Conservation Biology最新文献

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.

In the late 1980s, the scientific community became aware of severe, enigmatic amphibian population declines. These declines triggered a wave of research focused on quantifying their extent and identifying key drivers. We used text-analysis techniques, including topic modeling and geoparsing, to examine the evolution of research focused on amphibian declines. We sought to provide an example of scientific inquiry in action, from the initial recognition and quantification of the phenomenon to identifying drivers and understanding mechanisms of amphibian decline. We delineated research topics, tracked spatiotemporal trends from 1985 to 2024, and extracted the number of publications per topic. Early research focused on evaluating the veracity of declines and was followed by investigations of potential drivers (in particular, UVB radiation, pollution, and habitat fragmentation and loss). After the amphibian chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) was identified in the late 1990s, research emphasis shifted toward disease. Subsequently, disease-focused research became increasingly specialized, the primary topics of which were susceptibility, resistance and tolerance, and mitigation. Most recently, extinction risk and climate change became increasingly prominent topics, reflecting emerging threats to amphibians. Regions with high amphibian biodiversity and observed declines (e.g., Central and South America) were underrepresented in the literature, and research was strongly biased toward North America, Australia, and Europe. We uncovered a clear disconnect between the amphibian decline literature and the development of effective management and conservation actions. To address this gap, we suggest an increased emphasis on the application of existing knowledge to drive meaningful conservation outcomes and prioritization of new research on ongoing and emerging threats.

The importance of social science to address the human dimensions of natural resource management is increasingly recognized in the conservation field, yet the application of associated concepts, theories, methods, and data remains underrepresented in parts of Europe. Common barriers and gaps, persistent over decades, including institutional constraints, work environment, different cultures and languages between natural and social science disciplines, lack of qualified personnel, and an accessible professional community, are often cited as underlying and driving factors. To better understand, contextualize, and inform solutions for wider use of social science, we analyzed interactions with conservation researchers and practitioners across a series of organized events from 2018 to 2023 (e.g., in-depth interviews, facilitated discussions, expert workshops, international conferences, knowledge exchange forums). Frequently mentioned challenges to integrating social science were limited opportunities to engage across disciplines in the workplace, to interact with like-minded colleagues, and for 2-way communication and knowledge exchange between scientists and practitioners, especially given the diversity of subject matter expertise and disciplinary training of conservation professionals. The needs identified included capacity building to strengthen individual and institutional competencies, such as creating and maintaining multidisciplinary teams and professional networks, working across different organizations at multiple scales, and advancing institutional support for acceptance and validation of social science as a routine element of conservation practice, including representation of social scientists in the workforce. Steps to address such challenges can be taken along 2 pathways that conservation researchers and practitioners consistently mentioned: first, increasing conservation social science literacy through awareness building, targeted professional development training, and institutional support, and, second, fostering knowledge exchange, enhancing professional networks, and bolstering a robust community of practice across Europe.

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.

Conservation has embraced advances in big data and related digital technologies as key to preventing biodiversity loss, especially in the identification of areas of conservation priority based on spatial data, which we call the big geospatial data turn. This turn has led to the proliferation of useful methods and tools, including global geospatial maps. But these methods may also undermine moves toward rights-based and inclusive conservation approaches that consider plural values and perspectives. We built on the burgeoning literature to call for greater attention to be paid to the datasets, methodological choices, and the assumptions global mapping for biodiversity conservation is based on. In increasingly prioritizing the use of big geospatial data, conservation professionals risk forgetting that maps show only partial information and limit the diversity of ways of seeing and representing the world. Big geospatial data collected through remotely sensed technologies must still be situated in time and place and provided with appropriate political–economic and sociocultural contexts. Further, global mapping efforts remain primarily the purview of Global North researchers, even given the push to make data open access. Instead of uncritically calling for more data, we urge conservationists to contextualize and situate big geospatial data carefully so as to build a field that achieves socially just and ecologically effective conservation outcomes.

We thank the following colleagues for providing Conservation Biology with book reviews:

M. Ferrante

C. Perl

T. Price

M. Scott

S. Scott

Zs. Végvári

Reviewers for “Noted with Interest”

D. A. Andow*

R. Aszalos

S. Bonicalza

J. Bölöni

E. Frater

M. Guerra

N. Holst

K. Krenhardt*

G. L. Lovei*

Y. Lubin

Zs. Molnár*

T. Price

M. Scott*

F. Toth

V. Ulicsni

*Author wrote more than one review.

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.