Africa | ConservationBytes.com

Keeping babies alive will lower population growth

23 02 2023

We’ve just published a paper in PLOS ONE showing high infant mortality rates are contributing to an incessant rise of the global human population, which supports arguments for greater access to contraception and family planning in low- and middle-income nations.

In collaboration with Melinda Judge, Chitra Saraswati, Claire Perry, Jane Heyworth, and Peter Le Souëf of the University of Western Australia‘s School of Medicine and the Telethon Kids Institute, we found that higher baby death rates and larger household sizes (as an indicator of population density) lead to higher fertility rates.

In the first study of its kind, we provide a compelling argument that the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for reducing infant mortality can be accelerated by increasing access to family planning.

Although it sounds counterintuitive, higher baby death rates are linked to higher population growth because the more babies a women loses, the more children she is likely to have. Family planning, including access to quality contraception, enables women to plan pregnancies better and therefore reduce infant mortality to curb the so-called ‘replacement’, or ‘insurance’ effect.

We evaluated six conditions thought to influence a woman’s fertility — availability of family planning, quality of family planning, education, religion, mortality, and socio-economic conditions, across 64 low- to middle-income countries.

Specifically, we tested whether

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Tags: child mortality, children, contraception, family planning, fertility, human population size, overpopulation, population density, Population size, SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals, United Nations
Categories : Africa, Asia, Central America, education, ethics, gender, health, human overpopulation, poverty, sustainability

Neo-colonialist attitudes ignoring poachernomics will ensure more extinctions

14 01 2022

No matter most people’s best intentions, poaching of species in Sub-Saharan Africa for horn and ivory continues unabated. Despite decades of policies, restrictions, interventions, protections, and incentives, many species of elephant and rhino are still hurtling toward extinction primarily because of poaching.

Clearly, we’re doing something heinously wrong.

Collectively, we have to take a long, hard look in the conservation mirror and ask ourselves some difficult questions. Why haven’t we been able to put any real dent in the illegal trade of poached elephant ivory and rhino horn? How many millions (billions?) of dollars have we spent seemingly to little avail? Why haven’t trade bans and intensive security measures done the trick?

The reasons are many, but they boil down to two main culprits:

neo-colonialist sentiments driven by the best intentions of mainly overseas NGOs have inadvertently created the ideal conditions for the poaching economy — what we term poachernomics — to thrive by ensuring the continued restriction of legal supply of wildlife products; and
shutting off conservation areas to local people and directing the bulk of ecotourism profits away from source communities have maintained steady poaching incentives in the absence of other non-destructive livelihoods.

In our new paper — Dismantling the poachernomics of the illegal wildlife trade (led by Enrico Di Minin of the Universities of Helsinki and KwaZulu-Natal, and co-authored by Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes of the University of Oxford, Jeanetta Selier of the South African National Biodiversity Institute, Maxi Louis of the Namibian Association of Community-Based Natural Resources Management Support Organizations, and me) — published quietly in late 2021, we describe how poachernomics works, and why our efforts to incapacitate it have been so ineffectual.

First, what is poachernomics?

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Tags: CITES, crime syndicates, Economics, elephant, elephant ivory, illegal wildlife trade, ivory, narcotics, organised crime, poachernomics, poachers, poaching, rhino, rhino horn, rhinoceros
Categories : Africa, Asia, China, conservation, conservation biology, corruption, culture gap, development, economics, environmental economics, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, extinction vortex, governance, harvest, human-wildlife conflict, mammal, management, poaching, poverty, preservationist, propaganda, protected area, reserve, sustainability, threatened species, tourism

Fancy a pangolin infected with coronavirus? Apparently, many people do

30 12 2021

The logic of money contradicts the logic of species conservation and human health. As illegal trade has driven pangolins to near extinction, their hunting and market value has kept increasing ― even when we have known that they act as coronavirus reservoirs in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.

