Cities are becoming increasingly important to biodiversity conservation, conservation that could also benefit urban people given the importance of nature to human well-being. Urban conservation is challenging, however, given cities’ primary role as human habitats and the need to simultaneously support heterogeneous human and wild species communities in similarly heterogeneous environments. We demonstrate a framework for identifying conservation zones within cities and human and species habitat preferences within them, thereby identifying habitat attributes that management could target to support human well-being and conservation objectives. The framework first categorizes conservation zones within a city, then develops species indicator communities for each zone. Habitat preferences are identified for each indicator community using richness modelling, and human habitat preferences within zones are identified using one of several approaches. Lastly, habitat preferences are compared to identify commonalities and differences within zones. We demonstrate our framework in Iowa City (IA, USA) using songbirds, identifying similarities in human and bird habitat preferences within conservation zones that management could target to support human well-being and species conservation and differences in preferences that could be proactively managed to reduce conflict. This framework can thus identify key habitat attributes and approaches to inform conservation planning targeted to specific settings within cities.

Protection of biodiversity requires inclusive and gender-responsive programming. Evidence of success in engaging women in large carnivore conservation remains scarce, however, although women play an important role in caring for livestock at risk of predation and could contribute to large-carnivore conservation. We aimed to assess the performance of an income-generation and skills-building programme for women in Spiti Valley (India) that sought to engage women in local conservation action. Annual programme monitoring together with a one-time survey of attitudes, perceptions and social norms in eight communities exposed to the conservation programme and seven ‘control’ communities revealed: a keen interest and increasing levels of women’s participation over 7 years of programme operation; participant reports of multiple programme benefits including additional personal income, social networking and travel opportunities; and more positive attitudes towards snow leopards among programme participants than among non-participants in the control communities. Women from programme communities recorded in their diaries 33 self-directed conservation actions including improving livestock protection and preventing wildlife poaching. These results show a way forward to purposively engage women in conservation programming towards achieving sustainable and equitable outcomes in efforts to promote carnivore–human coexistence.

While many species are affected by trafficking in their products, some take centre stage, including elephants, rhinos, pangolins and helmeted hornbills, and we report an open trade that continued in these items in eastern Myanmar between 2015 and 2020. We surveyed Myanmar’s border towns of Tachilek and Mong La, recording volumes, prices, origins and trade routes. We observed c. 16 500 ivory items, 8 helmeted hornbill casques and 264 beads, over 100 African rhino horn items and over 250 pangolins (mainly skins and scales). In 2020, asking prices in Mong La for rhino horn tips were US$10 770, rhino horn bracelets US$5385, helmeted hornbill casques US$2424 and big ivory bangles c. US$800, with prices being stable overall since 2017. We estimate the combined monetary values at US$0.25–0.30 million for Tachilek and US$0.75–2.00 million for Mong La. Mong La’s market today far surpasses Tachilek’s, being on the border of mainland China. Mobile phones and online trading allow customers to order items without bothering to cross the borders. Commitment to address the illegal wildlife trade across Myanmar’s borders requires a greater degree of cooperation and coordination amongst the relevant authorities in Myanmar, China and Thailand.

Protected areas have numerous roles (such as biodiversity preservation, the development of scientific research and the sustainable use of natural resources), but they are under threat from political and economic forces. The 837 000-ha Serra do Divisor National Park (SDNP) in the south-western Brazilian Amazon combines the conservation of natural resources and the maintenance of the productive activities of c. 400 resident families. The Brazilian and Peruvian governments have proposed a road linking Acre (Brazil) to Ucayali (Peru) that would bisect the SDNP. Another threat to the SDNP is a bill proposing its downgrading to an ‘environmental protection area’. This study aims to map the land cover of the SDNP and its surroundings from 1988 to 2018 and to analyse the dynamics of land-use change. Analysis of Landsat satellite images with supervised classification using the MaxVer algorithm show that, during the 30-year period, pasture showed the highest absolute land-cover gain, with 1986 ha in the interior and 7661 ha along the periphery of the SDNP. Only 1% of the park’s primary forest was lost by 2018, but the proposed road and potential downgrading may result in accelerated deforestation and forest degradation in the near future.

