The challenge of biased evidence in conservation

Efforts to tackle the current biodiversity crisis need to be as efficient and effective as possible given chronic underfunding. To inform decision-makers of the most effective conservation actions, it is important to identify biases and gaps in the conservation literature to prioritize future evidence generation. We used the Conservation Evidence database to assess the state of the global literature that tests conservation actions for amphibians and birds. For the studies in the database, we investigated their spatial and taxonomic extent and distribution across biomes, effectiveness metrics, and study designs. Studies were heavily concentrated in Western Europe and North America for birds and particularly for amphibians, and temperate forest and grassland biomes were highly represented relative to their percentage of land coverage. Studies that used the most reliable study designs—before-after control-impact and randomized controlled trials—were the most geographically restricted and scarce in the evidence base. There were negative spatial relationships between the numbers of studies and the numbers of threatened and data-deficient species worldwide. Taxonomic biases and gaps were apparent for amphibians and birds—some entire orders were absent from the evidence base—whereas others were poorly represented relative to the proportion of threatened species they contained. Metrics used to evaluate effectiveness of conservation actions were often inconsistent between studies, potentially making them less directly comparable and evidence synthesis more difficult. Testing conservation actions on threatened species outside Western Europe, North America, and Australasia should be prioritized. Standardizing metrics and improving the rigor of study designs used to test conservation actions would also improve the quality of the evidence base for synthesis and decision-making.     

Motivations for the use and consumption of wildlife products

The dominant approach to combating the illegal wildlife trade has traditionally been to restrict the supply of wildlife products. Yet conservationists increasingly recognize the importance of implementing demand-side interventions that target the end consumers in the trade chain. Their aim is to curb the consumption of wildlife or shift consumption to more sustainable alternatives. However, there are still considerable knowledge gaps in understanding of the diversity of consumer motivations in the context of illegal wildlife trade, which includes hundreds of thousands of species, different uses, and diverse contexts. Based on consultation with multiple experts from a diversity of backgrounds, nationalities, and focal taxa, we developed a typology of common motivations held by wildlife consumers that can be used to inform conservation interventions. We identified 5 main motivational categories for wildlife use: experiential, social, functional, financial, and spiritual, each containing subcategories. This framework is intended to facilitate the segmentation of consumers based on psychographics and allow the tailoring of interventions—whether behavior change campaigns, enforcement efforts, or incentive programs—to the specific context in which they will be used. Underlining the importance of consumer research and collaborating with local actors is an important step toward promoting a more systematic approach to the design of demand reduction interventions.     

Rewilding in the face of climate change

Expansion of the global protected-area network has been proposed as a strategy to address threats from accelerating climate change and species extinction. A key step in increasing the effectiveness of such expansion is understanding how novel threats to biodiversity from climate change alter concepts such as rewilding, which have underpinned many proposals for large interconnected reserves. We reviewed potential challenges that climate change poses to rewilding and found that the conservation value of large protected areas persists under climate change. Nevertheless, more attention should be given to protection of microrefugia, macrorefugia, complete environmental gradients, and areas that connect current and future suitable climates and to maintaining ecosystem processes and stabilizing feedbacks via conservation strategies that are resilient to uncertainty regarding climate trends. Because a major element of the threat from climate change stems from its novel geographic patterns, we examined, as an example, the implications for climate-adaptation planning of latitudinal, longitudinal (continental to maritime), and elevational gradients in climate-change exposure across the Yellowstone-to-Yukon region, the locus of an iconic conservation proposal initially designed to conserve wide-ranging carnivore species. In addition to a continued emphasis on conserving intact landscapes, restoration of degraded low-elevation areas within the region is needed to capture sites important for landscape-level climate resilience. Extreme climate exposure projected for boreal North America suggests the need for ambitious goals for expansion of the protected-area network there to include refugia created by topography and ecological features, such as peatlands, whose conservation can also reduce emissions from carbon stored in soil. Qualitative understanding of underlying reserve design rules and the geography of climate-change exposure can strengthen the outcomes of inclusive regional planning processes that identify specific sites for protection.     