_{Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) in a monsoon forest (Sumba Island, Indonesia). With adult weights up to 10 kg and body lengths around half a metre, these animals are mostly solitary and nocturnal, feed on ants and termites, and love tree climbing using bark hollows to shelter and give birth to singletons. The species occurs across mainland and islands of South East Asia, and became ‘Endangered’ in 2008 and ‘Critically Endangered’ in 2014, following a 80% decline in the last 20 years due to hunting and poaching. It has been the most heavily trafficked Asian species, and the IUCN’s assessment states: “… the incentives for harvesting and illegally trading in the species are universally high based on the high financial value of pangolin parts and derivatives”. Captive breeding is unlikely to deter wild collection because (among other reasons) farming costs are high (more so on a large scale) and, even if the species could be traded legally, wild versus farmed pangolin products and individuals are difficult to distinguish (23). Photo courtesy of Michael Pitts}

Urbanites are attracted to exotic species, materials, and places. Our purchasing power seems to give us the right to buy any ‘object’ that we can pay for, no matter how exotic the object might be. In such a capitalist rationale, it is no surprise that > 150 thousand illegal cargos with wild animals and plants have been confiscated in 149 countries over the last two decades, moving some 6000 species from one place of the planet to another (1).

Social networks show people interacting with all kinds of fauna, creating the illusion that any animal can become a pet (2). And there’s a multi-$billion market of wildlife for a diverse array of uses including collecting, food, ornamentation, leisure, clothing and medicine (3-5). The paradox is that the rarer a species is, the higher its market value runs and the more lucrative selling it turns out to be, leading to more exploitation and rocketing extinction risk (6).

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Tags: CITES, COVID, COVID-19, covid19, endangered, illegal wildlife trade, pangolin, SARS-COV-2, wildlife, Wildlife trade
Categories : Africa, Asia, biodiversity, China, conservation, conservation biology, corruption, decline, disease, economics, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, harvest, Malaysia, mammal, poaching, poverty, South East Asia, threatened species, tropical

Attack of the alien invaders: pest plants and animals leave a frightening $1.7 trillion bill

19 04 2021

They’re one of the most damaging environmental forces on Earth. They’ve colonised pretty much every place humans have set foot on the planet. Yet you might not even know they exist.

We’re talking about alien species. Not little green extraterrestrials, but invasive plants and animals not native to an ecosystem and which become pests. They might be plants from South America, starfish from Africa, insects from Europe or birds from Asia.

These species can threaten the health of plants and animals, including humans. And they cause huge economic harm. Our research, recently published in the journal Nature, puts a figure on that damage. We found that globally, invasive species cost US$1.3 trillion (A$1.7 trillion) in money lost or spent between 1970 and 2017.

The cost is increasing exponentially over time. And troublingly, most of the cost relates to the damage and losses invasive species cause. Meanwhile, far cheaper control and prevention measures are often ignored.

Yellow crazy ants attacking a gecko — Yellow crazy ants, such as these attacking a gecko, are among thousands of invasive species causing ecological and economic havoc. Dinakarr, CC0, Wikimedia Commons

An expansive toll

Invasive species have been invading foreign territories for centuries. They hail from habitats as diverse as tropical forests, dry savannas, temperate lakes and cold oceans.

They arrived because we brought them — as pets, ornamental plants or as stowaways on our holidays or via commercial trade.

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Tags: alien species, Economics, environmental economics, invasive alien spcies, invasive species, weeds
Categories : Africa, agriculture, alien species, Australia, biodiversity, conservation, disease, environmental economics, environmental policy, fish, health, invasive species, management, predator

Recreational hunting, conservation and livelihoods: no clear evidence trail

2 03 2021

Enrico Di Minin, University of Helsinki; Anna Haukka, University of Helsinki; Anna Hausmann, University of Helsinki; Christoph Fink, University of Helsinki; Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Flinders University; Gonzalo Cortés-Capano, University of Helsinki; Hayley Clements, Stellenbosch University, and Ricardo A. Correia, University of Helsinki

In some African countries, lion trophy hunting is legal. Riaan van den Berg

In sub-Saharan Africa, almost 1,400,000 km² of land spread across many countries — from Kenya to South Africa — is dedicated to “trophy” (recreational) hunting. This type of hunting can occur on communal, private, and state lands.

The hunters – mainly foreign “tourists” from North America and Europe – target a wide variety of species, including lions, leopards, antelopes, buffalo, elephants, zebras, hippopotamus and giraffes.

Debates centred on the role of recreational hunting in supporting nature conservation and local people’s livelihoods are among the most polarising in conservation today.

On one hand, people argue that recreational hunting generates funding that can support livelihoods and nature conservation. It’s estimated to generate US$200 million annually in sub-Saharan Africa, although others dispute the magnitude of this contribution.