Protected areas (PAs) are critical for achieving conservation, economic and development goals, but the factors that lead households to engage in prohibited resource collection in PAs are not well understood. We examine collection behaviours in community forests and the protected Chitwan National Park in Chitwan, Nepal. Our approach incorporates household and ecological data, including structured interviews, spatially explicit data on collection behaviours measured with computer tablets and a systematic field survey of invasive species. We pair our data with a framework that considers factors related to a household’s demand for resources, barriers to prohibited resource collection, barriers to legal resource collection and alternatives to resource collection. The analysis identifies key drivers of prohibited collection, including sociodemographic variables and perceptions of an invasive plant (Mikania micrantha). The social-ecological systems approach reveals that household perceptions of the presence of M. micrantha were more strongly associated with resource collection decisions than the actual ecologically measured presence of the plant. We explore the policy implications of our findings for PAs and propose that employing a social-ecological systems approach leads to conservation policy and scientific insights that are not possible to achieve with social or ecological approaches alone.

Message framing contributes to an increase in public support for invasive species management. However, little is known about people’s preferences for the multiple objectives of management within different contexts relating to the challenges and benefits of invasive species management. We examine Japanese citizens’ preferences for the goals of free-roaming unowned cat (Felis catus) management in three contextual frames by applying experimentally controlled information and the best–worst scaling technique. Our results indicate that the ecological frame highlighting the ecological impacts of free-roaming unowned cats on native ecosystems significantly increases Japanese citizens’ concern about cat predation, although the frame did not change the preference ranking of goals. There are differences in the effects of message framing depending on cat ownership. The best–worst scaling technique shows that Japanese citizens prefer to maintain a sanitary environment, followed by the prevention of zoonotic diseases. Although the ranking of sanitary environmental management does not depend on cat ownership, the ranking of the other goals differs depending on cat ownership. The findings highlight the importance of strategic message framing and its prioritization in encouraging public support for invasive species management.

Wild carnivores are threatened by human activities, particularly by lethal responses to livestock predation. As natural prey populations decline, predation of livestock and consumption of discarded livestock ‘waste’ (carcasses and body parts) should increase. We investigated whether parameters linked to the production of livestock waste affected the likelihood of livestock predation. We interviewed 160 households near Ruaha National Park in Tanzania to obtain information on households, livestock ownership, predation and parameters linked to livestock waste production. Our analysis identified parameters that affected the likelihood of predation on cattle, sheep and goats. When these parameters were controlled for, we found an increased likelihood of cattle predation as waste from diseased and slaughtered cattle increased. Sheep predation was more likely and cattle predation was less likely as sheep deaths from starvation increased. Goat predation was more likely in medium-sized than smaller or larger villages, suggesting a trade-off to predators between the increasing benefit of more livestock waste and the costs of higher human disturbance and diminishing natural prey abundance as village size category increased. Our findings suggest that improved disposal of livestock waste from slaughtered cattle and measures to decrease cattle deaths from disease should reduce predation of highly prized cattle.

The North American Waterfowl Management Plan highlights the importance of enhancing waterfowl habitat for productivity and resilience. Many forms of land management are conducted in wetlands to support the diverse communities of waterfowl and other species. Primary burrowing crayfish are also abundant and important in these environments, but little research is available assessing the effects of waterfowl land management on primary burrowers. We examined the response of the digger crayfish, Creaserinus fodiens, to the common vegetation management practices of mowing and disking at waterfowl conservation areas in south-eastern Missouri. Our results demonstrated that at a fine scale, crayfish density was affected by only canopy cover. We also highlighted distributional effects of landscape-level environmental variables and suggested that habitat generalists were tolerant of vegetation management, responding more to vegetation composition and broader landscape effects. We discuss wetlands conservation practices and suggest that burrowing crayfish management would integrate well with some current management strategies for waterfowl.

