Estimating the extinction date of the thylacine with mixed certainty data

The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), one of Australia's most characteristic megafauna, was the largest marsupial carnivore until hunting, and potentially disease, drove it to extinction in 1936. Although thylacines were restricted to Tasmania for 2 millennia prior to their extinction, recent so‐called plausible sightings on the Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland have emerged, leading some to speculate the species may have persisted undetected. We compiled a data set that included physical evidence, expert‐validated sightings, and unconfirmed sightings up to the present day and implemented a range of extinction models (focusing on a Bayesian approach that incorporates all 3 types of data by modeling valid and invalid sightings as independent processes) to evaluate the likelihood of the thylacine's persistence. Although the last captive individual died in September 1936, our results suggested that the most likely extinction date would be 1940. Our other extinction models estimated the thylacine's extinction date between 1936 and 1943, and the most optimistic scenario indicated that the species did not persist beyond 1956. The search for the thylacine, much like similar efforts to rediscover other recently extinct charismatic taxa, is likely to be fruitless, especially given that persistence on Tasmania would have been no guarantee the species could reappear in regions that had been unoccupied for millennia. The search for the thylacine may become a rallying point for conservation and wildlife biology and could indirectly help fund and support critical research in understudied areas such as Cape York. However, our results suggest that attempts to rediscover the thylacine will be unsuccessful and that the continued survival of the thylacine is entirely implausible based on most current mathematical theories of extinction.     

National contributions to global ecosystem values

Current conservation templates prioritize biogeographic regions with high intensity ecosystem values, such as exceptional species richness or threat. Intensity-based targets are an important consideration in global efforts, but they do not capture all available opportunities to conserve ecosystem values, including those that accrue in low intensity over large areas. We assess six globally-significant ecosystem values—intact wilderness, freshwater availability, productive marine environments, breeding habitat for migratory wildlife, soil carbon storage, and latitudinal potential for range shift in the face of climate change—to highlight opportunities for high-impact broadly-distributed contributions to global conservation. Nations can serve as a cohesive block of policy that can profoundly influence conservation outcomes. Contributions to global ecosystem values that exceed what is predicted by a nation's area alone, can give rise to countries with the capacity to act as ‘conservation superpowers’, such as Canada and Russia. For these conservation superpowers, a relatively small number of national policies can have environmental repercussions for the rest of the world.     

Environmental Management in India: Recent Challenges to the Indian Forest Service

This paper examines the impact of various social, economic and political changes on the work of the Indian Forest Service, the elite organization concerned with environmental management in India. It is noted that whilst many leading authors criticize this organization, nobody has taken the time to analyse the role of the Indian Forest Service and the way it has responded to the many challenges it has faced in the last 20 years. This paper seeks to rectify this by focusing on three key challenges: (1) due to economic liberalization the actual work that the forest officer is expected to undertake has changed beyond recognition; (2) political manipulation and correspondingly accusations of corruption have increased; (3) social changes and their impact on recruitment into the Indian Forest Service. It is concluded that, despite the many challenges which the Indian Forest Service has faced over the years, it is remarkably resilient and remains the most powerful agent in rural India.     

Improving situational awareness through the design of offshore installations

Maintaining the situational awareness of control room operators on offshore installations contributes to the timely diagnosis of conditions and making appropriate decisions. This is particularly important when dealing with events and incidents. Recent initiatives aimed at reducing operators’ exposure to the hazards of working on offshore installations may have a negative impact upon situational awareness within the control room environment.This paper discusses mitigation of the negative impact through the design and operation of the installation and control system; either by improving the general level of situational awareness or by specifically targeting the areas affected by these initiatives.     

Toxicological responses to sublethal anticoagulant rodenticide exposure in free-flying hawks

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - An important component of assessing the hazards of anticoagulant rodenticides to non-target wildlife is observations in exposed free-ranging...     

Uncertainty quantification of large-eddy simulation results of riverine flows: a field and numerical study

Environmental Fluid Mechanics - We present large-eddy simulations (LES) of riverine flow in a study reach in the Sacramento River, California. The riverbed bathymetry was surveyed in...     

Parasites as conservation tools

Parasite success typically depends on a close relationship with one or more hosts; therefore, attributes of parasitic infection have the potential to provide indirect details of host natural history and are biologically relevant to animal conservation. Characterization of parasite infections has been useful in delineating host populations and has served as a proxy for assessment of environmental quality. In other cases, the utility of parasites is just being explored, for example, as indicators of host connectivity. Innovative studies of parasite biology can provide information to manage major conservation threats by using parasite assemblage, prevalence, or genetic data to provide insights into the host. Overexploitation, habitat loss and fragmentation, invasive species, and climate change are major threats to animal conservation, and all of these can be informed by parasites.     

Fully-automated SPE coupled to UHPLC-MS/MS method for multiresidue analysis of 26 trace antibiotics in environmental waters: SPE optimization and method validation

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Achieving simultaneous determination of antibiotic multiresidues in environmental waters by solid phase extraction (SPE) coupled with...