On the other hand, hunting is heavily criticised on ethical and moral grounds and as a potential threat to some species.

Evidence for taking a particular side in the debate is still unfortunately thin. In our recently published research, we reviewed the large body of scientific literature on recreational hunting from around the world, which meant we read and analysed more than 1000 peer-reviewed papers.

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Tags: conservation, ethics, habitat protection, habitat restoration, hunting, morality, poaching, recreational hunting, trophy hunting
Categories : Africa, alien species, animal welfare, biodiversity, bushmeat, conservation, conservation biology, decline, demography, environmental policy, Europe, exploitation, extinction, food, habitat loss, harvest, invasive species, mammal, management, predator, preservationist, Red List, research, reserve, sustainability, threatened species

Conservation paradox – the pros and cons of recreational hunting

20 02 2021

The recovery of species such as mountain zebra (*Equus zebra*) was partly supported by the economic benefits generated by trophy hunting. © Dr Hayley Clements

Through the leadership of my long-time friend and collaborator, Enrico Di Minin of the Helsinki Lab of Interdisciplinary Conservation Science, as well as the co-leadership of my (now) new colleague, Dr Hayley Clements, I’m pleased to report our new paper in One Earth — ‘Consequences of recreational hunting for biodiversity conservation and livelihoods‘.

My father was a hunter, and by proxy so was I when I was a lad. I wasn’t really a ‘good’ hunter in the sense that I rarely bagged my quarry, but during my childhood not only did I fail to question the morality of recreational hunting, I really thought that in fact it was by and large an important cultural endeavour.

It’s interesting how conditioned we become as children, for I couldn’t possibly conceive of hunting a wild, indigenous species for my own personal satisfaction now. I find the process not only morally and ethically reprehensible, I also think that most species don’t need the extra stress in an already environmentally stressed world.

I admit that I do shoot invasive European rabbits and foxes on my small farm from time to time — to reduce the grazing and browsing pressure on my trees from the former, and the predation pressure on the chooks from the latter. Of course, we eat the rabbits, but I tend just to bury the foxes. My dual perspective on the general issue of hunting in a way mirrors the two sides of the recreational hunting issue we report in our latest paper.

Wild boar (*Sus scrofus*). Photo: Valentin Panzirsch, CC BY-SA 3.0 AT, via Wikimedia Commons

I want to be clear here that our paper focuses exclusively on recreational hunting, and especially the hunting of charismatic species for their trophies. The activity is more than just a little controversial, for it raises many ethical and moral concerns at the very least. Yet, recreational hunting is frequently suggested as a way to conserve nature and support local people’s livelihoods.

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Tags: extinction, hunting, Livelihoods, Population size, poverty, poverty alleviation, recreational hunting, social licence, trophy hunting
Categories : Africa, agriculture, animal welfare, biodiversity, bushmeat, conservation, decline, demography, ecology, economics, ecosystem, environmental economics, environmental policy, ethics, exploitation, governance, habitat loss, human-wildlife conflict, invasive species, mammal, management, poverty, preservationist, research, sustainability, threatened species

Worried about Earth’s future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp

14 01 2021

Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Flinders University; Daniel T. Blumstein, University of California, Los Angeles, and Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University

Anyone with even a passing interest in the global environment knows all is not well. But just how bad is the situation? Our new paper shows the outlook for life on Earth is more dire than is generally understood.

The research published today reviews more than 150 studies to produce a stark summary of the state of the natural world. We outline the likely future trends in biodiversity decline, mass extinction, climate disruption and planetary toxification. We clarify the gravity of the human predicament and provide a timely snapshot of the crises that must be addressed now.

The problems, all tied to human consumption and population growth, will almost certainly worsen over coming decades. The damage will be felt for centuries and threatens the survival of all species, including our own.

Our paper was authored by 17 leading scientists, including those from Flinders University, Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles. Our message might not be popular, and indeed is frightening. But scientists must be candid and accurate if humanity is to understand the enormity of the challenges we face.

