Ambio最新文献

The Amazon—the most biodiverse biome in the world—faces huge conservation challenges. Multiple institutional and technological actors, organized in environmental networks, collaborate to support improved environmental governance. However, these efforts are understudied and underrecognized, particularly in the case of the Colombian and Peruvian Amazon. Employing a social network analysis, this study evaluates the actors, the institutional–technological relationships, and the network addressing socio-environmental challenges. We identified 392 development actors (nodes) with different levels of international, national, and regional participation. They use transnational technologies, but have limited integration of local actors where environmental challenges are most pressing. To combat the biome's rapid degradation, these countries could strengthen their environmental agendas, governance, and policy design—for greater environmental impact—by effectively integrating cooperation between international and local partners. Both countries should develop their local networks, create participatory collaborative spaces to enhance national capacities, and promote diverse and coordinated coalitions.

Debate has arisen on the use of “re-wilding” to promote biodiversity conservation. We contend that approaches aiming for strict non-intervention to restore “wilderness” may be conceptually inconsistent when applied to human-shaped landscapes. Several ecosystems of high biodiversity value, often misclassified as “pristine” have been shaped over millennia of human use, a context rarely acknowledged by re-wilding approaches. Rural abandonment in Europe is seen as an opportunity to promote biodiversity conservation through “re-wilding”, but management neglect may favor forest species at the expense of open-habitat species. In Mediterranean regions, where cultural ecosystems have high conservation value, management neglect may reduce biodiversity and increase wildfire hazard, especially under climate change. Using three Mediterranean basin case studies, we argue that wilderness-focused re-wilding, if applied uncritically, can have unintended negative consequences. While recognizing the diversity of re-wilding concepts, we highlight the need for context-specific strategies, where active management remains essential.

Calls for social-ecological restoration have emerged to help transcend traditional ecological boundaries by including plural values as well as transdisciplinary processes. Inspired by the IPBES values typology, we used questionnaires to assess four multi-layered perspectives characterizing local actors in two transdisciplinary grassland restoration projects in Germany: Broad values, specific values, knowledge, and visions for restoration outcomes. Varimax rotated principal component analysis yielded 16 factors across these dimensions. A subsequent hierarchical cluster analysis revealed three clusters based on these factors compatible with the Life Framework of Values: restoration for… (1) living with nature, (2) living in nature, and (3) living from nature. The three clusters demonstrate the diversity of values-based perspectives among participants of the real-world laboratories. These perspectives capture the multi-layered values underpinning engagement in restoration. Accounting for these perspectives without jeopardizing one perspective over the others provides a basis for more inclusive restoration efforts.

Understanding context-specific drivers and mechanisms of human-wildlife interactions is crucial to designing effective conservation strategies. Community-based data provides valuable insights for adaptive management efforts aimed at fostering coexistence in shared landscapes. This study analyzed 611 reports of grey wolves and brown bears recorded by rural communities in the Carpathians (Poland). Bears and wolves were recorded in 6% and 12% of all built-up areas within the study region, respectively. These species exploited anthropogenic food resources (53% of all reports), interacting with pets, livestock, and wild animals found within human settlements. The probability of carnivore reports increased with the number of previous observations and was influenced by prior successful food acquisition. The observed pattern highlights the importance of habituation and food conditioning for effective management of carnivores in human-dominated landscapes. Engaging local communities in monitoring carnivore presence can facilitate early conflict detection, providing a foundation for effective coexistence strategies.

Cities increasingly hope to mobilize nature-based solutions in urban sustainability planning because of their wide-ranging ecosystem services. In this critical moment, where failure due to poor implementation could lead policymakers to turn away from nature-based solutions, we investigate the case of urban forestry and ask: how do strategic-level sustainability goals influences site-level decision-making? We conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 urban foresters leading advanced programs at municipalities with adopted sustainability goals, framed as ecosystem services, across the US and Canada. Day-to-day, site-level decision-making focused on advancing a “more, bigger trees” paradigm with the justification that this would deliver increased ecosystem services in a general sense and thus contribute to city goals. Our analysis and results suggest that urban foresters are more guided by a shared sense of the greater purpose of their work to serve urban communities than city plans, which yields actions usually aligning but sometimes conflicting with specific strategic-level goals.

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