Abstract
Effective environmental decision-making, in the form of evidence-based management and policy, is a key prerequisite to help balance nature conservation, natural resource management, and human socio-economic activities (Sutherland et al. 2004). To aid such decision-making, the need for predictive tools that are accurate, robust, and parsimonious has arguably never been greater. The Earth is currently in a time of environmental change unprecedented in human history, due to climate change, growing human population size and resource use, land-use changes and intensification, habitat loss and fragmentation, pollution and invasive species.