Girl in breathing mask attached ot plant in container

Getting to grips with the problem

First, we reviewed the extent to which experts grasp the scale of the threats to the biosphere and its lifeforms, including humanity. Alarmingly, the research shows future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than experts currently believe. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: agriculture, alien species, Anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, bushmeat, carbon, climate change, climate shift, conservation, coral reefs, decline, deforestation, development, disease, drought, Economics, Ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, Education, Endarkenment, environmental economics, environmental policy, Environmental science, exploitation, extinction, extremism, fire, food, function, governance, habitat loss, harvest, health, human overpopulation, impact, invasive species, ocean, planning, pollination, poverty, propaganda, science, threatened species, toxification
Categories : Africa, agriculture, alien species, anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, carbon, climate change, climate shift, conservation, conservation biology, corruption, decline, deforestation, development, disease, drought, economics, ecosystem services, education, Endarkenment, environmental economics, environmental policy, environmental science, extinction, extinction debt, extremism, fire, Flinders University, governance, habitat loss, harvest, health, human overpopulation, investment, livestock, logging, management, ocean, planning, propaganda, restoration, science, seagrass, sustainability, synergies, threatened species, toxification, vegetation

Time for a ‘cold shower’ about our ability to avoid a ghastly future

13 01 2021

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,’ said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Frodo Baggins and Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

Today, 16 high-profile scientists and I published what I describe as a ‘cold shower’ about society’s capacity to avoid a ghastly future of warfare, disease, inequality, persecution, extinction, and suffering.

And it goes way beyond just the plight of biodiversity.

No one who knows me well would mistake me for an optimist, try as I might to use my colleagues’ and my research for good. Instead, I like to describe myself as a ‘realist’. However, this latest paper has made even my gloomier past outputs look downright hopeful.

And before being accused of sensationalism, let me make one thing abundantly clear — I sincerely hope that what we describe in this paper does not come to pass. Not even I am that masochistic.

I am also supportive of every attempt to make the world a better place, to sing about our successes, regroup effectively from our failures, and maintain hope in spite of evidence to the contrary.

But failing to acknowledge the magnitude and the gravity of the problems facing us is not just naïve, it is positively dangerous and potentially fatal.

It is this reason alone that prompted us to write our new paper “Underestimating the challenges of
avoiding a ghastly future” just published in the new journal, Frontiers in Conservation Science.

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Tags: carrying capacity, climate change, climate disruption, climate refugees, consumption, density feedback, extinction, governance, human population, over-consumption, political will, populism, sustainability
Categories : Africa, agriculture, alien species, anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, bushmeat, carbon, climate change, climate shift, conservation, coral reefs, decline, deforestation, development, disease, drought, economics, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, education, Endarkenment, environmental economics, environmental policy, environmental science, exploitation, extinction, extremism, fire, food, function, governance, habitat loss, harvest, health, human overpopulation, impact, invasive species, ocean, planning, pollination, poverty, propaganda, science, threatened species, toxification

Environmental damage kills children

1 10 2019

Yes, childrenairpollution it’s a provocative title, I agree. But then again, it’s true.

But I don’t just mean in the most obvious ways. We already have good data showing that lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills children (especially in developing nations), that air pollution is a nasty killer of young children in particular, and now even climate change is starting to take its toll.

These aspects of child health aren’t very controversial, but when we talk about the larger suite of indicators of environmental ‘damage’, such as deforestation rates, species extinctions, and the overall reduction of ecosystem services, the empirical links to human health, and to children in particular, are far rarer.

This is why I’m proud to report the publication today of a paper on which I and team of wonderful collaborators (Sally Otto, Zia Mehrabi, Alicia Annamalay, Sam Heft-Neal, Zach Wagner, and Peter Le Souëf) have worked for several years.

I won’t lie — the path to publishing this paper was long and hard, I think mainly because it traversed so many different disciplines. But we persevered and today published the paper entitled ‘Testing the socioeconomic and environmental determinants of better child-health outcomes in Africa: a cross-sectional study among nations‘* in the journal BMJ Open.