For many, declining biodiversity represents an emotionally and psychologically distant ‘cost’ – similar to how a number of people perceive climate change. Using an expectancy-value theory framework, we showed participants photographs that visibly illustrated the threat of biodiversity loss. Specifically, we tested a combination of preregistered and exploratory hypotheses through an online experiment (n = 843) to understand whether viewing photographs of plants and animals (with and without captions) bolstered people’s valuing of biodiversity and willingness to donate to a nature-focused charity relative to a control group. Participants who viewed photographs (without captions) valued biodiversity more and donated more to the nature-focused charity; those who viewed photographs with captions showed similar though more muted (non-statistically significant) effects. Follow-up mediation analyses on the photographs-only participants suggested that the photographs may have catalysed negative emotions that increased valuing of biodiversity and, in turn, increased donations. This study provides preregistered evidence that thoughtfully selected photographs boost people’s valuing of biodiversity and exploratory evidence that the pathway through which that might occur is more likely via negative emotions than through reduced psychological distance. Educators, conservationists, journalists and others may find these results informative as they develop strategies for addressing the acute problem of biodiversity loss.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), designed to build critical infrastructure and coordinate economic growth, is the most significant development initiative in modern history. The BRI has a documented vision for sustainability, including environmental impact assessments and responsibility tenets. Despite this, a growing body of literature has found adverse effects of BRI projects on protected land and species. To understand corporate responsibility and regulations for companies participating in the BRI, we gathered information on 260 BRI companies using the Refinitiv Eikon BRI Connect database and the China Global Investment Tracker. The results revealed a significant gap in corporate responsibility reporting for biodiversity impacts, environmental restoration, environmental project financing and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 14 ‘Life below Water’ and 15 ‘Life on Land’. The modest fraction of companies that we found to report biodiversity accountability highlights the need to restructure and incentivize the reporting of environmental and biodiversity risks. The current evidence of limited adherence to responsibility measures highlights a clear opportunity to align BRI development with the BRI’s vision for sustainability, and to strengthen links for policy engagement within Chinese regulatory frameworks and international obligations at the United Nations within its SDG framework.

Recreational activities may have negative effects on wildlife, but there are very few studies specifically on the effects of free-flight activities (i.e., hang-gliders, paragliders and their powered derivatives) on wildlife. We review the existing scientific studies on this issue in order to identify the gaps in knowledge at the taxonomic-group level in order to develop guidelines to minimize the impacts of recreational free-flight on wildlife. We found that studies mainly concerned the effects on four ungulate species (chamois, red deer, roe deer and Alpine ibex) and, to a lesser extent, on raptors such as the golden eagle and two vulture species (bearded vulture and cinereous vulture). The studies have generally been carried out in high mountain areas (e.g., the European Alps). Data show that free-flight activities create disturbances and have negative effects on wildlife, resulting in increased energy expenditure, reduction of feeding time, abandonment of feeding areas, reduced breeding output, loss of body condition, increased predation risk and harm from flight accidents. However, the lack of studies on many species and areas, along with the small number of long-term studies, prevents proper assessment of the current situation regarding the impact of this activity on wildlife. We provide recommendations to improve the regulation of this activity.

Climate change is causing the geographical ranges of some species to track suitable conditions. Habitat specialists, range-restricted species and species with limited dispersal abilities may be unable to track changing conditions, increasing their extinction risk. In response to changing conditions and species movement patterns, there is a need to account for the effects of climate change when designing protected areas and identifying potential climate refugia. We used ecological niche models projected into future climates to identify potential impacts of climate change on the distribution of 11 rupicolous reptile species in the Soutpansberg Mountains, South Africa. Lygodactylus incognitus, Lygodactylus soutpansbergensis, Platysaurus relictus and Vhembelacerta rupicola were identified as being vulnerable to climate change due to substantial reductions in suitable habitat and low spatial overlap between current and future niche envelopes. We identified areas of high conservation importance for the persistence of these species under present-day and projected future conditions. The western Soutpansberg was identified as an area of high conservation priority as it is a potential refuge under future projections. Projecting distributions of vulnerable species into future climate predictions can guide future research and identify potential refugia that will best conserve species with restricted ranges in a world with climate change.

