Conservation Biology最新文献

Illegal wildlife trade is an important branch of global environmental crime. It relies heavily on transit countries to promote the cross-border movement of illegal wildlife products by boosting markets, laundering services, processing and packaging products, and concealing routes. However, transit countries' strategic role is not well understood. We constructed a dataset of 15 years of illegal wildlife seizure cases from the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) air seizure database and Wildlife Trade Portal database. From the dataset, we determined transnational illegal wildlife trade routes with complete supply chain information. There were 84 transit countries, and the organisms involved in trade included mammals, birds, reptiles, marine species, amphibians, and arthropods. We identified that about 40% of illegal wildlife trade routes crossed one or multiple countries. Species being moved along these routes originated mainly from Africa and were transported through African, European, or Asian countries to East Asia or Southeast Asia. Transit countries for illegal wildlife products tended to be geographically close to and have a high trade volume of legal biological products with both the origin and destination countries and had advanced airport infrastructure. Transit countries were associated with 39.7% more individual animal products being illegally traded, particularly ivory, pangolin products, and rhinoceros horn, and served as key bridges among economically underdeveloped and geographically distant countries with weak trade links in legal biological products. These findings highlight the importance of monitoring and enforcement in transit countries and suggest that transit hubs be targeted based on location, trade in legal biological products, and transport infrastructure.

Human development is a driver of global change and a major threat to biodiversity. Protected areas maintain and support biodiversity, but outside stressors, such as climate change and land use change, can negatively influence natural resources within protected areas. We examined the effects of land surface temperature and the surrounding landscape context on the structure and composition of the breeding bird community in national parks in the Mid-Atlantic (USA). We used avian point count surveys, conducted annually from 2007 to 2024, to estimate the composition of 16 avian guilds and estimated land surface temperature at each survey point. We defined 3 landscape context types (forested, urban, and agricultural) based on the dominant land cover surrounding each survey point. We used multivariate generalized linear models to test community-level (all guilds combined) and guild-level (individual guilds) responses to local land surface temperature and landscape context. We hypothesized a negative relationship between within-guild abundance and land surface temperature, and stronger negative relationships in specialist guilds and variation in response based on the landscape context. Landscape context influenced local land surface temperature and, therefore, avian guild responses. Points in forest-dominated landscapes averaged 2°C cooler than points in urban or agricultural landscapes. The majority of specialist guilds had an interaction with land surface temperature and landscape context. There were negative effects of high land surface temperature on the bird community. These effects differed across landscape context, with less extreme negative relationships detected at points surrounded by forest relative to points in urban or agricultural landscapes. Because increased forest cover is important to retain natural cooling and mitigate the effects of urban heat, preserving or increasing forest cover could help preserve and maintain bird community resilience in a warming climate.

The currently circulating high-pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) virus of the subtype H5 causes variable illness and death in wild and domestic birds and mammals, as well as in humans. This virus evolved from the Goose/Guangdong lineage of the HPAI H5 virus, which emerged in commercial poultry in China in 1996, spilled over into wild birds, and spread through Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America by 2021. Our objective was to summarize the spread and impact of the HPAI H5 virus in wild birds and mammals in South America, evaluate the risk of its spread and potential impact on Antarctic wildlife, and consider actions to manage the current and future HPAI outbreaks in wildlife. We obtained data on HPAI H5 virus detection and reported wildlife deaths from websites, newspaper articles, and scientific publications. The virus arrived in South America in October 2022. Thereafter, it spread widely and rapidly throughout the continent, where it infected at least 83 wild bird species and 11 wild mammal species and is estimated to have killed at least 667,000 wild birds and 52,000 wild mammals. The HPAI H5 virus spread to the Antarctic region by October 2023 and to mainland Antarctica by December 2023. This spread was associated with multiple mortality events in seabirds and marine mammals. The high spatial density of colonies of various Antarctic species of birds and mammals provides conditions for potentially devastating outbreaks with severe conservation implications. Ecosystem-level impacts may follow, and affected populations may take decades to recover. Although little can be done to stop the virus spread in wildlife, it is important to continue targeted surveillance of wildlife populations for HPAI H5 virus incursion and assessment of the spread and impact of disease to inform adaptation of conservation plans and to help policy makers mitigate and prevent future HPAI outbreaks.

