Conservation Biology最新文献

The rapid decline of global biodiversity has engendered renewed debate about the social, economic, and political factors contributing to it. Specifically, there is little understanding of the role that political ideology within a country (e.g., nationalism, conservatism, socialism) plays in determining biodiversity outcomes. We used negative binomial generalized linear models to investigate the importance of national regime ideology in predicting threatened animal species and protected area establishment compared with other factors that affect biodiversity outcomes, such as gross domestic product, inequality, and democracy. For threatened animals, the model with the highest Akaike weight suggested adverse biodiversity outcomes arose from larger gross domestic product (β = 0.120, p < 0.001). However, nationalism (β = 0.371, p < 0.01) and socialism (β = 0.293, p < 0.05) were also significantly associated with increased proportions of threatened species. For protected areas, the model with the highest Akaike weight suggested increases in democracy (β = 0.880, p < 0.001) led to a rise in relative protected area estate. Conservative regime ideology was also associated with greater protected area estate, although this did not increase the weight of evidence in support of the best models. These findings highlight the relevance of political ideology for predicting biodiversity outcomes at a national scale and illustrate opportunities to tailor policies and advocacy to promote biodiversity conservation more effectively. By targeting appropriate messaging and political advocacy, conservationists can improve the likelihood that politicians and their nations will participate in positive biodiversity actions.

Biodiversity research is essential for addressing the global biodiversity crisis, necessitating diverse participation and perspectives of researchers from a wide range of backgrounds. However, conservation faces a significant inclusivity problem because local expertise from biodiversity-rich but economically disadvantaged regions is often underrepresented. This underrepresentation is driven by linguistic bias, undervalued contributions, parachute science practices, and capacity constraints. Although fragmented solutions exist, a unified multistakeholder approach is needed to address the interconnected and systemic conservation issues. We devised a holistic framework of collective responsibility across all research participants and tailored strategies that embrace diversity and dismantle systemic barriers to equitable collaboration. This framework delineates the diverse actors and practices required for promoting inclusivity in biodiversity research, assigning clear responsibilities to researchers, publishers, institutions, and funding bodies. Strategies for researchers include cultivating self-awareness, expanding literature searches, fostering partnerships with local experts, and promoting knowledge exchange. For institutions, we recommend establishing specialized liaison roles, implementing equitable policies, allocating resources for diversity initiatives, and enhancing support for international researchers. Publishers can facilitate multilingual dissemination, remove financial barriers, establish inclusivity standards, and ensure equitable representation in peer review. Funders must remove systemic barriers, strengthen research networks, and prioritize equitable resource allocation. Implementing these stakeholder-specific strategies can help dismantle deep-rooted biases and structural inequities in biodiversity research, catalyzing a shift toward a more inclusive and representative model that amplifies diverse perspectives and maximizes collective knowledge for effective global conservation.

Biotic interactions, such as plant-animal seed dispersal mutualisms, are essential for ecosystem function. Such interactions are threatened by the possible extinction of the animal partners. Using a data set that includes plant-lemur interactions across Madagascar, we studied the current state of knowledge of these interactions and their structure to determine which plant species are most at risk of losing dispersal services due to the loss of lemurs. We found substantial gaps in understanding of plant-lemur interactions; data were substantially skewed toward a few lemur species and locations. There was also a large gap in knowledge on the interactions of plants and small-bodied or nocturnal lemurs and lemurs outside a few highly studied locations. Of the recorded interactions, a significant portion occurred between lemurs and endemic plants, rather than native or introduced plants. We also found that lemur species tended to primarily consume closely related plant species. Such interaction patterns may indicate the threats to Malagasy endemic plants and highlight how lemur population loss or reductions could affect plant phylogenetic diversity. When examining the impacts of lemur extinction, losing critically endangered species left 164 plant species with no known lemur frugivore partners. Despite phylogenetic patterns in lemur diet, plants for which the only known lemur frugivore is critically endangered were not closely related. These results emphasize the need for further studies to complete our knowledge on these essential interactions and to inform conservation priorities.

