Conservation Letters最新文献

While habitat loss is a major threat to species, the effects of habitat fragmentation independent of habitat loss (fragmentation per se) are debated. Metapopulation studies often assert negative fragmentation effects, but they do not measure fragmentation per se. We evaluate the effects of fragmentation per se (patch density) across 20 years of patch occupancy patterns of the Åland Islands Glanville fritillary butterfly, Finland, a famous model system in metapopulation studies. Fragmentation per se had mainly positive effects on patch occupancy, the proportion of years occupied per patch, and patch colonization, and negative effects on patch extinction. These results suggest that fragmentation per se does not threaten persistence of the Åland Islands Glanville fritillary butterfly. Our results support the growing body of research challenging the paradigm that habitat fragmentation per se is mostly negative for species, highlighting the value of small patches for species conservation.

The increased availability of remote sensing products and new legislative agendas are driving a growing focus on farm-level traceability and monitoring to tackle commodity-driven deforestation. Here, we use data on land use change in Brazil (1985–2021) from Mapbiomas to demonstrate how analyses of the drivers of deforestation are sensitive to the scale of analysis: while pixel- or property-level analyses identify proximate drivers of deforestation, analyses at larger scales (subnational regions or countries) capture more complex land use dynamics, including indirect land use change. We argue that initiatives which seek to monitor and address commodity-driven deforestation—such as the European Union's deforestation due-diligence regulation and the World Business Council on Sustainable Development's Greenhouse Gas Protocol—must be conscient of these wider land use dynamics. Only by measuring progress and defining success at multiple scales can initiatives for sustainable commodity sourcing create the right mix of incentives for addressing deforestation.

Even after research identifies new approaches for wildlife management, translating those methods for delivery can be logistically challenging. In tropical Australia, invasive cane toads (Rhinella marina) fatally poison many anuran-eating native predators. Small-scale trials show that vulnerable predators exposed to small (nonlethal) toads can learn to delete toads from their diets, increasing survival of those predators after toads invade. We deployed this method in the remote Kimberley region of tropical Australia, with >200,000 eggs, tadpoles, or metamorph toads released in advance of the expanding toad invasion front. Remote camera surveys before and after “teacher toad” deployment showed that large monitor lizards (Varanus panoptes) were almost extirpated from control plots but remained abundant in treatment plots, indicating broad-scale success of this novel intervention.

Numerous policy and international frameworks consider that “destructive fishing” hampers efforts to reach sustainability goals. Though ubiquitous, “destructive fishing” is undefined and therefore currently immeasurable. Here we propose a definition developed through expert consultation: “Destructive fishing is any fishing practice that causes irrecoverable habitat degradation, or which causes significant adverse environmental impacts, results in long-term declines in target or nontarget species beyond biologically safe limits and has negative livelihood impacts.” We show strong stakeholder support for a definition, consensus on many biological and ecological dimensions, and no clustering of respondents from different sectors. Our consensus definition is a significant step toward defining sustainable fisheries goals and will help interpret and implement global political commitments which utilize the term “destructive fishing.” Our definition and results will help reinforce the Food and Agricultural Organization's Code of Conduct and meaningfully support member countries to prohibit destructive fishing practices.

Fungal conservation is gaining momentum globally, but many challenges remain. To advance further, more data are needed on fungal diversity across space and time. Fundamental information regarding population sizes, trends, and geographic ranges is also critical to accurately assess the extinction risk of individual species. However, obtaining these data is particularly difficult for fungi due to their immense diversity, complex and problematic taxonomy, and cryptic nature. This paper explores how citizen science (CS) projects can be leveraged to advance fungal conservation efforts. We present several examples of past and ongoing CS-based projects to record and monitor fungal diversity. These include projects that are part of broad collecting schemes, those that provide participants with targeted sampling methods, and those whereby participants collect environmental samples from which fungi can be obtained. We also examine challenges and solutions for how such projects can capture fungal diversity, estimate species absences, broaden participation, improve data curation, and translate resulting data into actionable conservation measures. Finally, we close the paper with a call for professional mycologists to engage with amateurs and local communities, presenting a framework to determine whether a given project would likely benefit from participation by citizen scientists.

