title: Under the radar: mitigating enigmatic ecological impacts.
abstract: Identifying the deleterious ecological effects of developments, such as roads, mining, and urban expansion, is essential for informing development decisions and identifying appropriate mitigation actions. However, there are many types of ecological impacts that slip 'under the radar' of conventional impact evaluations and undermine the potential for successful impact mitigation (including offsets). These 'enigmatic' impacts include those that are small but act cumulatively; those outside of the area directly considered in the evaluation; those not detectable with the methods, paradigms, or spatiotemporal scales used to detect them; those facilitated, but not directly caused, by development; and synergistic impact interactions. Here, we propose a framework for conceptualising enigmatic impacts and discuss ways to address them.
authors.affiliation: School of Plant Biology, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Hwy Crawley, Perth, WA, 6009, Australia. Electronic address: keren.raiter@research.uwa.edu.au.
authors.forename: Keren G
authors.initials: KG
authors.lastname: Raiter
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland St Lucia, Brisbane, Qld, 4072, Australia; Imperial College London, Department of Life Sciences, Silwood Park, Ascot, SL5 7PY, UK.
authors.forename: Hugh P
authors.initials: HP
authors.lastname: Possingham
authors.affiliation: CSIRO Land and Water Flagship, Private Bag 5, Wembley Perth, WA, 6913, Australia.
authors.forename: Suzanne M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Prober
authors.affiliation: School of Plant Biology, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Hwy Crawley, Perth, WA, 6009, Australia.
authors.forename: Richard J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Hobbs
mesh_terms: D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods*; D004463:Ecology; D004777:Environment
keywords: cryptic impacts; cumulative impacts; ecological impact evaluations; offsite impacts; secondary impacts; synergistic impacts