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Tags: air pollution, breastfeeding, child health, children, corruption, diarrhoea, ecosystem services, environmental degradation, food supply, governance quality, health investment, human overpopulation, infectious disease, injury, Millennium Development Goals, over-population, paediatrics, pulmonary diseae, sanitation, stunting, Sustainable Development Goals, United Nations, water, wealth, World Health Organization
Categories : Africa, agriculture, anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, carbon, climate change, conservation, conservation biology, corruption, deforestation, demography, development, economics, ecosystem services, environmental Kuznets curve, environmental science, exploitation, extinction, food, function, governance, habitat loss, harvest, health, human overpopulation, investment, livestock, logging, modelling, pollution, poverty, Red List, societies, sustainability, threatened species, toxification, water

Increasing human population density drives environmental degradation in Africa

26 06 2019

stumps

Almost a decade ago, I (co-) wrote a paper examining the socio-economic correlates of gross, national-scale indices of environmental performance among the world’s nations. It turned out to be rather popular, and has so far garnered over 180 citations and been cited in three major policy documents.

In addition to the more pedestrian ranking itself, we also tested which of three main socio-economic indicators best explained variation in the environmental rank — a country’s gross ‘wealth’ indicator (gross national income) turned out to explain the most, and there was no evidence to support a non-linear relationship between environmental performance and per capita wealth (the so-called environmental Kuznets curve).

Well, that was then, and this is now. Something that always bothered me about that bit of research was that in some respects, it probably unfairly disadvantaged certain countries that were in more recent phases of the ‘development’ pathway, such that environmental damage long since done in major development pulses many decades or even centuries prior to today (e.g., in much of Europe) probably meant that certain countries got a bit of an unfair advantage. In fact, the more recently developed nations probably copped a lower ranking simply because their damage was fresher.

While I defend the overall conclusions of that paper, my intentions have always been since then to improve on the approach. That desire finally got the better of me, and so I (some might say unwisely) decided to focus on a particular region of the planet where some of the biggest biodiversity crunches will happen over the next few decades — Africa.

Africa is an important region to re-examine these national-scale relationships for many reasons. The first is that it’s really the only place left on the planet where there’s a semi-intact megafauna assemblage. Yes, the great Late Pleistocene megafauna extinction event did hit Africa too, but compared to all other continents, it got through that period relatively unscathed. So now we (still) have elephants, rhinos, giraffes, hippos, etc. It’s a pretty bloody special place from that perspective alone.

Elephants in the Kruger National Park, South Africa (photo: CJA Bradshaw)

Then there’s the sheer size of the continent. Unfortunately, most mercator projections of the Earth show a rather quaint continent nuzzled comfortably in the middle of the map, when in reality, it’s a real whopper. If you don’t believe me, go to truesize.com and drag any country of interest over the African continent (it turns out that its can more or less fit all of China, Australia, USA, and India within its greater borders).

Third, most countries in Africa (barring a few rare exceptions), are still in the so-called ‘development’ phase, although some are much farther along the economic road than others. For this reason, an African nation-to-nation comparison is probably a lot fairer than comparing, say, Bolivia to Germany, or Mongolia to Canada.

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Tags: Africa, agriculture, carbon emissions, deforestation, development, ecological footprint, ecology, environmental performance, environmental sustainability, human population, human population growth, megafauna, sustainability, sustainable development
Categories : Africa, agriculture, anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, carbon, cattle, conservation, corruption, deforestation, development, economics, environmental Kuznets curve, environmental policy, environmental science, exploitation, extinction, food, governance, habitat loss, human overpopulation, livestock, logging, mammal, management, modelling, poverty, protected area, societies, sustainability, threatened species, vegetation

Primate woes where the oil palm grows

16 08 2018

gorilla

A new article just published in PNAS reveals how future expansion of the palm-oil industry could have terrible consequences for African primates.

Researchers from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, CIRAD, Liverpool John Moores University, and ETH Zurich searched for “areas of compromise” combining high oil palm suitability with low primate vulnerability, as possible locations where to accommodate new oil-palm plantations while reducing detrimental effects on primate populations.

Results show that there is small room for compromise. In fact, potential areas of compromise are rare across the whole African continent, covering a total extent of 0.13 Mha of land highly suited to oil palm cultivation where primate vulnerability is low, rising to just 3.3 Mha if all land with at least minimum suitability to grow oil palm is taken into account.

Palm oil production is steadily rising, and expected to accelerate in response to growing world’s population, with future demand driven not only by the food industry, but also by the biofuel market. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Africa, agriculture, biodiversity, deforestation, oil palm, palm oil, sustainability
Categories : Africa, agriculture, biodiversity, carbon, conservation, deforestation, ecosystem services, environmental policy, extinction, food, fragmentation, habitat loss, human overpopulation, IUCN, modelling, oil palm, palm oil, prioritisation, rain forests, threatened species

Why populations can’t be saved by a single breeding pair

3 04 2018

I published this last week on The Conversation, and now reproducing it here for CB.com readers.

