There are clear links between tourism and the international wildlife trade, especially in countries with high levels of biodiversity and high numbers of international tourists. In the absence of clear regulations and implementation of existing policies, tourists can inadvertently have a negative impact on the environment, including through items bought as souvenirs. Bali is one of the world’s premier tourist destinations. We investigated legally protected species that are offered for sale specifically targeting tourists in Bali. During December 2022–June 2023, we surveyed 66 shops offering curios (skulls, bones, carvings) of animals for which the international trade is regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES). We found items from >500 individuals of 20 CITES-listed species, including primate skulls, ivory carvings and decorated shells. According to vendors, there would be no problem exporting these items despite the absence of CITES permits. Export records over the last two decades provided by the Indonesian authorities, mostly indicating no exports, contrast sharply with our observations in Bali. A short but effective campaign as a collaborative effort between industry, tourism operators, local and expatriate communities and government agencies could result in a drastic reduction of protected and/or CITES-listed species ending up in trade.

Interventions in environmental conservation are intended to make things better, not worse. Yet unintended and unanticipated consequences plague environmental conservation; key is how uncertainty plays out. Insights from the intellectual humility literature offer constructive strategies for coming to terms with uncertainty. Strategies such as self-distancing and self-assessment of causal complexity can be incorporated into conservation decision-making processes. Including reflection on what we know and do not know in the decision-making process potentially reduces unintended and unanticipated consequences of environmental conservation and management decisions. An important caution is not to have intellectual humility legitimate failing to act in the face of uncertainty.

The Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA), in power during 2002–2021, initiated the process of instituting community-based forest governance and building local capacity for natural resource management. These efforts coincided with the presence of international security forces and the mobilization of civil society organizations, and they were in response to community aspirations to protect and restore often degraded local forests. Legislation was passed to enable forest protection and management, including a provision to encourage participatory management by local community user groups organized as Forest Management Associations (FMAs). By the end of the GIRoA era, c. 20 registered FMAs were operating with c. 400 others in various stages of development across Afghanistan. Our analysis of relevant policy documents revealed that the policy framework developed during the GIRoA era scores favourably on the ideal criteria for community-based resource management. Despite the change in political administration with the inception of the current Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan regime, the influence of the GIRoA era serves as a starting point and may have enduring influences on rural communities in Afghanistan and the natural resources that support them. Anecdotal evidence suggests that community-based forest management may persist under the current national leadership despite international isolation and funding constraints. The model developed in Afghanistan may be relevant to other fragile states, especially in contexts where rural forest-dependent communities have strong local institutions, such as shuras, and where forests are not prone to heavy extraction pressure.

Protected areas worldwide are impacted by human activities within their boundaries. Despite having the highest level of protection in the US, wilderness areas are still vulnerable to ecological impacts. We compiled population, population growth rate, median travel time, wilderness size, wilderness proximity, relative accessibility, trail density and an amenity index to generate a Day-Use Vulnerability Index (DUVI) for 722 wilderness areas in the continuous US (CONUS). Using DUVI, we found that the Mount Timpanogos wilderness area in Utah, the Glacier View wilderness area in Washington, the J.N. Ding Darling wilderness area in Florida, the Philip Burton wilderness area in California and the Birkhead Mountains wilderness area in North Carolina were most likely to have ecological impacts from high day-use. Our findings provide a system for evaluating daily use of wilderness areas that could be paired with visitor counts in the future to improve predictions. Growing human populations and recreation are worldwide issues, suggesting that this framework could also be of interest to stakeholders outside the CONUS.

