Sudan is one of the African countries that are most seriously stricken by drought, desertification, and famine. Although accurate assessment of the disaster is yet to be documented, published data indicate that some 40% of the human population have been affected. In the Kordofan region alone, some 2.8 million people were subjected to the famine and half-a-million died. The drought's incidence and effects in western Sudan decreased from the Desert zone southwards across the Sahelian zone to the Sudanian zone.

The internationalization of conservation activities in the form of organizations is essentially a post-World War I development. The first international initiatives were taken in North America during the first decade of the 20th century, and in 1910 other attempts were made in Europe; but it was not before 1922 that the first truly international conservation organization, the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP), was created. After World War II, ecology evolved rapidly as a discipline and this development led to international cooperation in conservation. U.N. organizations such as FAO and UNESCO became established. In 1948 the latter took the initiative in the creation of IUCN. ICBP founded the International Waterfowl Research Bureau (IWRB), another important organization, and IUCN took the initiative to form in 1961 the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) as a fund-raising and public relations organization.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List provides a globally-recognized evaluation of the conservation status of species, with the aim of catalysing appropriate conservation action. However, in some parts of the world, species data may be lacking or insufficient to predict risk status. If species with shared ecological or life history characteristics also tend to share their risk of extinction, then ecological or life history characteristics may be used to predict which species may be at risk, although perhaps not yet classified as such by the IUCN. Statistical models may be a means to determine whether there are non-threatened or unclassified species that share the characteristics of threatened species, however there are no data on which model might be most appropriate or whether multiple models should be used. In this paper, three types of statistical models, namely regression trees, logistic regression and discriminant function analysis are compared using data on the ecological characteristics of Finnish lepidopterans (butterflies and moths). Overall, logistic regression performed slightly better than discriminant function analysis in predicting species status, and both outperformed regression trees. Uncertainty in species classification suggests that multiple analyses should be performed and particular attention devoted to those species for which the methods disagree. Such standard statistical methods may be a valuable additional tool in assessing the likely threat status of a species where there is a paucity of abundance data.

Non-timber forest products form a substantial contribution to the livelihood of many rural communities worldwide. In the Western Ghats, India, epiphytic macrolichens are harvested by Paliyan tribes to generate supplementary income. Paliyan tribes employ two harvesting methods: shallow harvesting, with a minimum of attached bark substratum, and deep harvesting, which exposes the sapwood. To evaluate the regeneration of the lichen community in terms of species diversity, abundance and composition, 320 bark samples of up to 50 cm2 were collected from bark patches where lichens had been harvested previously, as shown by bark scars. Samples selected represented four host tree species, both harvesting methods and seven one-year intervals of time since harvesting. In each case, the field guide estimated sample age, and peer-testing proved these estimates to be reliable up to an age of seven years. Seven years after harvesting, the lichen community showed noteworthy regeneration capacity in terms of total lichen coverage and species richness. However, to assess the risk of local species loss in the long-term, any harvesting should include continuous monitoring of lichen species composition. Since shallow harvesting resulted in a swifter recovery of species abundance and richness compared with deep harvesting, harvesters should preferentially employ the shallow harvesting method.

Human interactions with rain-forest on the Australian continent have played, and will continue to play, a vital role in their distribution and survival. The presence and significance of rain-forest in Australia lies in the evolutionary history of the Australian plate since the break-up of the Gondwanan supercontinent. Its continued survival and distribution illustrates and encapsulates the history of plant evolution and biogeography in Australia.

Since human arrival in Australia at least 40,000 years ago, human interactions with rain-forest have been marked by a number of phases — ranging from Aboriginal use of rain-forest resources to the impetus given by the hunt for the prized Red Cedar, and from the early European settlement on the east coast of Australia in the midto late-19th century to the wholesale clearing of rain forests for agricultural settlement and dairying in the late 19th century. In more modern times, human interactions with rain-forest have focused on adapting forest management techniques to rain-forest logging, restructuring the native forest timber industry in the face of mechanization, changing markets and resource constraints, convulsions as a result of conservationist challenges in Terania Creek and Daintree, and finally the implications of conserving rain-forests in the context of natural processes including fire, climate change, and the impact of human visitors and their recreation.

The course of the controversies over rain-forest conservation in Australia has meant that rain-forest logging either has been dramatically curtailed or is in the process of generally ceasing. The protection of rainforests from logging and forestry operations in the future seems secure, given the widespread community support for rain-forest conservation. Threats to rain-forest conservation in the future are likely to be found in more subtle processes: the impact of fire regimes on the spread and contractions of rain-forests, the impacts of exotic species such as Lantana (Lantana camara) and Camphor Laurel (Cinnamomum camphora), the impacts of human uses through tourism and recreation, the diminution of the viability of isolated pockets by ‘edge effects’, and the damage to the remaining stands on freehold property by conflicting land-uses.

Overlying all of these potential threats is the impact of global climate change. Climate change since the Tertiary has reduced the once widespread rain-forest communities of Australia practically to the status of relicts in refugia. Will the remaining rain-forests be able to withstand the projected human-induced climate changes of the future?

Traditional classifications of vertebrates’ responses to urbanization fail to capture the behaviour of those that rely on both urban and wildland resources for population persistence. Here, we use the wood stork (Mycteria americana), a species that makes daily foraging trips up to 74 km away from its nest, as an example of a previously unrecognized response to urbanization. We monitored nests and sampled diets at stork colonies in south Florida (USA) during 2014–2020 to investigate how storks use urban habitats. We found that urban development now comprises up to 51.6% of the land cover within the 30-km core foraging area surrounding colonies and that storks access alternative prey types within these urban areas. Our results also showed that urban-nesting storks outperformed wildland-nesting storks when the hydrological condition of the wetlands was suboptimal for foraging. Though storks still require healthy wetlands for population persistence, urban habitat benefitted storks when hydrological patterns were not ideal for prey production in wildlands. This ‘commuter’ response to urbanization, whereby individuals opt to utilize both urban and wildland resources within short time periods, may apply to other vertebrates with large home ranges.

