Peer-reviewed publications

As editors, we mark the launch of Conservation Science and Practice, a journal of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB), with the following remarks framing the purpose and aspirations of the journal. Our aim is to share scholarship on and experiences of the practice of conservation. We define conservation practice as the application of conservation principles or theory across conservation issues, from planning and directly managing nature to influencing public policy and private behaviors—at scales from local communities to international governing bodies. We are striving for Conservation Science and Practice to be a forum for sharing lessons learned from research and practice to reciprocally informing and improving both arenas.

Ensuring the persistence of biodiversity and ecosystem services represents a global challenge that need to be addressed with high urgency. Global priority areas can only be identified by means of an integrated prioritization approach that would not only preserve species numbers and ecosystem services, but also the evolutionary and functional components of diversity. In this study we combine global datasets on the distribution of mammals and birds with species traits and phylogenetic data and we identify conservation priorities for taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity, as well as for three ecosystem services, including potential for carbon sequestration, pollination potential and groundwater recharge. We show that, when priority areas are identified based only on individual, e.g. functional diversity, or any combination of the three biodiversity components, these areas do not allow a sufficient protection of the three ecosystem services. However, an integrated approach whereby prioritization is based on all biodiversity components and ecosystem services would allow to identify areas that maximize protection of all ecosystem services with a minimal loss in biodiversity coverage. Our results highlight the need for an integrated conservation planning framework in order to optimally allocate resources and achieve the long-term preservation of the multiple dimensions of biodiversity and ecosystems services.

Protected areas (PAs) are fundamental for biodiversity conservation, yet their impacts on nearby residents are contested. We synthesized environmental and socioeconomic conditions of >87,000 children in >60,000 households situated either near or far from >600 PAs within 34 developing countries. We used quasi-experimental hierarchical regression to isolate the impact of living near a PA on several aspects of human well-being. Households near PAs with tourism also had higher wealth levels (by 17%) and a lower likelihood of poverty (by 16%) than similar households living far from PAs. Children under 5 years old living near multiple-use PAs with tourism also had higher height-for-age scores (by 10%) and were less likely to be stunted (by 13%) than similar children living far from PAs. For the largest and most comprehensive socioeconomic-environmental dataset yet assembled, we found no evidence of negative PA impacts and consistent statistical evidence to suggest PAs can positively affect human well-being.

A variety of policy interventions from public authorities and private companies attempt to reduce deforestation in private forest concessions. These include fines for illegal deforestation and market incentives for forest management practices that meet sustainability standards. While some studies have found significant differences in forest outcomes between concessions that participate in sustainability commitments and those that do not, others have found small or inconclusive differences. We contribute to this literature by examining all privately allocated concessions in the Peruvian Amazon to determine whether sustainability commitments correspond with lower deforestation rates. Conversely, we examine whether fines correspond with higher deforestation rates, a question for which fewer analyses have been published. Using matching methods, we do not find significantly different deforestation rates between control groups and logging concessions with third party environmental certification. We also do not see significant differences in deforestation rates in petroleum concessions managed by companies who have made sustainability commitments. Regarding punitive fines, we do not find significant differences in deforestation rates between control groups and logging concessions with fines levied. The same holds true for fines levied in brazil nut concessions. Potential explanations for these findings include insufficient monitoring or inadequate stringency for sustainability commitments, and insufficiently punitive fines or low enforcement levels.

Over the last 25 years, the global area of certified forests has grown rapidly and voluntary forest certification has become recognized as an effective tool to engage international markets in improving sustainability within forest management units. However, the bulk of this growth has occurred in North America, Northern Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, with relatively limited uptake in the tropics. Since its creation, forest certification has been largely understood as a "market-based" mechanism, in contrast to government-led policies and regulations. Through the experience of the Responsible Asia Forestry and Trade (RAFT) partnership in the Asia Pacific region, we find that the framing of forest certification as voluntary and market-based, and as a mechanism to overcome governance failure, has created an artificial dichotomy. In this dichotomy, voluntary certification and regulatory measures to promote sustainable forest management are conceived of and pursued largely independently. We argue that it is more constructive to view them as complementary approaches that share a common goal of increasing sustainability across the forestry sector. In practice, forest certification interacts with conventional governance institutions and mechanisms. Understanding these interactions and their implications, as well as additional possibilities for interaction, will help in realizing the full potential of forest certification.