Motivating landowners to recruit neighbors for private land conservation

Encouraging motivated landowners to not only engage in conservation action on their own property but also to recruit others may enhance effectiveness of conservation on private lands. Landowners may only engage in such recruitment if they believe their neighbors care about the conservation issue, will positively respond to their conservation efforts, and are likely to take action for the conservation cause. We designed a series of microinterventions that can be added to community meetings to change these beliefs to encourage landowner engagement in recruitment of others. The microinterventions included neighbor discussion, public commitment making, collective goal setting, and increased observability of contributions to the conservation cause. In a field experiment, we tested whether adding microinterventions to traditional knowledge-transfer outreach meetings changed those beliefs so as to encourage landowners in Hawaii to recruit their neighbors for private lands conservation. We delivered a traditional outreach meeting about managing the invasive little fire ant (Wasmannia auropunctata) to 5 communities and a traditional outreach approach with added microinterventions to 5 other communities. Analysis of pre- and post-surveys of residents showed that compared with the traditional conservation outreach approach, the microinterventions altered a subset of beliefs that landowners had about others. These microinterventions motivated reputationally minded landowners to recruit and coordinate with other residents to control the invasive fire ant across property boundaries. Our results suggest integration of these microinterventions into existing outreach approaches will encourage some landowners to facilitate collective conservation action across property boundaries.     

Understanding and minimizing environmental impacts of the Belt and Road Initiative

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) sets to create connections and build infrastructure across Eurasia, Asia, and parts of the African continent in its initial phase and is the largest infrastructure project of all time. Any infrastructure project on this scale will necessarily pass through ecofragile regions and key biodiversity areas (KBAs). This creates an imperative to identify possible areas of impact and probable effects on conservation values to facilitate adaptive planning and to mitigate, minimize, or avoid impacts. Using the highest resolution route maps of the BRI available, I overlaid the proposed road and rail routes on KBAs, protected areas, and predicted biodiversity hotspots for over 4138 animal and 7371 plant species. I also assessed the relationship between the proposed route with the distribution of mines across BRI countries and the proportion of deforestation and forest near routes. Infrastructure, especially mining, was clustered near the proposed route; thus, construction and development along the route may increase the size and number of mines. Up to 15% of KBAs were within 1 km of proposed railways. Thus, planned and probable development along the routes may pose a significant risk to biodiversity, especially because the majority of KBAs are unprotected. Many biodiversity hotspots for different taxa were near the route. These hotspots varied between taxa, making systematic management and environmental impact assessments an effective strategy for at least some taxa. A combination of planning and mitigation strategies will likely be necessary to protect the most important areas for biodiversity proximal to development, especially in currently unprotected KBAs and other regions that need protection. A fuller assessment of trade-offs between conservation and other values will be necessary to make good decisions for each project and site being developed, including potentially modifying parts of the route to minimize impacts. Modification or foregoing of infrastructure may be needed if stakeholders consider the conservation costs too high.     

Applying habitat and population-density models to land-cover time series to inform IUCN Red List assessments

The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List categories and criteria are the most widely used framework for assessing the relative extinction risk of species. The criteria are based on quantitative thresholds relating to the size, trends, and structure of species’ distributions and populations. However, data on these parameters are sparse and uncertain for many species and unavailable for others, potentially leading to their misclassification or classification as data deficient. We devised an approach that combines data on land-cover change, species-specific habitat preferences, population abundance, and dispersal distance to estimate key parameters (extent of occurrence, maximum area of occupancy, population size and trend, and degree of fragmentation) and hence predict IUCN Red List categories for species. We applied our approach to nonpelagic birds and terrestrial mammals globally (∼15,000 species). The predicted categories were fairly consistent with published IUCN Red List assessments, but more optimistic overall. We predicted 4.2% of species (467 birds and 143 mammals) to be more threatened than currently assessed and 20.2% of data deficient species (10 birds and 114 mammals) to be at risk of extinction. Incorporating the habitat fragmentation subcriterion reduced these predictions 1.5–2.3% and 6.4–14.9% (depending on the quantitative definition of fragmentation) for threatened and data deficient species, respectively, highlighting the need for improved guidance for IUCN Red List assessors on the application of this aspect of the IUCN Red List criteria. Our approach complements traditional methods of estimating parameters for IUCN Red List assessments. Furthermore, it readily provides an early-warning system to identify species potentially warranting changes in their extinction-risk category based on periodic updates of land-cover information. Given our method relies on optimistic assumptions about species distribution and abundance, all species predicted to be more at risk than currently evaluated should be prioritized for reassessment.     

Selection of (bio) indicators to assess effects of freshwater use in wetlands: a case study of s’Albufera de Mallorca, Spain

Parc Natural sAlbufera de Mallorca is an internationally recognised resting area for a wide array of migratory birds, and like most wetlands it has many other ecological functions and socio-economic values. In the catchment, in which the wetland is situated, expanding tourism and intensification of agriculture place much pressure on a limited amount of freshwater. The freshwater supply to the wetland decreased due to water-extraction mainly driven by intensification of agriculture in the catchment. As a result saltwater intrusion increased since 1983–1985. This had considerable impacts on the ecological integrity of the wetland as reflected by changes in the state of the aquatic ecosystem. The distribution of submerged plants, less tolerant of salinity, declined or disappeared, while the distribution of species, known to prefer high salinity increased. As a contribution to the development of monitoring programs and management strategies that address both socio-economic and natural water demand, this article will formulate ecological criteria to assess the natural water demand by selection of (bio)indicators within the aquatic ecosystem.     