—

Two days ago, the last male northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) died. His passing leaves two surviving members of his subspecies: both females who are unable to bear calves.

Even though it might not be quite the end of the northern white rhino because of the possibility of implanting frozen embryos in their southern cousins (C. simum simum), in practical terms, it nevertheless represents the end of a long decline for the subspecies. It also raises the question: how many individuals does a species need to persist?

Fiction writers have enthusiastically embraced this question, most often in the post-apocalypse genre. It’s a notion with a long past; the Adam and Eve myth is of course based on a single breeding pair populating the entire world, as is the case described in the Ragnarok, the final battle of the gods in Norse mythology.

This idea dovetails neatly with the image of Noah’s animals marching “two by two” into the Ark. But the science of “minimum viable populations” tells us a different story.

No inbreeding, please

The global gold standard used to assess the extinction risk of any species is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Adam and Eve, apocalypse, de-extinction, extinction, inbreeding, inbreeding depression, Ragnarok, repopulating
Categories : Africa, Allee effect, cloning, conservation, conservation biology, decline, DNA, exploitation, extinction, extinction debt, extinction vortex, genetic diversity, genetics, inbreeding depression, living dead, minimum viable population, mvp, poaching, population dynamics, population viability analysis, PVA, recovery, threatened species

Penguins cheated by ecosystem change

13 03 2018

Jorge Drexler sings “… I was committed not to see what I saw, but sometimes life is more complex than what it looks like …”*. This excerpt by the Oscar-winning Uruguayan singer seems to foretell the theme of this blog: how the ecological complexity of marine ecosystems can elicit false signals to their predators. Indeed, the fidelity of marine predators to certain feeding areas can turn demographically detrimental to themselves when the amount of available food shrinks. A study of jackass penguins illustrates the phenomenon in a context of overfishing and ocean warming.

Adult of jackass penguin (Spheniscus demersus) from Robben Island (South Africa) — in the inset, one of the first juveniles released with a satellite transmitter on its back. The species is ‘Endangered’ under IUCN’s criteria (28), following a recent halving of the total population currently estimated at ~ 80,000 adults. Jackass penguins are the only penguins living in Africa, and owe their common name to their vocalisations (you can hear their braying sounds here); adults are ~ 50 cm tall and weigh ~ 3 kg. Photos courtesy of Richard Sherley.

Surface temperature, dissolved oxygen, acidity and primary productivity are, by and large, the top four environmental factors driving the functionality of marine ecosystems (1). Growing scientific evidence supports the idea that anthropogenic warming of the atmosphere and the oceans correlates with this quartet (2). For instance, marine primary productivity is enhanced by increased temperatures (3), but a warmer sea surface intensifies stratification, i.e., stacked layers of seawater with contrasting physical and chemical properties.

In coastal areas experiencing ‘upwelling’ (where winds displace surface water, allowing deep water laden with nutrients to reach the euphotic zone where plankton communities feast), stratification weakens upwelling currents and, in turn, limits the growth of plankton (4) that fuels the entire trophic web, including our fisheries. The study of these complex trophic cascades is particularly cumbersome from the perspective of large marine predators because of their capacity to move long distances, from hundreds to thousands of kilometres (5), with strong implications for their conservation (6).

With those caveats in mind, Richard Sherley and colleagues satellite-tracked the movement of 54 post-fledged, juvenile jackass penguins (Spheniscus demersus) for 2-3 years (7). All individuals had been hatched in eight colonies (accounting for 80% of the global population), and were equipped with platform terminal transmitters. Jackass penguins currently nest in 28 island and mainland locations between South Africa and Namibia. Juveniles swim up to 2000 km in search of food and, when approaching adulthood, return to their native colonies where they reproduce and reside for the remainder of their lives (watch individuals swimming here).