The expansion of oil palm plantations in Papua province, Indonesia, involves the conversion of forests, among other land types in the landscapes, which are a source of clan members' livelihoods. The way in which this expansion occurs makes it necessary to understand the factors associated with why companies look for frontier lands and what externalities are generated during both the land acquisition and plantation development periods. Using a spatial analysis of the concession areas, along with data from household surveys of each clan from the Auyu, Mandobo, and Marind tribes who release land to companies, we find that investors are motivated to profit from timber harvested from the clearing of lands for plantations, activity that is facilitated by the local government. Land acquisition and plantation development have resulted in externalities to indigenous landowners in the form of time and money lost in a series of meetings and consultations involving clan members and traditional elders. Other externalities include the reduced welfare of people due to loss of livelihoods, and impacts on food security.

Expanding human populations, combined with an increasingly variable climate, present challenges to the conservation of wide-ranging wildlife species, particularly for populations that persist in human-dominated landscapes. Although the movements and space use of many equid species have been well studied, comparable research of the Hartmann's mountain zebra (HMZ) Equus zebra hartmannae, which primarily inhabits communal and commercial farming areas of Namibia, has been scarce and may limit conservation effectiveness. Here, we investigated the environmental and anthropogenic factors influencing HMZ movements and resource use across a large area of their range in northwestern Namibia. We deployed 6 GPS collars on HMZ during 2011 to 2013 and used integrated step selection functions to quantify HMZ movements and space use. HMZ movements averaged ˜5 km d-1, and mean seasonal home range sizes were 681 and 256 km2 in the wet and dry season, respectively. HMZ selected for areas with high normalized difference vegetation index values (used as a proxy for primary production), particularly during the dry season, while avoiding areas further from water and closer to human settlements, although the effect was less apparent during the rainy season. Movement rates increased when HMZ crossed roads and were closer to roadways, but rates were not impacted by proximity to human activities. These results provide insights toward mitigating human-HMZ conflict. We highlight the difficulty a changing and less predictable climate creates for grazing species living in arid regions, as they must expend more energy and navigate dangers of a growing human footprint to seek out valuable but ephemeral forage.

In 2015, the UN adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aiming to "protect the planet from degradation...so that it can support the needs of the present and future generations". Through the SDGs, the UN recognises that conservation directly supports human health and wellbeing by providing goods like water and fibre, and global public goods like habitat for species and mitigation of climate change. Although trade-offs can indeed arise between conservation and economic development, the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health states unequivocally that "the environment has been the foundation of human flourishing", suggesting that if environmental degradation persists then ongoing improvements in human health are likely to be reversed.

Forests in southwestern Amazonia are increasingly being converted for agriculture, mining, and infrastructure development; subjected to low-intensity selective logging of high value timber species; and designated as conservation areas and indigenous reserves. To understand the impacts of forestry in this region, we evaluated carbon emissions from felling, skidding, and hauling in five FSC-certified concessions where workers were trained in reduced-impact logging (RIL) and in four non-certified concessions where workers were not trained in RIL in Madre de Dios, Peru. Emissions estimates did not differ by certification status, so we established a single baseline for selective logging emissions. Total carbon emissions from selective logging were low per hectare (4.9-11.6Mg ha-1) due to low logging intensities (2.9-8.1 m3 ha-1). Despite the unique architecture of trees in the southwestern Amazon (short stems and large crowns), emissions per volume and per ton carbon in the extracted timber were also relatively low (1.55 Mg m-3 and 4.04 Mg Mg-1, respectively). Only emissions per area scaled with logging intensity. Emissions were dominated by the felled tree itself (in extracted logs and residuals), whereas hauling infrastructure (roads and log landings) contributed comparatively little.

Stabilizing Earth's climate and limiting temperature increase to well below 2°C per the Paris Agreement requires a dramatic uptick in the rate of progress on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Natural climate solutions (NCS) can be a substantial contributor, while also providing valuable cobenefits for people and ecosystems. Although analyses of NCS have some differences in the GHG fluxes they consider, all include emissions sources (such as deforestation, land-use change, and agricultural practices), emissions sinks (such as reforestation and restoring degraded lands), and non–carbon dioxide (CO2) agricultural emissions (such as methane from livestock). Some of us have contributed to among the most optimistic assessments of the potential of NCS (1), whereas others have been more pessimistic (2, 3). But one thing on which we agree, and which technical literature generally acknowledges, is that the benefits of NCS do not decrease the imperative for mitigation from the energy and industrial sectors (2, 4, 5). Yet this point sometimes gets lost in public-facing conversations [for example, are forests "our best weapon for fighting carbon emissions" or, more realistically, just one "piece of the puzzle"? (6)]. Strategies for incorporating NCS with energy and industrial mitigation in the climate portfolio should not be "either/or" but "yes, and."