The wetlands of the jalca ecoregion in the Andes of northern Peru form peat and play a major role in the hydrological ecosystem services of the ecoregion. Although peat is globally valued for carbon sequestration and storage, peatlands have not yet been mapped in the jalca. In this region, the Gocta waterfall, one of the 20 highest waterfalls in the world, depends on the jalca’s wetlands ecosystem. The local population depends on tourism to the waterfall and is concerned about preserving its drainage area. To inform conservation planning, in this study we delimited the drainage area of the Gocta waterfall and identified land tenure by applying Geographic Information System (GIS), remote sensing and participatory mapping techniques. Then, by classifying optical, radar and digital elevation models data, we mapped peatland in the jalca of the Gocta drainage area with an overall accuracy of 97.1%. Our results will inform conservation strategy in this complex area of communal, private and informal land tenure systems. At a regional level, this appears to be the first attempt at mapping peatlands using remote sensing imagery in the jalca ecoregion, and it represents a milestone for future efforts to map and conserve peatlands in other tropical mountain areas of the world.

There is increasing disconnect between children and nature in the UK. Given that childhood nature experiences are important for the development of nature connection, well-being benefits and aspects of children’s development, mapping the existing biodiversity that children are exposed to on a daily basis in schools and their grounds is vital to identifying areas of low biodiversity and to developing strategies to increase exposure to nature. Despite children spending a large portion of time at schools, there has not yet been an in-depth, in situ assessment of the biodiversity present in school grounds. Using a sample of 14 English schools, including state-funded and non-state-funded schools, we used remote images to quantify green-space area within a 3–km buffer around (buffer greenness) and within (school greenness) each school, including the school’s grounds surrounding the buildings, and in situ images to quantify vegetation visible to children within each school’s grounds (visible vegetation). We also surveyed trees, ground plants, ground invertebrates and birds within school grounds. School greenness correlated positively with visible vegetation, but buffer greenness was not related to either school greenness or visible vegetation. Buffer greenness correlated positively with plant richness, and school greenness correlated positively with tree abundance and richness. Visible vegetation correlated positively with tree abundance and richness, maximum tree diameter at breast height, plant richness and invertebrate abundance. Non-state-funded schools had higher visible vegetation than state-funded schools. Our sample indicates that schools can support considerable biodiversity and that this is broadly consistent across state-funded and non-state-funded schools. We suggest that increasing the amount of vegetation, through planting of trees, shrubs and borders, may be the most effective method of increasing school biodiversity, as visible vegetation had effects on the greatest number of taxa.

Invasive alien species represent a multifaceted management problem in terms of threats to biodiversity and ecosystems and their impacts on agriculture and human well-being. Ambrosia artemisiifolia is an invasive alien plant in Europe that affects the human population as its already highly allergenic pollen can interact with air pollutants, resulting in detrimental effects on health. In this context, the invasive beetle Ophraella communa was proposed as a biocontrol agent of A. artemisiifolia, as it feeds on its leaves, leading to a decrease in pollen production. This paper takes advantage of the different co-occurrence classes obtained by the ecological niche models inferred for both of these species based on current and future climatic conditions. We integrate them with spatial data regarding major air pollutants (nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter). We couple this information with European human population density data at a narrow territorial scale to infer current and future statistically significant hotspots of health risk. The Netherlands and the UK host the widest hotspots within their national territory for both current (7.09% and 3.54%, respectively) and future (15.04% and 6.70%, respectively) scenarios. Considering the alarming results obtained for some areas, the monitoring and biocontrol of A. artemisiifolia should be applied as a European strategy.

Invasive species can have disastrous effects on the ecosystems they invade, requiring costly, labour-intensive mitigation. Public awareness campaigns are often used as a tool to reduce these species’ impacts. While heralded as useful and cost-effective, little evidence suggests that these campaigns contribute to meaningful biological outcomes. Furthermore, awareness campaigns are relatively understudied despite their usage as a common approach to mitigating invasive species. We conducted a literature review to assess publications that evaluated the efficacy of public awareness campaigns for managing invasive species. Out of 4382 papers initially extracted for analysis, we determined that 24 of them included studies conducted on awareness campaigns for invasive species. Four public awareness campaigns were deemed a ‘success’, and the other campaigns’ success was indeterminable due to study design. Our study revealed that inconsistencies in defined end points, unclear procedures and variability of campaigns contribute to there being insufficient evidence to determine the efficacy of public awareness campaigns. To evaluate the true efficacy of public awareness campaigns, we recommend that organizations conducting such campaigns implement rigorous and standardized assessments (e.g., Before–After Control–Impact designs or Bayesian analyses) that include measures of not just changes in the knowledge and behaviour of target audiences, but also relevant biological outcomes.

