After helping species win against human encroachment, a big win for a biologist

Photo credit: Sylvie Li / Shoot Studio

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) established this award to honour an individual whose body of work has demonstrated enduring excellence and influence. In addition to the medal, Fahrig receives $740,000, which she plans to use to hire post-doctoral researchers to continue her influential work in wildlife conservation.

Fahrig is Chancellor’s Professor of Biology and co-director of the Geomatics and Landscape Ecology Research Laboratory at Carleton University in Ottawa. Throughout her outstanding research career, Fahrig has concluded that a “many small” approach to conservation planning is often more effective than large-scale efforts. Her ground-breaking research shows that preserving a number of small habitats is just as good, or in some cases even better, than preserving a few large habitats of the same total area.

This discovery has inspired new thinking about how to balance human needs and infrastructure with better conditions for wildlife around the world. By demonstrating the greater benefit of small patches for species conservation, Fahrig has influenced the policy and practice of conservation in Canada and around the world.

“Several colleagues in Europe and South America have used the research results to encourage restoration of small natural spaces in cities and agricultural regions,” Fahrig told Research Money.

“One example is Paris, where for the past few years the city has been planting small, paved areas with native vegetation and installing insect hotels. They are doing this in a very deliberate and successful attempt to increase biodiversity in the city. This is exactly what my research says we should be doing on a large scale for biodiversity conservation.”

In agriculture, Fahrig’s research shows that the current global trend toward crop field enlargement threatens biodiversity. Instead, she says we should enact policies that encourage a greater number of smaller crop fields, which would preserve the populations of local species without sacrificing overall crop production.

Fahrig explains why organisms are more likely to survive in landscapes with smaller fields. “We have one study showing that pollinators, such as bees or butterflies, follow borders between fields when they’re looking for nectar. Landscapes with smaller fields have more borders, so they are more likely to find what they need.

“Plus, when fields are smaller, the resources that an animal needs, such as food or nesting sites, tend to be more intermixed throughout the landscape, making them easier to hop, fly, or walk to. If a butterfly or a frog has to travel across a huge field to reach some resource it needs on the other side, chances are it will die from exposure, starvation or predation before it reaches that resource.”

Another important finding of Fahrig’s work has been the exceptional impact of roads and traffic on amphibians and reptiles. Her research once again challenged conventional beliefs about conservation, which have regarded the most effective conservation measures as those designed for large mammals, such as overpasses for moose, deer and wolves. Smaller species have therefore been frequently ignored in the planning associated with such measures.

“We found that the effect of roads on amphibians and reptiles are about as large as habitat loss, which is usually considered to be the main cause of species decline,” said Fahrig. “This huge impact of roads on amphibians and reptiles is really important in terms of biodiversity conservation, since they are the most endangered vertebrates in the world.”

When such creatures move across roads, she explained, they do so slowly and may stop moving altogether. “Research shows that when a frog is on a road and a car is approaching, the frog will actually stop moving. Snakes use roads the same way they use rocks, to warm up on, and turtles are just very slow-moving, making them both very susceptible to road kill.”

Fahrig has always found time to share her findings widely, regularly giving interviews to the media on issues related to climate change and biodiversity. She also delivers presentations to audiences, ranging from community groups to parliamentary committees. The Herzberg medal, she confessed, is nothing less than thrilling.

“It feels almost surreal,” she said. “When I started my research career I never dreamed it would come to this.”

She also  pointed to the important role of another NSERC initiative — the Discovery Grants program — which has supported research in fields such as biodiversity conservation, where results help develop policies for the common good.

“No one makes any money from our research results,” Fahrig explains. “There are no patents and there is no research funding from industry. Without funding from NSERC’s Discovery Grants, I would not have been able to do the research that led to the discoveries that ultimately led to this Herzberg medal.”

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