Private protected areas (PPAs) are a board category that includes reserves established and managed by non-government entities, including civil society organizations, businesses and private individuals. It was recently suggested that the creation of a system of PPAs in Brazil may act as a useful model for extending protected area systems internationally. While it is clear that RPPNs have an important role to play in the future development of Brazil's protected area system, there are several significant challenges that need to be overcome if they are fulfil their potential: (1) ensuring that RPPNs contribute to coverage and representation; (2) ensuring adequate governance; and (3) increasing the attractiveness of the RPPN model. While it is still too early to determine whether RPPNs constitute a robust PPA model that could (or should) be exported to other countries, they are creating new opportunities for innovation and novel management strategies that might eventually lead to a vibrant and distinctly Brazilian protected area movement.

A recent Comment article suggested replacing the established term warfare ecology with the name ‘military ecology’. This emerging and important sub-discipline requires an accurate, inclusive, and descriptive name. Maintaining the broad term warfare ecology reaches beyond the military to beyond to involve a much wider range of processes and stakeholders, including non-state parties and insurgencies, contractors, civilians, humanitarian and relief organizations, and reconstruction/restoration efforts. It has been adopted by practitioners from a similarly diverse range of disciplines, and used for important research that would not be included under a field limited to military studies.

Extractive reserves are conservation units that are concurrently expected to sustain subsistence and cash economies of reserve residents, often through use of non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa) has been central to many Amazonian reserves and resident livelihoods therein, due to its basin-wide distribution, significance in global markets, and potential for sustainable use and forest conservation. Yet, do the benefits of this and other NTFPs extend to all extractive reserve residents? A livelihood survey, structured interviews, and Brazil nut inventories from 2008 to 2010, randomly sampling the widely dispersed households and corresponding forests across the three regions of Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractive Reserve (RDAER), revealed significant social and ecological heterogeneity among RDAER regions. There were differences in Brazil nut stand access, individual tree characteristics (including crown form and marginally, and fruit production), stand and tree management, multiple household characteristics that shape resident investment and dependence on NTFPs, and the contribution of Brazil nut to forest-based income. If Brazil nut and other NTFPs are to reconcile conservation and development in forest communities, then policies to regulate and promote NTFP use must integrate the socioecological heterogeneity inherent in these forest products and within reserve polygons.

There is burgeoning interest in predicting road development because of the wide ranging important socioeconomic and environmental issues that roads present, including the close links between road development, deforestation and biodiversity loss. This is especially the case in developing nations, which are high in natural resources, where road development is rapid and often not centrally managed. Characterization of large scale spatio-temporal patterns in road network development has been greatly overlooked to date. This paper examines the spatio-temporal dynamics of road density across the Brazilian Amazon and assesses the relative contributions of local versus neighbourhood effects for temporal changes in road density at regional scales. To achieve this, a combination of statistical analyses and model-data fusion techniques inspired by studies of spatio-temporal dynamics of populations in ecology and epidemiology were used. The emergent development may be approximated by local growth that is logistic through time and directional dispersal. The current rates and dominant direction of development may be inferred, by assuming that roads develop at a rate of 55 km per year. Large areas of the Amazon will be subject to extensive anthropogenic change should the observed patterns of road development continue.

Local people's involvement in the management of conservation initiatives is central to ongoing debates on the relative merits of distinct biodiversity conservation models. Since different governance models provide distinct opportunities for local people to participate in the management of protected areas, their knowledge of these governance models and motivation to collaborate will vary. This paper analyses cognisance and participation in (1) government-imposed biosphere reserves and (2) community conservation areas, in which ecotourism projects take place. Qualitative and quantitative data (n = 205) were gathered in two indigenous communities in Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Whereas local cognisance of community-driven conservation initiatives is not always greater than cognisance of government-imposed Biosphere Reserves, local participation is always greater. Cognisance of and participation in conservation initiatives depend on the management approach, extent of external resource support, and a community's social organization. Gender and land holding status influence access to information about conservation initiatives, since men with land rights had more access than other people. More participatory mechanisms for decision-making and direct communication strategies between managers and local people are required to improve communities’ involvement in conservation.

Worldwide, coastal and floodplain wetlands are rapidly urbanizing, making them highly vulnerable to biodiversity loss, biological invasion and climate change. Yet urban wetlands management is an understudied area of global environmental research. Different policy approaches and institutional arrangements in place for urban wetlands governance have to be studied comparatively to obtain a better understanding of the current issues. This paper investigates four urban wetland policy regimes and the application of ecological reference points across four countries. The regimes are discussed within the context of global policy trends, urbanization patterns and environmental change. The analysis illustrates that the four cases deviate substantially in certain characteristics and converge in others. Global trends such as environmental treaties and restructuring of city spaces are common policy drivers for all cases. Conversely, the localized specific problems have yielded specialized policy responses in each case. Declaration of fixed biological reference points for wetlands were not used at any stage of the policy development process. However, the wetland managers formally or informally set up ecosystem-services oriented benchmarks for urban wetland management. Globally-applicable normative policy directives or universal ecological reference points seem bound to fail in urban wetlands governance. However, in designing effective urban wetland policy and institutions at the regional scale, both context-specific and generalized lessons from empirical policy evaluation of multiple case studies need to be jointly considered. Based on the characteristics of the policy regimes analysed in this study, a hypothetical framework for urban wetland policy evaluation is proposed; this has yet to be validated by empirical application to actual cases.

The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) reforms agreed by European Union (EU) ministers include a discard ban where fishers will be required to land all fish they catch. The ban is expected to reduce the risk of capturing unwanted and low-value biomass species, and therefore should make fishing more environmentally and economically sustainable. The implications of introducing a discards ban may be gauged by assessing the practical and economic issues surrounding whether discards not destined for human consumption can be used once landed. Interviews with company managers established the attitude of the main commercial outlets towards suitability of, and interest in using discards. Results indicate that opportunities for using discards include reduction to fishmeal and fish oil, ensiling, composting, anaerobic digestion with energy recovery, and freezing (prior to use as bait). In the UK, nine main outlets expressed interest in using discards as raw materials to process into animal, pet and aqua feed; organic fertilizer; frozen bait; and other products, such as renewable energy generation. Estimates of discard quantities from English fleets show that most of the outlets are not located close to the main landing ports where the discards would likely come ashore. However, most outlets have extensive established transport links, which would enable them to cover even the remote ports. Preliminary analysis on cost of discarding shows that a discard ban will lead to increases in annual operating costs for fishers ranging from GB£ 1709–90 959 yr−1 (£1 = US$ 1.52, May 2013). Assuming that discards are processed for fishmeal, fetching c. GB£ 130 t−1, then majority of the fishers will make losses in their fishing operations. Such losses could lead fishers to adopt more selective gears in order to avoid catching unwanted species and thereby help conserve the marine environment. Finding potential uses for discards is important in the context of the proposed land-all catch policy under the reformed CFP, but the primary goal of government should be to prevent the capture of unwanted fish.