Rotational closures have potential fisheries benefits, yet their impact on coral cover is unknown. Research has shown that permanent closures can protect herbivorous fish, indirectly benefiting corals, but these observations may not apply when closed periods alternate with fishing. Here, we examine how rotational closures affect coral, focusing on systems with the potential to switch between alternative stable states, a context in which temporary closures may have persistent effects. We show that rotational closures can trigger coral recovery, and in some contexts lead to better coral recovery than fixed closures of similar size. Such benthic effects are only possible if closures last long enough for change to occur. We also note that very large fixed or rotating closures may concentrate fishing effort in areas where fishing remains permitted, leading to lower overall coral cover. Our findings offer crucial guidance to managers regarding rotational closures’ potential advantages and drawbacks.

Carvalho, S., Wessling, E. G., Abwe, E. E., Almeida-Warren, K., Arandjelovic, M., Boesch, C., Danquah, E., Diallo, M. S., Hobaiter, C., Hockings, K., Humle, T., Ikemeh, R. A., Kalan, A. K., Luncz, L., Ohashi, G., Pascual-Garrido, A., Piel, A., Samuni, L., Soiret, S., Sanz, C., & Koops, K. (2022). Using nonhuman culture in conservation requires careful and concerted action. Conservation Letters, e12860. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12860

The following text is missing from the Acknowledgements section: “OA fees were supported by ICArEHB—The interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behaviour, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under program UIDP/04211/2020”.

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Protected areas (PAs) are central to sustainability targets, yet few evaluations explore outcomes for both conservation and development, or the trade-offs involved. We applied counterfactual analyses to assess the extent to which PAs maintained forest cover and influenced well-being across >31,000 villages in Sumatra and Kalimantan, Indonesia. We examined multidimensional aspects of well-being, tracking education, health, living standards, infrastructure, environment, and social cohesion in treatment and control villages between 2005 and 2018. Overall, PAs were effective at maintaining forest cover compared to matched controls and were not detrimental to well-being. However, impacts were highly heterogeneous, varying by island and strictness of protection. While health, living standards, and infrastructure aspects of well-being improved, education access, environmental conditions, and social cohesion declined. Our analysis reveals the contexts through which individual PAs succeed or fail in delivering multiple benefits and provides insights into where further on-ground support is needed to achieve conservation and development objectives.

Conservation funding is currently limited; cost-effective conservation solutions are essential. We suggest that the thousands of field stations worldwide can play key roles at the frontline of biodiversity conservation and have high intrinsic value. We assessed field stations’ conservation return on investment and explored the impact of COVID-19. We surveyed leaders of field stations across tropical regions that host primate research; 157 field stations in 56 countries responded. Respondents reported improved habitat quality and reduced hunting rates at over 80% of field stations and lower operational costs per km² than protected areas, yet half of those surveyed have less funding now than in 2019. Spatial analyses support field station presence as reducing deforestation. These “earth observatories” provide a high return on investment; we advocate for increased support of field station programs and for governments to support their vital conservation efforts by investing accordingly.

The state of biodiversity for most of the world is largely enigmatic due to a lack of long-term population monitoring data. Citizen science programs could substantially contribute to resolving this data crisis, but there are noted concerns on whether methods can overcome the biases and imprecision inherent to aggregated opportunistic observations. We explicitly test this question by examining the temporal correlation of population time-series estimated from opportunistic citizen science data and a rigorous fishery-independent survey that concurrently sampled populations of coral-reef fishes (n = 87) in Key Largo, Florida, USA, over 25 years. The majority of species exhibited positive temporal correlations between population time-series, but survey congruence varied considerably amongst taxonomic and trait-based groups. Overall, these results suggest that citizen scientists can be effective sentinels of ecological change, and that there may be substantial value in leveraging their observations to monitor otherwise data-limited marine species.