The global climate is undergoing unprecedented changes, posing significant threats to species persistence. However, the spatiotemporal impacts on genetic diversity remain poorly understood, hindering species conservation and management. Walnuts, generally referred to as Juglans regia and J. sigillata, are economically vital in Asia, but little is known about their genetic origins and how the species will be affected by future climate change. Using 31 microsatellites, we genotyped 5282 individuals from 233 populations of walnuts in Asia. We assessed genetic diversity patterns and demographic history and investigated potential future genetic erosion risks. Genetic diversity of walnuts was high in the Himalaya and Hengduan Mountains. The 2 species diverged during the Pleistocene (around 1.41 Ma BP), and J. regia contained 2 genetic groups (JR1 and JR2). The JR2 group had the lowest diversity and likely arrived in northern China around 9.77 ka BP, perhaps via human transport. The Western Himalaya likely served both as a glacial refugium and the center of origin for J. regia, and the Eastern Himalaya appears to have been the refugium for J. sigillata. The 2 species appear to have hybridized in the Central Himalaya and the Sichuan basin and surroundings, forming two distinct hybrid zones. Our results indicate that genetic diversity will be reduced by up to 9.03% due to range loss under future climate change and dramatic genetic structure turnover in the Himalaya and Hengduan Mountains. In situ conservation in the Himalaya is essential for safeguarding genetic diversity and adaptive potential in Asian walnuts, while ex situ preservation of genetically unique wild germplasm, coupled with its integration into breeding programs, will enhance climate resilience. The findings advance our understanding of the origin of Asian walnuts and how future climatic change may affect their genetic diversity, offering a model for conservation and breeding strategies in other tree species facing similar threats.

As the global protected area (PA) network expands to meet international targets, it is important to assess whether traditional reliance on public land will suffice for projected PA growth or whether other tenures, such as Indigenous or pastoral lands, may increasingly contribute. Another consideration is whether the relative importance of different tenures varies depending on the specific goals of the PA network. We used the mammal fauna of the Australian monsoon tropics (AMT), one of the world's largest intact tropical savannas, as a case study to address these questions. We applied systematic conservation planning to identify optimal PA configurations under 2 objectives (adding to the existing PA network from any tenure vs. expanding the Indigenous protected area [IPA] network through voluntary declaration of Indigenous lands by traditional owners) and 2 species protection criteria (prioritizing currently threatened species vs. species predicted to become threatened). We calculated planning unit selection frequencies for the resulting 4 scenarios to identify high-priority areas for mammal conservation and assessed their dependence on different tenure categories. All scenarios relied heavily on Indigenous lands to achieve species representation targets, with varying contributions from pastoral land depending on the criteria prioritized. Protecting potentially threatened species required more pastoral land and Indigenous land coexisting with primary industries, whereas targets for currently threatened species were more cost-effectively met through voluntary declarations of Indigenous freehold land as IPAs. Our results highlight the potential for Indigenous lands to play a major role in achieving biodiversity conservation targets and demonstrate that land tenure requirements vary depending on conservation priorities. These findings emphasize the need to explicitly consider tenure in conservation planning to guide collaborative strategies and ensure PA growth aligns with specific biodiversity goals across diverse land management contexts.

Tracking has enabled rapid advances in knowledge of the movement behavior and habitat use of shorebirds and is thus making a growing contribution to their conservation. However, realizing the full potential that tracking holds for conservation involves understanding what has been performed on shorebirds to date and identifying regional and taxonomic knowledge gaps. To this end, we reviewed the literature on 195 species across 10 shorebird families. We determined the number of shorebird tracking studies published over time, types of tracking devices used, reporting rates for data archiving in online repositories, and coverage of the major flyways by the data collected. Using Movebank, we further identified tracked species that have not appeared in the literature. We included 351 peer-reviewed publications in the review. Tracking data were lacking for 50% of the species reviewed. Considerably more tracking studies were conducted in temperate regions and in flyways that include wealthy countries than in the tropics. Of the 351 publications, 26.9% reported data were archived in an online repository, although the annual rate increased over time. We identified 16 species whose conservation needs and a lack of data make them relevant priorities for future tracking. Improving data archiving practices and coordination around tag deployment to cover understudied regions is key to maximizing the utility of tracking for shorebird research and conservation.