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.

Allocation of water specifically to the environment (often dubbed ‘environmental water’ or ‘environmental flows’) can be contentious within government, among irrigators and between community members. The reduction in supply of fresh water has led to questions surrounding the efficiencies and ecological value of securing these adequate flows for waterways. This literature review examines the evidence on these perceptions of environmental water allocations, focusing foremost on general public, irrigator, Indigenous and decision-maker perspectives. Existing studies are predominantly in Global North areas such as Australia, Canada and the USA. Two themes featured strongly in the papers: the importance of personal values in the acceptance of environmental water and the perception of fairness in environmental water allocation processes. Although the research area has been expanding, there is still limited representation in types of study, disciplinary backgrounds and study locations, and as such many research opportunities remain.

Government conservation measures will always depend on public support. While more has been learnt about which species the public values and which conservation measures are socially acceptable, less is known about the criteria that the public thinks government should consider when making conservation investment decisions. This study uses a stated preference best–worst scaling method to gauge the views of a sample of the Australian public on what they think government should consider when allocating funding to threatened species conservation. We found that the three most important factors were the risk that a species might become extinct, the likelihood that a conservation intervention might be effective and the risk of unintended consequences for other species that could potentially arise if the measure was implemented. Costs of conservation measures and the degree to which the society accepts these costs were considered much less important. The latter aspect was consistent with the high level of trust that respondents placed in the judgement of experts and scientists concerning threatened species conservation. We conclude that the Australian Government has a societal mandate to spend more money on threatened species conservation, provided that there is little risk and that it is backed up by science.

Unsustainable hunting threatens biodiversity in the tropics through the removal of key seed-dispersing frugivorous primates. Traditionally, hunting in the Amazon Basin was managed through hunter territoriality, with the threat of social sanctions for overexploitation. We examined hunter territoriality and differential prey selection as alternative hypotheses to central-place foraging. Territoriality occurred beyond common hunting grounds, which were on major rivers and immediately surrounding the community. Hunters displayed selectivity in prey choice, with 50% of hunters not hunting primates. The combination of hunter territoriality and differential prey selection means that over 22% of the hunted area of the Sucusari river basin could be considered primate refuge. Of the remaining hunted area, 16% was hunted relatively little by primate hunters. We suggest that the combination of territoriality and selection against primates creates refuges, mitigating the effects of sustained hunting pressure and contributing to the conservation of these species.

The anthropogenic spread of disease from captive to wild amphibian populations (referred to as spillover) is linked to global amphibian declines. Disinfecting procedures and protocols exist to mitigate pathogen transmission to and within natural areas, but understanding of visitor attitudes and behaviour regarding their adoption is limited. We surveyed visitors in two natural areas in a global amphibian biodiversity hotspot to assess their attitudes regarding pathogen spread in such areas and analysed the factors influencing their behavioural intentions to take specific actions to prevent pathogen spillover. Visitors’ willingness to take action was influenced by their attitudes, behavioural control and trust in wildlife/land managers, whereas socio-demographic characteristics were less influential. These findings help us to understand visitor behaviour with respect to amphibian biosecurity in natural areas and inform enhanced biosecurity measures and strategic messaging to reduce pathogen spillover.

The analysis of conservation narratives primarily resides in the methods and techniques of social sciences, focusing mainly on uncovering advocacy versus critical lines of thought in the complex mosaic of arguments around institutional actors and the public. Researchers have previously proposed an archetypal scheme in which the core conservation narratives and their conceptual interrelations are classified. This report explores the feasibility of coupling such a traditional method with techniques emanating from quantitative linguistics, network analysis and bibliometry. The neologic metaphor of the Anthropause is purposely added to long-established narratives to examine its potential effects on the conservation narratives landscape. The results show that this metaphor reorganizes the mentally constructed connections between flag narratives and symbolic lexical units.