It was just over 50 years ago that the fledgling United Nations expressed its revulsion against the German wartime atrocities, doing so by means of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNGA 1948). The 30 principles declared in 1948 were eventually solidified in 1966 via two widely-adopted international covenants (Afghanistan et al. 1966a, b). However, the need for environmental conservation was nowhere directly mentioned in any of these three landmark documents. Nonetheless, their fundamental principle that every human being has the inherent right to life (UNGA 1948, Article 3; Afghanistan et al. 1966a, Article 6.1) has been inferred to imply the need for an environment adequate for the fulfillment of that right (Westing 1993).

Training needs assessments have revealed the need for people-oriented training to increase the job performance of African protected area (PA) managers. The Garoua regional wildlife college for francophone Africa (Cameroon) developed the first long (diploma and certificate) and refresher courses in community conservation for mid-career PA managers and guards from West and Central Africa. Through lectures, case studies and participatory rural appraisal exercises, the courses emphasized the development of skills for tuning principles of people participation to the conservation objectives of PAs. The present study reviews the trainees' evaluations of these courses, to appreciate their relevance and support their further development. Diploma students judged the course as highly relevant because of the acquired analytical skills, whereas certificate students considered them only of medium relevance. The response to short refresher courses varied as a function of the use of cases from either the trainees' professional experience or from the fieldwork location. The reactions of trainees to this learning opportunity show that PA personnel are not ‘attitude-limited’ as often suggested. Their constraints to develop a more people-oriented work style lie largely in the areas of knowledge and skills. These findings point to the need for increased efforts to implement training of PA personnel in community conservation, preferably early in their careers.

Nationally important wintering populations of up to 2700 Pochard Aythya ferina and 2000 Tufted Duck A. fuligula feed around Salford Docks in the upper reaches of the Manchester Ship Canal. The system is grossly organically polluted and devoid of aquatic macrophytes, but holds high densities of oligochaetes and other pollution-tolerant invertebrates. The species fed together and differences in feeding distributions were more apparent between day and night than they were between species or winter period. We related the spatial patterns of feeding by ducks to water depth, channel width, total organic benthic carbon levels, and invertebrate densities. Separate analyses were performed for each species, during nighttime and daytime, and for different periods of the winter. In only half these analyses could feeding patterns be explained by differences in the microhabitat variables. However, feeding by both species was concentrated in the wider portions of the docks, in areas with high densities of oligochaetes, but particularly in areas of high total benthic organic carbon. These were areas where large amounts of sewage matter are deposited in the benthos. There are plans to improve water quality in the docks by modernizing sewage treatment systems upstream and by oxygenating the water within the docks. These may generally improve the biology of the system , but they may have a serious impact on the numbers of diving ducks by reducing the densities of their invertebrate prey.

To manage widespread conservation conflicts, building a shared understanding among the parties involved has been considered key. However, there is little empirical evidence of the role this understanding might play in the context of imposed biosphere reserves. Using semi-structured and in-depth interviews in two communities within the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, we explored whether or not there is a shared understanding of conflicts between local people and reserve managers, and we analysed its contribution to conflict management. We found that a shared understanding is not a determining factor when the conflict solution demands actions that exceed stakeholders’ functions. While a shared understanding helps with the global process of conflict management, there are other challenges: local impairment resulting from the exclusionary creation and the operation of protected areas and the need for action to solve a conflict that exceeds the functions of stakeholders.

Grassland habitats currently face severe anthropogenic exploitation, thereby affecting the survival of grassland-dependent biodiversity globally. The biodiversity-rich grasslands of India lack quantitative spatiotemporal information on their status. We evaluated the status of upper Gangetic Plains grasslands in 2015 and compared it with those from 1985, 1995 and 2005. On-ground mapping and visual classifications revealed a 57% decline in these grasslands between 1985 (418 km2) and 2015 (178 km2), mostly driven by habitat conversion (74% contribution by cropland). Limited radiotelemetry data from endemic swamp deer indicated a possible grassland-dominated average home range size of 1.02 km2, and these patches were highly preferred (average Ivlev’s index = 0.85) over other land-use classes at both spatial and temporal scales. Camera-trapping within the core habitats suggests the critical use of these patches as fawning/breeding grounds. Habitat suitability analysis indicates only c. 17% of the area along the Ganges is suitable as swamp deer habitat. We recommend the protection of these critical grassland patches to maintain ‘dynamic corridors’, with restoration and other management approaches involving multiple stakeholders to ensure the survival of this critical ecosystem.

Providing benefits to local people from forest conservation programmes is an important issue for policy makers. Livelihood projects are a common way to provide benefits, but there is little information about their costs. We analysed 463 livelihood projects in the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) pilot project in Madagascar to understand how different approaches to delivering livelihood projects affect costs. We compared costs across four approaches: conservation agreements, small grants, direct implementation and application of social safeguards. The approach impacted overall costs and the proportion of funds reaching communities. Projects implemented as safeguards were most expensive and had the lowest proportion of expenditures reaching the community. Projects provided as part of conservation agreements directed the highest proportion of expenditures to communities. Our results highlight that how livelihood projects are delivered has implications for project costs and community benefits and should be an important consideration in the design and implementation of REDD+ and forest conservation policies.