Written Accounts of an Amazonian Landscape Over the Last 450 Years

Abstract:  Books, articles, government documents, and other written accounts of tropical biology and conservation reach a tiny fraction of their potential audience. Some texts are inaccessible because of the language in which they are written. Others are only available to subscribers of developed-world journals, or distributed narrowly within tropical countries. To examine this dysfunction in the tropical literature—and what it means for conservation—we tried to compile everything ever written on the biology and conservation of the department of Madre de Dios, Peru, in southwestern Amazonia. Our search of libraries, databases, and existing bibliographies uncovered 2,202 texts totaling roughly 80,000 pages. Texts date from 1553 to 2004, but 93% were written after 1970. Since that year the publication rate has increased steadily from fewer than 10 texts/year to nearly 3 texts/week in 2004. Roughly half of the Madre de Dios bibliography is in Spanish-language texts written by Peruvian authors and mostly inaccessible outside Peru. Most of the remaining material is English-language texts written by foreign authors and largely inaccessible in Peru. Foreign authors tended to write about ecological studies with limited relevance to on-the-ground conservation challenges, whereas Peruvian authors were more likely to make specific management recommendations. The establishment of a Web-based digital library for Neotropical nature would help make the tropical literature a more efficient resource for science and conservation. Additional recommendations include investing in syntheses, translations, popular summaries, and peer-reviewed journals in tropical countries, providing incentives for management-relevant research in tropical protected areas, and reinforcing training of scientific reading and writing in tropical universities.     

Current Practices and Future Opportunities for Policy on Climate Change and Invasive Species

Abstract:  Climate change and invasive species are often treated as important, but independent, issues. Nevertheless, they have strong connections: changes in climate and societal responses to climate change may exacerbate the impacts of invasive species, whereas invasive species may affect the magnitude, rate, and impact of climate change. We argue that the design and implementation of climate-change policy in the United States should specifically consider the implications for invasive species; conversely, invasive-species policy should address consequences for climate change. The development of such policies should be based on (1) characterization of interactions between invasive species and climate change, (2) identification of areas where climate-change policies could negatively affect invasive-species management, and (3) identification of areas where policies could benefit from synergies between climate change and invasive-species management.