The motivations for incorporating nature into the design of cities have never been more compelling. Creating experiences with nature that occur every day (everyday nature) in cities could help reverse the fate of many threatened species and connect people with nature and living cultural traditions. However, this requires more than just urban greening; it involves ensuring daily doses of nature in a way that also supports nonhuman organisms. A major shift in the way nature is conceived of and is made part of the design of cities is required. Principles include reconsidering nature as a development opportunity rather than a constraint and eliminating offsetting of biodiversity site values. Processes include using biodiversity-sensitive design frameworks and establishing meaningful professional engagement among ecologists, planners, and designers. Challenges include design obstacles, conflicts between nature and people (e.g., safety, disease, and noise) that require careful management, and socioeconomic and political considerations (e.g., Global North vs. Global South). Research to interrogate the multiple benefits of nature in cities can complement experimental interventions, ultimately supporting better urban design and creating much more resiliently built environments for people and nature.

The ability to strengthen governance institutions and fisheries restrictions and laws is needed to improve conservation and management of common-pool resources. We evaluated the potential for stimulating change with modest interventions by studying fishing village households before and after a 27-month intervention period in a high-priority coral reef conservation area. Interventions included training in catch monitoring, stock assessment, mapping fishing grounds, microcredit, gender inclusion, theatrical skills, fuel efficient stoves, and participation in the planning of a conservation proposal. There was a background increase in reported formal education, household size, group membership, and household wealth but a decrease in fish consumption and public services. Of conservation importance, the perceived strength of 13 governance institutions and benefits of 6 fisheries restrictions increased over the intervention period. Finally, correspondence between knowledge of and agreement with recent national fisheries laws was moderate to high and positively correlated. The intervention period was stronger than demographic factors that often influence perceptions, such as village, government services, gender, household size, membership in community groups, and age responses. In general, perceptions of strengths of governance and benefits of restrictions increased more among women and youth than adult men respondents. The largest changes in perceptions of increased benefits were among strict restrictions initially ranked low, specifically fisheries closures, parks, and species restrictions. Consequently, capacity building overrode demographic factors common to poor people with limited employment capacity that can have negative perceptions of strict conservation.

Cemeteries are key urban green spaces with multifaceted societal and ecological importance. Their biodiversity is shaped by unique environmental and cultural factors. They can potentially protect rare and endangered species, yet their conservation value compared with other urban green spaces remains largely unexplored. We sought to fill this gap by systematically reviewing literature to investigate the conservation value of cemeteries relative to other urban green spaces (botanical gardens, institutional premises, natural remnants, and parks) by comparing species richness and proportions of native and unique species. We analyzed data from 70 papers covering 50 cities in 27 countries with linear and binomial mixed-effects models at both site and city level. Cemetery conservation value was similar to urban parks, except for the proportion of unique species, for which parks had significantly higher proportions (21.9% vs. 14.2%, p < 0.001). Cemeteries hosted slightly higher proportions of native species at the city level than botanical gardens (99.7% vs. 99.6%, p < 0.001) and institutional green spaces (96.3% vs. 94.1%, p = 0.034) and proportions comparable to parks and natural remnants (p > 0.05). They also had similar or higher values than institutional premises in species richness and unique species proportions (p > 0.05) and a higher site-level proportion of native species (p < 0.001). In contrast, species richness (slopes = -0.11 and -0.25, respectively) and unique species proportions (4.4% and 6.9%, respectively, p < 0.001 for both) were lower in cemeteries than in remnants of natural areas and in botanical gardens. The conservation value of cemeteries and parks was similar for animals, but parks had a higher value for plants. Overall, cemeteries were generally at least as valuable as some other green spaces for urban biodiversity and mostly native biota. Their religious and cultural significance suggests they will remain intact in the long term; thus, it is essential to prioritize and further promote their biodiversity in conservation and sustainable urban design plans.

Protected area management often depends heavily on law enforcement to secure compliance with rules. However, this can contribute to conflict between protected area authorities and local people, negatively affecting both human well-being and conservation outcomes. Compliance is affected by many factors, including whether those who enforce rules are perceived to do so fairly, as well as the perceived rule-related behavior of others. We used factorial survey experiments to explore how fair respondents living around protected areas in Indonesia and Tanzania perceive sanctions distributed by law enforcers to be. We presented scenarios to respondents to assess how crime type, offender characteristics, and corruption influenced their judgments regarding the fairness of administered sanctions. We also assessed how descriptive norms and corruption influenced individuals' willingness to obey protected area rules. Data were collected from 229 people in Indonesia and 217 in Tanzania. Results showed that in both locations, lawful sanctions, such as arrests or warnings, were perceived as fairer, and sanctions that involved corruption were perceived as least fair. Attitudes toward protected area rules, corruption, and descriptive norms all influenced people's willingness to comply, whereas multidimensional poverty did not. Our results highlight the need for conservation policy and practice to move beyond narratives that focus on the need for more law enforcement. To improve protected area compliance and secure better outcomes for people and nature, conservation must focus on ensuring the fair administration of rules and enhancing the legitimacy of rules themselves.

