title: Incorporating evolutionary principles into environmental management and policy.
abstract: As policymakers and managers work to mitigate the effects of rapid anthropogenic environmental changes, they need to consider organisms' responses. In light of recent evidence that evolution can be quite rapid, this now includes evolutionary responses. Evolutionary principles have a long history in conservation biology, and the necessary next step for the field is to consider ways in which conservation policy makers and managers can proactively manipulate evolutionary processes to achieve their goals. In this review, we aim to illustrate the potential conservation benefits of an increased understanding of evolutionary history and prescriptive manipulation of three basic evolutionary factors: selection, variation, and gene flow. For each, we review and propose ways that policy makers and managers can use evolutionary thinking to preserve threatened species, combat pest species, or reduce undesirable evolutionary changes. Such evolution-based management has potential to be a highly efficient and consistent way to create greater ecological resilience to widespread, rapid, and multifaceted environmental change.
authors.affiliation: Illinois Natural History Survey, Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lankau
authors.affiliation: Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen Universitetsparken 15, Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: Peter Søgaard
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Jørgensen
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California Davis CA, USA.
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California Davis CA, USA.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sih
keywords: conservation biology; environmental management; evolution; gene flow; selection; variation