电弧炉炼钢过程中二□英类的排放浓度和同类物分布

对国内某电弧炉炼钢设施的烟气和飞灰样品中二(噁)英类物质进行了采样分析.结果表明:炉内直接排烟和屋顶罩排烟烟气中的二(噁)英类毒性当量(TEQ)浓度平均值分别为0.13和0.17 ng/m3(均指I-TEQ当量);2种烟气的布袋飞灰中二(噁)英类毒性当量质量分数分别为7.5和55.0 ng/kg;PCDDs同类物的质量浓度随着氯取代数的增加而呈升高趋势,PCDFs实测质量浓度和毒性当量浓度均远大于PCDDs;排放分布特征表明,电弧炉炼钢设施排放的二(噁)英类生成机理应为从头合成反应.     

Effectiveness of China's National Forest Protection Program and nature reserves

There is profound interest in knowing the degree to which China's institutions are capable of protecting its natural forests and biodiversity in the face of economic and political change. China's 2 most important forest‐protection policies are its National Forest Protection Program (NFPP) and its national‐level nature reserves (NNRs). The NFPP was implemented in 2000 in response to deforestation‐caused flooding. We undertook the first national, quantitative assessment of the NFPP and NNRs to examine whether the NFPP achieved its deforestation‐reduction target and whether the NNRs deter deforestation altogether. We used MODIS data to estimate forest cover and loss across mainland China (2000–2010). We also assembled the first‐ever polygon dataset for China's forested NNRs (n = 237, 74,030 km² in 2000) and used both conventional and covariate‐matching approaches to compare deforestation rates inside and outside NNRs (2000–2010). In 2000, 1.765 million km² or 18.7% of mainland China was forested (12.3% with canopy cover of ≥70%)) or woodland (6.4% with canopy cover <70% and tree plus shrub cover ≥40%). By 2010, 480,203 km² of forest and woodland had been lost, an annual deforestation rate of 2.7%. Forest‐only loss was 127,473 km² (1.05% annually). In the NFPP provinces, the forest‐only loss rate was 0.62%, which was 3.3 times lower than in the non‐NFPP provinces. Moreover, the Landsat data suggest that these loss rates are overestimates due to large MODIS pixel size. Thus, China appears to have achieved, and even exceeded, its target of reducing deforestation to 1.1% annually in the NFPP provinces. About two‐thirds of China's NNRs were effective in protecting forest cover (prevented loss 4073 km² unmatched approach; 3148 km² matched approach), and within‐NNR deforestation rates were higher in provinces with higher overall deforestation. Our results indicate that China's existing institutions can protect domestic forest cover.     

Contrasting ecological information content in whaling archives with modern cetacean surveys for conservation planning and identification of historical distribution changes

Many species are restricted to a marginal or suboptimal fraction of their historical range due to anthropogenic impacts, making it hard to interpret their ecological preferences from modern-day data alone. However, inferring past ecological states is limited by the availability of robust data and biases in historical archives, posing a challenge for policy makers . To highlight how historical records can be used to understand the ecological requirements of threatened species and inform conservation, we investigated sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) distribution in the Western Indian Ocean. We assessed differences in information content and habitat suitability predictions based on whale occurrence data from Yankee whaling logs (1792–1912) and from modern cetacean surveys (1995–2020). We built maximum entropy habitat suitability models containing static (bathymetry-derived) variables to compare models comprising historical-only and modern-only data. Using both historical and modern habitat suitability predictions  we assessed marine protected area (MPA) placement by contrasting suitability in- and outside MPAs. The historical model predicted high habitat suitability in shelf and coastal regions near continents and islands, whereas the modern model predicted a less coastal distribution with high habitat suitability more restricted to areas of steep topography. The proportion of high habitat suitability inside versus outside MPAs was higher when applying the historical predictions than the modern predictions, suggesting that different marine spatial planning optimums can be reached from either data sources. Moreover, differences in relative habitat suitability predictions between eras were consistent with the historical depletion of sperm whales from coastal regions, which were easily accessed and targeted by whalers, resulting in a modern distribution limited more to steep continental margins and remote oceanic ridges. The use of historical data can provide important new insights and, through cautious interpretation, inform conservation planning and policy, for example, by identifying refugee species and regions of anticipated population recovery.