Ecological transformations are occurring as a result of climate change, challenging traditional approaches to land management decision-making. The resist-accept-direct (RAD) framework helps managers consider how to respond to this challenge. We examined how the feasibility of the choices to resist, accept, and direct shifts in complex and dynamic ways through time. We considered 4 distinct types of social feasibility: regulatory, financial, public, and organizational. Our commentary is grounded in literature review and the examples that exist but necessarily has speculative elements because empirical evidence on this newly emerging management strategy is scarce. We expect that resist strategies will become less feasible over time as managers encounter situations where resisting is ecologically, by regulation, financially, or publicly not feasible. Similarly, we expect that as regulatory frameworks increasingly permit their use, if costs decrease, and if the public accepts them, managers will increasingly view accept and direct strategies as more viable options than they do at present. Exploring multiple types of feasibility over time allows consideration of both social and ecological trajectories of change in tandem. Our theorizing suggested that deepening the time horizon of decision-making allows one to think carefully about when one should adopt different approaches and how to combine them over time.

Growing human use of the marine environment increases the proximity of humans to marine wildlife and thus likely increases human-wildlife interactions. Such interactions influence perceptions of nature and promote or undermine conservation. Despite their importance, human-wildlife interactions are rarely considered in ecosystem-based marine spatial planning (MSP). Ideally, these interactions should be identified and considered in ecosystem-based management (EBM), which is often purported to be the basis for MSP. We used Marxan software and data from a citizen science project documenting location, species, age, sex, and activity type to identify regions along Israel's coast with a high probability of encounters between people and 2 species of guitarfish. We considered the geographic distribution of these encounters and the various activities undertaken by the reporting observers. We ran 4 scenarios in Marxan. Two had conservation goals of 30% and 50% guitarfish habitat protection. In the third and fourth scenarios, we added a 50% conservation goal of human leisure activities to each guitarfish conservation goal. We also conducted a gap analysis between our guitarfish conservation goals and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority's master plan for marine protected areas. We found the park authority was close to meeting the 30% goal but was far from meeting the conservation goal of 50% of guitarfish habitat conservation. Different human uses were more likely to interact with different life stages of guitarfish, and different recreational activities occurred in different areas. Identifying areas of specific human use showed which activities should be addressed in conservation management decisions. Our addition of certain recreational uses to the model of habitat conservation showed how enhancing human dimensions in conservation planning can lead to more holistic ecosystem-based conservation necessary for effective marine planning.

Purse-seine tropical tuna fishing in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (EPO) results in the bycatch of several sensitive species groups, including elasmobranchs. Effective ecosystem management balances conservation and resource use and requires considering trade-offs and synergies. Seasonal and adaptive spatial measures can reduce fisheries impacts on nontarget species while maintaining or increasing target catches. Identifying persistently high-risk areas in the open ocean, where dynamic environmental conditions drive changes in species’ distributions, is essential for exploring the impact of fisheries closures. We used fisheries observer data collected from 1995 to 2021 to explore the spatiotemporal persistence of areas of high bycatch risk for 2 species of oceanic sharks, silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis) and oceanic whitetip shark (Carcharhinus longimanus), and of low tuna catch rates. We analyzed data collected by fisheries scientific observers onboard approximately 200 large purse-seine vessels operating in the EPO under 10 different flags. Fishing effort, catch, and bycatch data were aggregated spatially and temporally at 1° × 1° cells and monthly, respectively. When areas of high fishing inefficiency were closed the entire study period and effort was reallocated proportionally to reflect historical effort patterns, yearly tuna catch appeared to increase by 1–11%, whereas bycatch of silky and oceanic whitetip sharks decreased by 10–19% and 9%, respectively. Prior to fishing effort redistribution, bycatch reductions accrued to 21–41% and 14% for silky and oceanic whitetip sharks, respectively. Our results are consistent with previous findings and demonstrate the high potential for reducing elasmobranch bycatch in the EPO without compromising catch rates of target tuna species. They also highlight the need to consider new dynamic and adaptive management measures to more efficiently fulfill conservation and sustainability objectives for exploited resources in the EPO.