The natural history of this species is linked to the Southern Hemisphere’s trade winds (‘alisios’ for Spanish speakers), which blow from the southeast to the tropics. In the South Atlantic, trade winds sustain the Benguela Current, the waters of which surface from some 300 m of depth and fertilise the marine ecosystems stretching from the Western coasts of South Africa to Angola (8). Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: anchovy, Benguela, climate change, fisheries, food web, Global warming, jellies, jellyfication, Namibia, Overfishing, penguin, penguins, pilchard, South Africa, upwelling
Categories : Africa, behaviour, birds, climate change, climate shift, coasts, decline, ecology, ecosystem, ecosystem function, fish, fisheries, food, function, harvest, impact, research, science, trophic cascades

Bring it back

13 02 2018

Protea compacta in fynbos, a form of shrubland at Soetanysberg, South Africa. Photo: Brian van Wilgen

Restoration of lost habitats and ecosystems hits all the right notes — conservation optimism, a can-do attitude, and the excitement of seeing biologically impoverished areas teem with life once more.

The Strategic Plan of the Convention on Biological Diversity includes a target to restore at least 15% of degraded ecosystems. This is being enthusiastically taken up in many places, including through initiatives such as the Bonn Challenge, a global aspiration to restore 350 million hectares of deforested and degraded land by 2030. This is in recognition of the importance of healthy ecosystems in not just conserving biodiversity, but also in combating climate change. Peatlands and forests lock away carbon, while grassland diversity stabilises ecosystem productivity during extreme weather events. So how can we make sure that these restoration efforts are as effective as possible? Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Cambridge, Claire Wordley, conservation, ecological restoration, evidence, rehabilitation, restoration, www.conservationevidence.com, www.restorationevidence.com
Categories : Africa, Australia, biodiversity, biosequestration, biowealth, carbon, climate change, connectivity, conservation, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental engineering, fragmentation, implementation, investment, management, reforestation, restoration

Drivers of protected-area effectiveness in Africa

31 01 2018

Bowker_et_al-2017-Conservation_Biology. Fig. 1

Subtropical and
Tropical Moist Broadleaf Forest of
Africa with 224 parks surrounded
by a 10-km buffer area. ©
2016 Society for Conservation Biology.

I’ve just read an interesting paper published in late 2016 in Conservation Biology that had so far escaped my attention. But given my interest in African conservation recently (and some interesting research results on the determinants of environmental performance for that region should be coming soon out of our lab), the work caught my eye.

The paper by Bowker and colleagues asked a question that has been asked previously regarding the ‘effectiveness’ of protected areas — do they succeed in limiting forest loss? While forest loss itself is not necessarily indicative of biodiversity erosion in any given area (for that, you need measures of species trends, etc.), it is arguably one of the most important drivers of species loss today.

The first set out to differentiate ‘effective’ from ‘ineffective’ protected areas, which was a simple binary variable related to whether there was less deforestation inside the protected area relative to comparable points outside (effective), or greater than or equal to deforestation outside (ineffective). The authors then related this binary response to a series of biophysical and social indicators. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Africa, biodiversity, conservation, deforestation, effectiveness, forest loss, national parks, paper parks, parks, Protected Areas
Categories : Africa, conservation, deforestation, fragmentation, governance, logging, management, protected area, rain forests, tropical

Influential conservation ecology papers of 2017

27 12 2017

As I have done for the last four years (2016, 2015, 2014, 2013), here’s another retrospective list of the top 20 influential conservation papers of 2017 as assessed by experts in F1000 Prime.

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Tags: Africa, Amazon, biodiversity, boundaries, cats, climate change, decline, depression, disturbance, dogs, drowning, elevation, eutrophication, Fish, forests, fragmentation, Genetics, Global warming, green spaces, insects, mental health, networks, nutrient cycling, ocean, oil, oil spill, oxygen, photosynthesis, phytoplankton, Planetary boundaries, Predation, predators, prey, productivity, rainfall, richness, Soil, wildebeest, zooplankton
Categories : Africa, algae, Amazon, anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, cat, climate change, community ecology, connectivity, conservation, conservation ecology, coral reefs, decline, deforestation, drought, ecology, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental science, eutrophication, extinction, extinction debt, fish, fragmentation, function, genetics, habitat loss, marine, pollination, toxicology

Human population growth, refugees & environmental degradation

7 07 2017

refugees The global human population is now over 7.5 billion, and increasing by about 90 million each year. This means that we are predicted to exceed 9 billion people by 2050, with no peak in site this century and a world population of up to 12 billion by 2100. These staggering numbers are the result of being within the exponential phase of population growth since last century, such that some 14% of all human beings that have ever lived on the planet are still alive today. That is taking into account about the past 200,000 years, or 10,000 generations.

