Action

Retain connectivity between habitat patches

How is the evidence assessed?
  • Effectiveness
    60%
  • Certainty
    31%
  • Harms
    0%

Study locations

Key messages

  • One before-and-after study in Australia found that retaining native vegetation corridors maintained populations of eight of 13 frog species over 20 years.

 

About key messages

Key messages provide a descriptive index to studies we have found that test this intervention.

Studies are not directly comparable or of equal value. When making decisions based on this evidence, you should consider factors such as study size, study design, reported metrics and relevance of the study to your situation, rather than simply counting the number of studies that support a particular interpretation.

Supporting evidence from individual studies

  1. A before-and-after study in 1998–1999 of pine plantations and surrounding native forest in New South Wales, Australia (Lemckert, Brassil & Towerton 2005) found that retaining native vegetation corridors helped maintain populations of eight of 13 frog species over 20 years. Eight of the species that had been present in 1980–1984 were recorded within native forest remnants and plantations in 1998–1999. Five species were not found, but two new species were observed. Numbers of species or individuals captured did not increase significantly with corridor width or distance to continuous native vegetation. Species diversity and abundance did not differ between sites that bordered pine or were surrounded by pine (>450 m from native forest). Following a wildfire in 1983, pines were replanted and native vegetation strips (20 m to over 100 m wide) regenerated. Strips were originally retained along drainlines linking native forest remnants. Twenty-four breeding sites within and around the forest were surveyed four times between November 1998 and December 1999. Call and visual surveys were undertaken.

    Study and other actions tested
Please cite as:

Smith, R.K., Meredith, H. & Sutherland, W.J. (2020) Amphibian Conservation. Pages 9-64 in: W.J. Sutherland, L.V. Dicks, S.O. Petrovan & R.K. Smith (eds) What Works in Conservation 2020. Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, UK.

Where has this evidence come from?

List of journals searched by synopsis

All the journals searched for all synopses

Amphibian Conservation

This Action forms part of the Action Synopsis:

Amphibian Conservation
What Works 2021 cover

What Works in Conservation

What Works in Conservation provides expert assessments of the effectiveness of actions, based on summarised evidence, in synopses. Subjects covered so far include amphibians, birds, mammals, forests, peatland and control of freshwater invasive species. More are in progress.

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