Compensatory mitigation as a solution to fisheries bycatch–biodiversity conservation conflicts

Abstract

Globally, fisheries catch of non‐target species has major environmental impacts, resulting in social conflict, litigation, and fisheries closures. We use a bio‐economic approach to demonstrate that compensatory mitigation – an innovative, market‐influenced approach to fishery–conservation conflicts – can facilitate high‐value uses of biological resources and cost‐effective conservation gains for species of concern. We illustrate the strategy with a seabird example: levying fishers for their bycatch and using the funds to remove invasive mammals from breeding islands. Removal of invasive predators is 23 times more effective from a return‐on‐investment perspective (ie percent increase in population growth per dollar invested) in comparison to fisheries closures, and is more socio‐politically feasible. A bycatch levy, which would increase with endangerment, provides an individual incentive for avoiding bycatch, the most effective mechanism for sustainable management of fisheries. Compensatory mitigation provides an opportunity to address a global concern, optimize conservation interventions, and forge an alliance between conservation and fisheries organizations.

Integrating invasive mammal eradications and biodiversity offsets for fisheries bycatch: conservation opportunities and challenges for seabirds and sea turtles

“…The offset ratio would be conservative, and encompass a discount rate and demographic uncertainties (e.g., X*Y sea turtles protected or produced for every X sea turtle interaction). Contrary to the idea of letting the fishers 'off the hook', the Hawaiian fleet, whom have already significantly reduced sea turtle bycatch by switching to circle hooks (Gilman et al 2007), would have additional incentives to avoid sea turtle bycatch with a bycatch levy or similar financial instrument (e.g., Pigovian tax, Wilcox and Donlan 2007). The levy or trust would then fund offsets that could be one of a variety of interventions, including predator control or other conservation programs at nesting beaches (Engeman et al 2005;Engeman et al 2002).…”

“…Interventions could include invasive predator control on mainland breeding sites, combating IUU fishing (illegal, unregulated, and unflagged), conservation incentive agreements with artesanal fishing communities that are also impacting the species of concern, or invasive mammal eradications on breeding islands. In some cases, the transfer of capital from a impact that is associated with revenue-generating activities to address an impact that is revenue-neutral or -negative would result in cost-effective interventions with high conservation returns, even after discounting demographic delays (i.e., allowing current impacts for future benefits, Wilcox and Donlan 2007).…”

Linking colonies to fisheries: Spatio-temporal overlap between common murres (Uria aalge) from Tatoosh Island and coastal gillnet fisheries in the Pacific Northwest, USA

“…Uncertainty can impede conservation action because the burden of proof lies on the side of conservation, and often action occurs too late, i.e., when a population is already declining or on the brink of extinction (Taylor et al, 2000). On the other hand, we must determine whether or not fisheries have an impact on marine populations to avoid penalizing the industry unnecessarily, as well as to make sound decisions about how to distribute limited resources for conservation actions (Wilcox and Donlan, 2007). In this study, we cannot attribute spatio-temporal overlap to a specific fishery, nation or tribe, as we consolidated multiple fisheries in each stratum.…”

Fisheries bycatch reduction within the least-cost biodiversity mitigation hierarchy: Conservatory offsets with an application to sea turtles

“…Their costs, and hence prices, will correspondingly differ, since they form under different circumstances and objectives. 6 A tax could incentivize changes in producer and consumer behavior and the proceeds finance costs of conservatory offsets [5,7,8,11,17,19,20,23]. The tax is ideally levied on bycatch mortality (i.e.…”