title: Priority threat management of invasive animals to protect biodiversity under climate change.
abstract: Climate change is a major threat to global biodiversity, and its impacts can act synergistically to heighten the severity of other threats. Most research on projecting species range shifts under climate change has not been translated to informing priority management strategies on the ground. We develop a prioritization framework to assess strategies for managing threats to biodiversity under climate change and apply it to the management of invasive animal species across one-sixth of the Australian continent, the Lake Eyre Basin. We collected information from key stakeholders and experts on the impacts of invasive animals on 148 of the region's most threatened species and 11 potential strategies. Assisted by models of current distributions of threatened species and their projected distributions, experts estimated the cost, feasibility, and potential benefits of each strategy for improving the persistence of threatened species with and without climate change. We discover that the relative cost-effectiveness of invasive animal control strategies is robust to climate change, with the management of feral pigs being the highest priority for conserving threatened species overall. Complementary sets of strategies to protect as many threatened species as possible under limited budgets change when climate change is considered, with additional strategies required to avoid impending extinctions from the region. Overall, we find that the ranking of strategies by cost-effectiveness was relatively unaffected by including climate change into decision-making, even though the benefits of the strategies were lower. Future climate conditions and impacts on range shifts become most important to consider when designing comprehensive management plans for the control of invasive animals under limited budgets to maximize the number of threatened species that can be protected.
authors.affiliation: Land and Water, CSIRO, Ecosciences Precinct Boggo Road, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.|School of Earth, Environmental and Biological Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Firn
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, NERP Environmental Decisions Hub, Centre for Biodiversity & Conservation Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Ramona
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Maggini
authors.affiliation: Land and Water, CSIRO, Ecosciences Precinct Boggo Road, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.|ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, NERP Environmental Decisions Hub, Centre for Biodiversity & Conservation Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Iadine
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Chadès
authors.affiliation: Land and Water, CSIRO, Ecosciences Precinct Boggo Road, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.|ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, NERP Environmental Decisions Hub, Centre for Biodiversity & Conservation Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Sam
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nicol
authors.affiliation: Land and Water, CSIRO, Ecosciences Precinct Boggo Road, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
authors.forename: Belinda
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Walters
authors.affiliation: CSIRO Digital Productivity, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
authors.forename: Andy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Reeson
authors.affiliation: Land and Water, CSIRO, Ecosciences Precinct Boggo Road, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.|ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, NERP Environmental Decisions Hub, Centre for Biodiversity & Conservation Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Tara G
authors.initials: TG
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, NERP Environmental Decisions Hub, Centre for Biodiversity & Conservation Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Hugh P
authors.initials: HP
authors.lastname: Possingham
authors.affiliation: Land and Water, CSIRO, Ecosciences Precinct Boggo Road, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
authors.forename: Jean-Baptiste
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Pichancourt
authors.affiliation: Land and Water, CSIRO, Ecosciences Precinct Boggo Road, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
authors.forename: Rocio
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ponce-Reyes
authors.affiliation: Land and Water, CSIRO, Ecosciences Precinct Boggo Road, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.|ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, NERP Environmental Decisions Hub, Centre for Biodiversity & Conservation Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Josie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Carwardine
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001315:Australia; D044822:Biodiversity; D057231:Climate Change; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods*; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D056727:Endangered Species; D058865:Introduced Species; D008954:Models, Biological
keywords: EPBC Act 1999; IPCC RCP6 scenario; IUCN Red list; Maxent; adaptive management; climate adaptation; climate variability; complementarity; decision theory; ecological cost-benefit analyses; multi-objective optimization; synergistic threats to biodiversity