
Source: Life and death: what readers in Australia are seeing post-bushfires
The latest academic papers on conservation. If you have a paper that you would like to share, please get in contact with us. Click on the title to follow the link to each article. Please note that some of these articles are behind a paywall.
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- Source: Conservation Letters
- Author(s): Michele L. Thieme et al.
- Globally, at least 1,249 large dams are located within PAs; two‐thirds (907) were built before PA establishment. Additionally, 14% of planned geolocated hydropower dams (509 dams) are located within PAs…
Retreat of large carnivores across the giant panda distribution range
- Source: Nature Ecology & Evolution
- Author(s): Sheng Li et al.
- As both a flagship and umbrella species, the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is one of the most heavily invested species in conservation. Here, we report the wide distribution range retreat of the leopard (Panthera pardus, 81% loss), snow leopard (P. uncia, 38%), wolf (Canis lupus, 77%) and dhole (Cuon alpinus, 95%) from protected areas in the giant panda distribution range since the 1960s…
Trading for climate resilience
- Source: Nature Climate Change
- Author(s): Victor Nechifor, Emanuele Ferrari
- International trade plays an important role in ensuring the resilience of the global food system. Now research suggests a further reduction in trade barriers could alleviate the impacts of climate change on hunger risk…
Global targets that reveal the social–ecological interdependencies of sustainable development
- Source: Nature Ecology & Evolution
- Author(s): Belinda Reyers, Elizabeth R. Selig
- We are approaching a reckoning point in 2020 for global targets that better articulate the interconnections between biodiversity, ecosystem services and sustainable development…
- Source: Global Ecology and Conservation
- Author(s): Chris R. Shepherd, Boyd T.C. Leupen, Penthai Siriwat, Vincent Nijman
- The Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is the most important global initiative to monitor and regulate the international trade of plants and animals, but there is a lack of…
- Source: Global Ecology and Conservation
- Author(s): Jianxiong Tang et al.
- Intensive human activity has led to dramatic land changes in coastal watersheds, which in turn cause landscape pattern changes and threaten the valuable but fragile ecosystem…
Ecological impacts of human‐induced animal behaviour change
- Source: Ecology Letters
- Author(s): Margaret W. Wilson et al.
- While animal behavior changes in response to human disturbances are increasingly documented, we have little understanding of if or how these changes may ultimately affect ecosystem processes. We synthesize literature and theory from natural and human‐impacted systems to identify pathways in which human‐induced…
Emerging diseases, livestock expansion and biodiversity loss are positively related at global scale
- Source: Biological Conservation
- Author(s): Serge Morand
- A new study looks at the growth of global livestock farming and the threat to biodiversity, and the health risks to both humans and domesticated animals…
Coral reef resilience to thermal stress in the Eastern Tropical Pacific
- Source: Global Change Biology
- Author(s): Mauricio Romero‐Torres et al.
- Coral reefs worldwide are threatened by thermal stress caused by climate change. Especially devastating periods of coral loss frequently occur during El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events originating in the Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP)…
Reframing the Wilderness Concept can Bolster Collaborative Conservation
- Source: Science & Society
- Author(s): Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares et al.
- Indigenous territories represent ~45% of land categorized as wilderness in the Amazon, but account for <15% of all forest loss on this land. At a time when the Amazon faces unprecedented pressures, overcoming polarization and aligning the goals of wilderness defenders and Indigenous peoples is paramount…
- Source: EcoEvoRxiv
- Author(s): Anupam Anand, Do-Hyung Kim
- The importance of tourism for social and economic development is widely recognized. Travel restrictions imposed to contain the spread of COVID…
Ranking the direct threats to biodiversity in sub-Saharan Africa
- Source: BioRxiv
- Author(s): Craig Leisher et al.
- Sub-Saharan Africa benefits from large investments in biodiversity conservation, yet there is no prioritization of the many direct threats to biodiversity available to inform organizations developing sub-Saharan or sub-regional conservation strategies. Consequently, regional investments by funders of…
A global mapping template for natural and modified habitat across terrestrial Earth
- Source: Biological Conservation
- Author(s): Joe Gosling et al.
- The IPBES Global Assessment proposed five key interventions to tackle the drivers of nature deterioration. One of these proposals was to take pre-emptive and precautionary actions in regulatory and management institutions and businesses…
- Source: Land
- Author(s): Luis Santiago Castillo et al.
- Conservationists recognize the value of protected area (PA) systems, with adequate coverage, ecological representation, connection, and management to deliver conservation benefits. Yet, governments primarily focus on…
Global status and conservation potential of reef sharks
- Source: Nature
- Author(s): M. Aaron MacNeil et al.
- Decades of overexploitation have devastated shark populations, leaving considerable doubt as to their ecological status. Yet much of what is known about sharks has been inferred from catch records in industrial fisheries…
Levers and leverage points for pathways to sustainability
- Source: People and Nature
- Author(s): Kai M. A. Chan et al.
- Humanity is on a deeply unsustainable trajectory. We are exceeding planetary boundaries and unlikely to meet many international sustainable development goals and global environmental targets…
Estimating marine protected area network benefits for reef sharks
- Source: Journal of Applied Ecology
- Author(s): Gerardo Martín, Mario Espinoza, Michelle Heupel, Colin A. Simpfendorfer
- Our framework can be applied to many studies using passive‐acoustic telemetry to track animal movements. Protected area networks benefit species highly attached to protected sites. To increase benefits of marine protected area networks for all species (with low and high degrees of reef attachment)…
- Source: Journal of Applied Ecology
- Author(s): Pamela McElwee et al.
- The Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment (GA) demonstrated the importance of Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLC) to global biodiversity conservation…
Reframing the Wilderness Concept can Bolster Collaborative Conservation
- Source: Science and Society
- Author(s): Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares et al.
- A new study shows that Indigenous territories represent around 45% of all the remaining wilderness areas in the Amazon, comprising an area of three times the surface of Germany. At a time when the Amazon forests face unprecedented pressures, overcoming divergences and aligning the goals of wilderness…
Ecosystem decay exacerbates biodiversity loss with habitat loss
- Source: Nature
- Author(s): Jonathan M. Chase, Shane A. Blowes, Tiffany M. Knight, Katharina Gerstner, Felix May
- Biodiversity’s ongoing global decline has prompted policies to protect and restore habitats to minimize animal and plant extinctions. However, biodiversity forecasts used to inform these policies are usually based on assumptions of a simple theoretical model describing how the number of species changes…
Crop production in the USA is frequently limited by a lack of pollinators
- Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B
- Author(s): J. R. Reilly
- Crop yields for apples, cherries and blueberries across the United States are being reduced by a lack of pollinators, according to new research, the most comprehensive study of its kind to date. Most of the world’s crops depend on honeybees and wild bees for pollination, so declines in both managed and…
Conserving Africa’s wildlife and wildlands through the COVID-19 crisis and beyond
- Source: Nature Ecology & Evolution
- Author(s): Peter Lindsey et al.
- The SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19 illness are driving a global crisis. Governments have responded by restricting human movement, which has reduced economic activity. These changes may benefit biodiversity conservation in some ways, but in Africa…
The balancing act of urban conservation
- Source: Nature Communications
- Author(s): Katherine J. Turo, Mary M. Gardiner
- As investment in urban conservation grows, researchers must balance the needs of residents and conservation targets. We discuss some of the challenges we have encountered and the importance of taking a transdisciplinary approach informed by design and social knowledge…
Conservation optimism and reckoning with the future
- Source: Conservation Biology
- Author(s): Luiz R. R. Faria
- The optimism permeating biological conservation should be recalibrated considering the future that present times portend…