Few studies have highlighted perceptions of urban natural open space systems: land specifically excluded from development to protect ecosystem services. We used a local metropolitan city in South Africa to explore community perceptions of its natural open space system through individual qualitative interviews (n = 40). The objectives were: (1) to identify ecosystem services and disservices associated with the city’s natural open space system, and the reasons thereof, by exploring the relational values of nature held by a diverse socioeconomic spectrum of urban residents; and (2) to identify priorities for protecting the natural open space system by enhancing the benefits and minimizing ecosystem disservices. Reference to ecosystem services and disservices were coded according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) categorization of nature’s contribution to people. Non-material services (relational benefits) were impacted by exploitative material uses, access concerns and (mis)management. Challenges and opportunities identified relate to nature as a resource for supporting livelihoods and lifestyles; community outreach and employment opportunities; personal safety, health and aesthetic concerns; and lack of political accountability and municipal planning in terms of the management of natural open spaces. Innovative collaborative management and stewardship interventions with ecological and socioeconomic benefits should be prioritized to protect the natural open space system.

Throughout southern Africa, there have been growing concerns about the rates of ecosystem degradation. This issue and natural resource governance concerns in general remain key challenges. We conducted a scoping review of 135 articles to inductively assess how governance challenges have manifested in natural resource management during 2010–2020 in southern Africa. The paper’s findings show that governance challenges in southern Africa are ‘hydra-headed’. The results suggest that governance challenges related to the maintenance of system integrity and functioning – specifically lack of coordination, accountability, capacity, skills and resources to define effective natural resource management – were the most reported in literature. Challenges related to achieving socially equitable governance were the second most mentioned, followed by those related to institutional robustness. Challenges related to the adaptability and flexibility of institutions, specifically learning, monitoring capacity and innovation, were the least identified, showing that these areas are poorly studied or that these attributes are considered less problematic for achieving sustainable outcomes. Furthermore, the review highlights critical gaps – the limited engagement with governance-related frameworks, specifically polycentricity, adaptive governance and social-ecological stewardship. In concluding, we highlight governance reforms and future research needs on the topic of natural resources in southern Africa.

The prevention of tropical forest deforestation is essential for mitigating climate change. We tested the machine learning algorithm Maxent to predict deforestation across the Peruvian Amazon. We used official annual 2001–2019 deforestation data to develop a predictive model and to test the model’s accuracy using near-real-time forest loss data for 2020. Distance from agricultural land and distance from roads were the predictor variables that contributed most to the final model, indicating that a narrower set of variables contribute nearly 80% of the information necessary for prediction at scale. The permutation importance indicating variable information not present in the other variables was also highest for distance from agricultural land and distance from roads, at 40.5% and 14.3%, respectively. The predictive model registered 73.2% of the 2020 early alerts in a high or very high risk category; less than 1% of forest cover in national protected areas were registered as very high risk, but buffer zones were far more vulnerable, with 15% of forest cover being in this category. To our knowledge, this is the first study to use 19 years of annual data for deforestation risk. The open-source machine learning method could be applied to other forest regions, at scale, to improve strategies for reducing future deforestation.

