteria in a dynamic landscape

Tradable biodiversity credit systems provide flexible means to resolve conflicts between development and conservation land-use options for habitats occupied by threatened or endangered species. We describe an approach to incorporate the influence of habitat fragmentation into the conservation value of tradable credits. Habitat fragmentation decreases gene flow, increases rates of genetic drift and inbreeding, and increases probabilities of patch extinction. Importantly, tradable credit systems will change the level of fragmentation over time for small and/or declining populations. We apply landscape equivalency analysis (LEA), a generalizable, landscape-scale accounting system that assigns conservation value to habitat patches based on patch contributions to abundance and genetic variance at landscape scales. By evaluating habitat trades using two models that vary the relationship between dispersal behaviors and landscape patterns, we show that LEA provides a novel method for limiting access to habitat at the landscape-scale, recognizing that the appropriate amount of migration needed to supplement patch recruitment and to offset drift and inbreeding will vary as landscape pattern changes over time. We also found that decisions based on probabilities of persistence alone would ignore changes in migration, genetic drift, and patch extinction that result from habitat trades. The general principle of LEA is that habitat patches traded should make at least equivalent contributions to rates of recruitment and migration estimated at a landscape scale. Traditional approaches for assessing the “take” and “jeopardy” standards under the Endangered Species Act based on changes in abundance and probability of persistence may be inadequate to prevent trades that increase fragmentation.     

Management of radioactive waste

The safe management of the solid radioactive waste material generated by the various operations that make up the rapidly growing nuclear electric power industry, the nuclear reactors themselves, and the plants which provide new fuel for these reactors and process the spent fuel which results from reactor operations are discussed.     

Mitigation of the response of Friesian calves to live Babesia bovis vaccine by treatment with long acting oxytetracycline

Forty 11- to 13-month-old Friesian calves were inoculated with live Babesia bovis vaccine. Twenty of the calves were treated with long acting oxytetracycline seven and 15 days after receiving the vaccine. Parasites were detected in nine of the treated calves compared with all 20 of the untreated control group. Treated calves were less febrile and had higher packed cell volumes than control animals. All calves from both groups developed a considerable antibody titre to B bovis. It appears that long acting oxytetracycline can mitigate the response of sensitive cattle breeds to live antibabesial vaccine and prevent damage caused by excessive multiplication of B bovis parasites.     

Ueber Bereinigung der Forftlehranftalten mit den Univerfitäten

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