Extinction debt repayment via timely habitat restoration

Abstract

Habitat destruction threatens the viability of many populations, but its full consequences can take considerable time to unfold. Much of the discourse surrounding extinction debts--the number of species that persist transiently following habitat loss, despite being headed for extinction--frames ultimate population crashes as the means of settling the debt. However, slow population decline also opens an opportunity to repay the debt by restoring habitat. The timing necessary for such habitat restoration to rescue a population from extinction has not been well studied. Here we determine habitat restoration deadlines for a spatially implicit Levins/Tilman population model modified by an Allee effect. We find that conditions that hinder detection of an extinction debt also provide forgiving restoration timeframes. Our results highlight the importance of transient dynamics in restoration and suggest the beginnings of an analytic theory to understand outcomes of temporary press perturbations in a broad class of ecological systems.