Jun | 2013 | ConservationBytes.com

Relaxed laws imperil Australian wildlife

28 06 2013

Christmas Island pipistrelle bat (Pipistrellus murrayi). © M. Schultz

On the continuing theme of the demise of laws designed to protect Australian biodiversity (see here, here and here), I’m reproducing our latest Nature Correspondence on the issue. I know this might be slightly dodgy to do so, but given that it’s only a Correspondence, I don’t think I’ll get in too much trouble. Besides, it’s too important an issue to hide away behind paywalls.

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Policy and legislative changes by Australia’s state governments are eroding the vital protection of the country’s unique biodiversity.

Reserves are being opened up to ecologically disruptive activities, such as grazing by domestic livestock, logging, mining, recreational hunting and fishing, and commercial development. Protected habitats on private and leasehold land are imperilled too. Queensland and Victoria, for example, are relaxing hard-won laws that limit vegetation clearance on private land, further accelerating the loss of regional biodiversity.

Collectively, these actions increase the pressure on biodiversity conservation in protected areas, many of which are already showing biodiversity loss (for example, the Kakadu National Park in northern Australia). Ecological connectivity is being lost, which will hamper the dispersal of species and their ability to respond to climate-change effects. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: Australia, biodiversity, decline, laws, national parks
Categories : Australia, conservation, conservation biology, environmental policy, exploitation, habitat loss, management, marine protected area, protected area

Conservation and ecology journal Impact Factors 2012

20 06 2013

It’s the time of year that scientists love to hate – the latest (2012) journal ranking have been released by ISI Web of Knowledge. Many people despise this system, despite its major role in driving publishing trends.

I’ve previously listed the 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 IF for major conservation and ecology journals. As before, I’ve included the previous year’s IF alongside the latest values to see how journals have improved or worsened (but take note – journals increase their IF on average anyway merely by the fact that publication frequency is increasing, so small jumps aren’t necessarily meaningful; I suspect that declines are therefore more telling).

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 16 Comments »
Tags: 2012, biodiversity, conservation, conservation biology, ecology, environment, impact factor, impact factors 2012, ISI, Journal Citation Reports, Scientific journal, Web of Knowledge
Categories : conservation, impact, scientific publishing

I fucking love biodiversity

18 06 2013

A corker of an idea, and post, from Diogo Veríssimo.

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I don’t like biodiversity. I like beef lasagna, I like the British museum and I like everything Jules Verne ever wrote. When it comes to biodiversity, it’s different. I think about it all the time, try to be close to it and suffer emotional distress when I think of it going irretrievably away. This is LOVE.

Understanding how to get this passion across effectively has always been one of my main goals. That is why my research has focused on the links between marketing and conservation. But recently I started feeling a bit more empowered to take this mission seriously, and all thanks to the Facebook page I fucking love Science. This page became an internet sensation amassing more than 5 million fans and engaging frequently over 4 million users in any given week. Forget the New York Times and National Geographic, this is the real deal.

So I wondered, why can’t I do the same for biodiversity? The idea lingered in my head until I read a recent paper by McCallum and Bury on Google search patterns, which shows how even during the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity we are failing to mainstream biodiversity and its associated issues. If fact, people seem to be less interested. Whatever we are doing is clearly not working. So why not give this concept a try? And so I fucking love Biodiversity (IFLB) was born.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 11 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, I fucking love biodiversity, I fucking love science, IFLB, science communication
Categories : biodiversity, cartoon, celebrity, conservation, conservation biology, ecological literacy, education, science, science communication

Australia’s national parks aren’t ‘national’ at all

14 06 2013

Following our The Conversation article a few weeks ago about the rapid demise of national parks in Australia, a few of us (me, Euan Ritchie & Emma Johnston) wrote a follow-up piece on the Australia’s national park misnomer (published simultaneously on The Conversation).

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Australia boasts over 500 national parks covering 28 million hectares of land, or about 3.6% of Australia. You could be forgiven for thinking we’re doing well in the biodiversity-conservation game.

But did you know that of those more than 500 national parks, only six are managed by the Commonwealth Government? For marine parks, it’s a little more: 61 of the 130-plus are managed primarily by the Commonwealth. This means that the majority of our important biodiversity refuges are managed exclusively by state and territory governments. In other words, our national parks aren’t “national” at all.

In a world of perfect governance, this wouldn’t matter. But we’re seeing the rapid “relaxation” of laws designed to protect our “national” and marine parks by many state governments. Would making all of them truly national do more to conserve biodiversity?

One silly decision resulting in a major ecosystem disturbance in a national park can take decades if not hundreds of years to heal. Ecosystems are complex interactions of millions of species that take a long time to evolve – they cannot be easily repaired once the damage is done.

Almost overnight, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria have rolled back nearly two centuries of park protection. What’s surprising here is that many of our conservation gains in the last few decades (for example, the Natural Heritage Trust, the National Reserve System, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and a national marine reserve network) originated from Coalition policies. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: Australia, biodiversity, fishing, grazing, Kakadu National Park, logging, marine protected areas, mining, national park, National Reserve System, Natural Heritage Trust, New South Wales, Protected Areas, threatened, Tony Burke
Categories : Australia, biodiversity, conservation, deforestation, environmental policy, extinction, fisheries, fragmentation, habitat loss, harvest, investment, management, marine protected area, protected area, reserve, threatened species

Learning how to fail

6 06 2013

On the way to work yesterday I was listening to ABC Radio National‘s Life Matters program hosted by Natasha Mitchell about how school children are now apparently being given so much positive praise and encouragement that they can no longer handle failure. Poor, wee dears. Maybe that’s why we have such a high attrition rate once they get up to postgraduate level, because that’s when they REALLY experience failure.

Jokes and whinges aside, there is a hard truth in that message that applies to all scientists, and especially the early-career ones. I’m talking about having your paper rejected from a journal.

Even the terms we use to describe the peer-review gauntlet appear designed to instil fear and inadequacy: reject or accept. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a PhD student’s face figuratively melt off the skull as they shuffle into my office to show me the journal’s rejection letter (now just usually forwarded in an email accompanied by implied stooped shoulders – is there an emoticon for that?). As I’ve mentioned before, we scientists can be real bastards to each other, and it comes out in spades during peer review.

While neophytes tend to take these hits the hardest, I want to impart a little wisdom from some of my very well-established and successful colleagues. Rejection should be viewed as an asset, not a mark of failure. Let me explain. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 11 Comments »
Tags: Academic publishing, assessment, failure, journals, peer review, publication, Scientist, success
Categories : conservation, research, science, science communication, scientific publishing, scientific writing

Cartoon guide to biodiversity loss XIX

3 06 2013

Here are 6 more biodiversity cartoons illustrating through humour the sad state of the natural world (see full stock of previous ‘Cartoon guide to biodiversity loss’ compendia here).

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