Of course just like the Earth’s resources, human beings are not distributed equally around the globe, nor are the population trends consistent among regions or nations. In fact, developing nations are contributing to the bulk of the global annual increase (around 89 million per year), whereas developed nations are contributing a growth of only about 1 million each year. Another demonstration of the disparity in human population distributon is that about half of all human beings live in just seven countries (China, India, USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh), representing just one quarter of the world’s total land area. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Climate, climate disruption, conflict, degradation, density dependence, density feedback, environment, growth, Population, refugees, resources, war, warfare, World population
Categories : Africa, climate change, climate shift, conservation, deforestation, exploitation, food, human overpopulation

Keeping lions from livestock — building fences can save lives

23 06 2017

Seeing majestic lions strolling along the Maasai Mara at sunset — a dream vision for many conservationists, but a nightmare for pastoralists trying to keep their cattle safe at night. Fortunately a conservation success story from Kenya, published today in the journal Conservation Evidence, shows that predation of cattle can be reduced by almost 75% by constructing chain-link livestock fences.

The Anne K. Taylor Fund (AKTF) subsidises over 70% of the cost of building a fully fortified chain-link livestock enclosure (‘boma’) to keep cattle safe from predators at night, in the hope that this will lessen the retaliatory killings of lions by frustrated farmers. While lions, leopards and cheetahs draw in crowds of tourists who marvel at their strength and beauty, living alongside big predators can be tough. Traditionally, local people keep their animals overnight in bomas made of acacia thorns — but depredation by lions and other large carnivores cause losses of on average more than nine head of cattle per year, or US$1870 that farmers see disappear down the throat of big, hairy animals. Building a solid fortification of chain-link fence costs just $890, of which the AKTF paid $638, helping to make this an affordable option for hard-pressed locals. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: farming, human-wildlife conflict, lion, lions, Maasai Mara, Panthera leo, pastoralism, predator, prey, protection
Categories : Africa, agriculture, cattle, conservation, livestock, management, predator

Potential conservation nightmare unfolding in South Africa

31 10 2016

Like most local tragedies, it seems to take some time before the news really grabs the overseas audience by the proverbial goolies. That said, I’m gobsmacked that the education tragedy unfolding in South Africa since late 2015 is only now starting to be appreciated by the rest of the academic world.

You might have seen the recent Nature post on the issue, and I do invite you to read that if all this comes as news to you. I suppose I had the ‘advantage’ of getting to know a little bit more about what is happening after talking to many South African academics in the Kruger in September. In a word, the situation is dire.

We’re probably witnessing a second Zimbabwe in action, with the near-complete meltdown of science capacity in South Africa as a now very real possibility. Whatever your take on the causes, justification, politics, racism, or other motivation underlying it all, the world’s conservation biologists should be very, very worried indeed.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: #feesmustfall, Africa, biodiversity, Education, megafauna, racism, science, South Africa, universities
Categories : Africa, anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, conservation, conservation biology, corruption, environmental policy, environmental science, extinction, governance, human overpopulation, management, poaching, poverty, propaganda, research, science

Valuing what we have to prevent it from disappearing

30 09 2016

29 year-old 'Tembo' shows us his grinders © CJA Bradshaw

29 year-old ‘Tembo’ shows us his grinders. Groom Anton is making sure Tembo remains well-rewarded for his good behaviour © CJA Bradshaw

I acknowledge that I’ve been banging on a bit about southern Africa over the last few weeks, but I defend my enthusiasm on the grounds that my first trip to the Kruger National Park profoundly changed the way I view extinction theory and conservation biology.

Today’s post rounds off this mini-series with something I only alluded to in my last: interacting with tame elephants.

I have always been in two minds about the role of animals in captivity, with my opinion that most zoos edge toward the negative because most people who attend them appear to view the animals as a freak-show rather than appreciate their beauty or be fascinated by their behaviour and ecology; add the near-impossible-to-avoid psychological distress to which most captive animals succumb, many zoos in particular are probably better off not existing at all.

That being the case, I won’t simply write off all captive situations as ‘negative’, because if done well, they can have a wonderful educational role to play. Read the rest of this entry »