In wildlife-livestock-human interfaces, pathogens capable of spreading between wild and domestic animals and humans have important implications for conservation outcomes, economics, and public health. Robust wildlife health surveillance can help address these risks. However, capacity and resource constraints hinder effective wildlife health surveillance at regional and national scales, particularly in lower- and middle-income countries. We examined how collaboration between Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) and wildlife health professionals may support the identification and mitigation of animal and zoonotic disease risks in remote and rural areas where wildlife surveillance remains underresourced. In the pastoral rangelands of Laikipia, Kenya, we completed interviews, focus group discussions, and elicitation methods from April 2023 to May 2024 to determine how Maasai pastoralists (n = 57) and trained animal health professionals (n = 10) understood wildlife health. Pastoralists held extensive place-based knowledge of wildlife health and disease, including knowledge of clinical symptoms, species affected, transmission routes, and trends that complemented, deepened, and extended the same knowledge held by trained animal health professionals. Our results suggest that combining IPLCs' and animal health professionals' knowledge can benefit wildlife health surveillance by enhancing surveillance efforts, furthering mutual learning about emerging or reemerging disease, providing new understanding of disease dynamics, and, more broadly, decolonizing conservation knowledge. Two practical ways IPLCs' knowledge could be included and availed to strengthen wildlife health surveillance and research include use of community-led wildlife health surveillance and research and incorporation of ethnoveterinary training in formal wildlife veterinary curricula. However, precautions must be taken to ensure equitable distribution of benefits arising from knowledge sharing and to safeguard against the appropriation of knowledge associated with animal health and disease.

How species interact with habitat patches is influenced primarily by habitat configuration (e.g., connectivity) and species' functional traits. As levels of fragmentation increase, identifying the intricate connections between these components is crucial for biodiversity conservation. We used the species-habitat network (SHN) approach to identify the links between fish species and lakes in a highly fragmented floodplain; to determine lakes and fish species that are key to maintaining landscape SHN organization; and to examine the impact of habitat configuration and species functional traits on fish responses to loss of lateral hydrological connectivity (LHC). Low metacommunity functional connectivity, lack of robustness, and high modularity (i.e., strong within group interactions) and nestedness indicated low resistance of fish communities to long-lasting landscape fragmentation, highlighting the importance of large lakes connected by rivers and fishes that migrate between rivers and lakes to maintaining the SHN organization in floodplain ecosystems. The strong association between maximum body length and fish contribution to this network organization indicated that large fish species are potentially more likely to establish interactions at the landscape scale. Trophic level was the main factor controlling the roles of migrating fishes in SHN organization. Based on species' interactions with habitat patches, we identified and mapped the sites and species responsible for the main features of the SHN structure. Our approach offers new directions for conserving and restoring fragmented floodplains by integrating LHC and fish functional traits to inform targeted conservation priorities.

Different worldviews shape how humans perceive, understand, inhabit, and value the world. Major efforts to achieve more inclusive conservation, such as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, seek to more fully reflect diverse worldviews in science, policy, and practice. Building on the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Values Assessment's comprehensive review of academic publications, Indigenous and local knowledge sources, and policy documents, we characterize 4 human-nature worldviews: anthropocentrism, biocentrism, ecocentrism, and pluricentrism. This heuristic typology can help conservation scholars and practitioners navigate participatory decision-making by providing conceptual clarity to distinguish particular worldviews and the fuzzy boundaries between them, and by addressing practical issues, particularly discursive and structural power dynamics, that affect worldview expression. Two case studies, protected area prioritization in India and payments for ecosystem services in Colombia, show that inclusive conservation depends on strategies and abilities to recognize and understand diverse worldviews and to articulate them in institutions. These examples highlight that engaging diverse human-nature worldviews applies not only to developing new policies but also to adapting mainstream instruments.