Human–wildlife interactions (HWIs) occur in many rural African communities, with potential impacts on livelihood vulnerability. High livelihood vulnerability may force communities to employ strategies that increase the risk of negative HWIs, yet the extent to which HWIs drive or are driven by vulnerability is unclear. We hypothesized that more vulnerable households are more likely to be exposed to wildlife and experience negative interactions. To test this hypothesis, we calculated the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) of rural households in and around Quirimbas National Park (north-eastern Mozambique) and assessed whether there is a link between livelihood vulnerability and HWIs. We found a two-way association between LVI and HWIs, with more vulnerable households indeed taking greater risks and encountering wildlife when fetching water from rivers, whereas less vulnerable households tended not to employ strategies likely to increase wildlife encounters. We also observed that HWIs exert a strong effect on livelihood vulnerability, suggesting that HWIs should be included as an exposure factor in vulnerability assessments for rural households. We recommend that livelihood strategies and community vulnerability should be considered when designing HWI mitigation schemes and implementing conservation measures.

Introduced mammalian predators are responsible for the decline and extinction of many native species, with rats (genus Rattus) being among the most widespread and damaging invaders worldwide. In a naturally fragmented landscape, we demonstrate the multi-year effectiveness of snap traps in the removal of Rattus rattus and Rattus exulans from lava-surrounded forest fragments ranging in size from <0.1 to >10 ha. Relative to other studies, we observed low levels of fragment recolonization. Larger rats were the first to be trapped, with the average size of trapped rats decreasing over time. Rat removal led to distinct shifts in the foraging height and location of mongooses and mice, emphasizing the need to focus control efforts on multiple invasive species at once. Furthermore, because of a specially designed trap casing, we observed low non-target capture rates, suggesting that on Hawai‘i and similar islands lacking native rodents the risk of killing non-target species in snap traps may be lower than the application of rodenticides, which have the potential to contaminate food webs. These efforts demonstrate that targeted snap-trapping is an effective removal method for invasive rats in fragmented habitats and that, where used, monitoring of recolonization should be included as part of a comprehensive biodiversity management strategy.

Protected areas (PAs) are intended to preserve natural places, aiming to sustain ecosystem functionality and preserve biodiversity. However, PAs are spatially static, while major threats to biodiversity, such as climate and land-use change, are dynamic. The climatic conditions represented in a PA could vanish in the future and appear in other places more or less far away from the PA; these places could be considered as recipient areas potentially suited to receive propagules from the source PAs, which tend to lose the climatic conditions that motivated their protection. This study estimates the current and future climatic representativeness of mainland Iberian national parks by identifying future areas with a similar climate to those existing now in the parks and taking into account the degree of anthropogenic alteration and protection. We identify a network of ecological corridors connecting Iberian national parks with their recipient areas, as well as discriminating those most conflicting areas that impede network connectivity due to their degree of land-use transformation. Our results identify important areas for maintaining the climatic representativeness of Iberian national parks in the future, showing a substantial reduction in the climatic representativeness of the Iberian national parks. Although most of the recipient areas now have forest and semi-natural land uses and more than half of their whole area has protected status, current land uses in the Iberian Peninsula severely obstruct the corridor network connecting the parks and recipient areas.

Rising flood damages have prompted local communities to implement buyout and property acquisition programmes to eliminate repetitive losses for at-risk properties. However, buyouts are often costly to implement and are reactionary solutions to flooding. This study quantifies the benefits of acquiring vacant private properties in flood-prone areas rather than acquiring such properties after they are built up. Using a geodesign framework that integrates concepts and analytical approaches derived from geographical, spatial and statistical-based disciplines, we analyse vacant properties with high development potential that intersect current and future floodplain areas in Houston (TX, USA). We use geospatial proximity analysis to select candidate properties, land-use prediction modelling to estimate future development and sea-level rise and benefit–cost analysis to assess the economic viability of buyouts. The results indicate that cumulative avoided flood losses exceed the cost of vacant land acquisition by a factor of nearly two to one, and up to a factor of ten to one in selected areas. This study emphasizes the benefits of proactive property buyouts that focus on acquiring parcels before they are built up, while also avoiding the social and institutional problems associated with traditional buyout programmes.