Loss of local biodiversity resulting from abrupt environmental change is a significant environmental problem throughout the world. Extinctions of plants are particularly important yet are often overlooked. Drawing from a case in Hawai‘i, a global hotspot for plant and other extinctions, we demonstrate an effort to better understand and determine priorities for the management of an endangered plant (‘Ihi makole or Portulaca sclerocarpa) in the face of rapid and extreme environmental change. Volcanic heat emissions and biological invasions have anecdotally been suggested as possible threats to the species. We integrated P. sclerocarpa outplanting with efforts to collect geological and ecological data to gauge the role of elevated soil temperatures and invasive grasses in driving P. sclerocarpa mortality and population decline. We measured soil temperature, soil depth, surrounding cover and P. sclerocarpa survivorship over three decades. The abundance of wild P. sclerocarpa decreased by 99.7% from the 1990s to 2021. Only 51% of outplantings persisted through 3–4 years. Binomial regression and structural equation modelling revealed that, among the variables we analysed, high soil temperatures were most strongly associated with population decline. Finding the niche where soil temperatures are low enough to allow P. sclerocarpa survival but high enough to limit other agents of P. sclerocarpa mortality may be necessary to increase population growth of this species.

The Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has played an important role in assessing knowledge and raising awareness of biodiversity loss, and it is now also mandated to assess and support processes of transformative change. This perspective paper argues that the transformative change assessment entails key elements of transformative agency, which, along with the performative role of IPBES, makes it relevant to re-conceptualize the organization as a transformative agent. This new role will change IPBES and brings attention to risks related to undermining the credibility, relevance and legitimacy of IPBES, but it also brings opportunities for innovations that may strengthen the organization, including furthering public reasoning, acknowledging ambiguities and disagreements, ensuring scientific autonomy and balancing governmental power in the organization. As IPBES takes on the fundamental challenge of transformative change, critical scrutiny and democratic debate regarding its function as a political actor are more important than ever.

The conservation performance of protected areas (PAs) is typically measured according to whether species are likely to be present within PAs. However, to attain the goal of long-term conservation it is important to consider the performance of PAs in terms of their ability to support the persistence of the species they contain. We used the concept of minimum viable population (MVP) size to examine the potential for PAs within a large national PA network to support mammal species over the long term. By developing habitat models for each species and estimating the area required to support the MVP size for each species, we identified whether each PA had sufficient habitat to meet the species’ requirements. We found that as a whole the PA network is able to support at least one viable population for all species studied. However, the extent of protection offered to species by the PA network varies considerably, with many PAs not able to support viable populations of individual species on their own. By understanding the capacity of PAs to provide long-term protection to species, our findings can guide strategies to increase the resilience of PA networks as a whole, including by improving habitat quality within and connectivity between PAs.

Species tend to peak in abundance at different times after fires. Over time, species richness (α) and landscape heterogeneity are prone to increase and lead to greater between-site diversity (β). However, post-fire salvage logging can reduce β-diversity, both directly and through its influence on succession. The as-yet understudied response of land snails to long-term habitat modification after wildfires and forest management is important for decision-making in forest restoration and conservation. We expected to detect differences in land snails and diversity in both the short and long term and between treatments in a natural park in the Mediterranean Basin. However, our results showed that post-fire management was a non-significant variable for snail community diversity, the exception being open-habitat endemic species. Plant succession and leaf litter cover were the main variables that shaped snail diversity and abundance over time after fires. Eighteen years after a fire, the land snail diversity had improved and the community composition had diversified, irrespective of the post-fire treatment, but threatened species disappeared and the total snail numbers had notably declined. To preserve threatened open-habitat species, prescribed fires and livestock grazing are recommended in combination with mature areas that can act as shelters where forest snails can recover from future disturbances.