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Best and worst countries by different environmental indicators

15 06 2022

I’ll preface this post with a caveat — the data herein are a few years old (certainly pre-COVID), so things have likely changed a bit. Still, I think the main message holds.

Many years ago, I compiled seven different national-level measures of environmental degradation to show that countries with the largest human populations, and hence, the largest economies, had done the most environmental damage — not only to their own resources, but to the world’s in general.

That last observation is important because there are really two main ways to quantify a country’s environmental performance. First, there is its relative environmental damage, which essentially means what proportion of its own resources a country has pilfered or damaged. This type of measure standardises the metrics to account for the different areas of countries (e.g., Russia versus Singapore) and how much of, say, forests, they had to start with, and what proportion of them they have thus far destroyed.

Looking at it this way, small countries with few large-scale industries came out in the lead as the least-damaged environmentally — the least environmentally damaged country according this metric is Cape Verde (followed by Central African Republic, Swaziland, Niger, and Djibouti).

However, another way to look at it is how much of the overall contribution to the world’s environmental damage each country is responsible, which of course implies that the countries with the highest amounts of resources damaged in absolute terms (i.e., the biggest, most populous ones) disproportionately contribute more to global environmental damage.

Using this absolute metric, the countries with the greatest overall damage are Brazil (largely due to the destruction of the Amazon and its other forests), the USA (for its greenhouse-gas emissions and conversion of its prairies to farmland), and China (for its water pollution, deforestation, and carbon emissions). On the flip side, this means that the smallest countries with the fewest people are ranked ‘better’ because of their lower absolute contribution to the world’s total environmental damage.

Looking more closely at how countries do relative to each other using different and more specific measures of environmental performance, the best-known and most-reported metric is the ecological footprint. This measures the ecological ‘assets’ that any particular population of people requires to produce the natural resources it consumes and to absorb its wastes.

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Tags: ecological footprint, environment, environmental performance, national ranks
Categories : agriculture, biodiversity, carbon, climate change, conservation, decline, deforestation, development, economics, environmental Kuznets curve, environmental science, extinction, habitat loss, harvest, Red List, reserve, 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?

Read the rest of this entry »

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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

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

The only constant is change

27 07 2020

I just wrote a piece for the Flinders University alumnus magazine — Encounter — and I thought I’d share it here.

encounter-2020_Page_01

As an ecologist concerned with how life changes and adapts to the vagaries of climate and pervasive biological shuffling, ‘constant change’ is more than just a mantra — it is, in fact, the mathematical foundation of our entire discipline.

But if change is inevitable, how can we ensure it is in the right direction?

Take climate change for example. Since the Earth first formed it has experienced abrupt climate shifts many times, both to the detriment of most species in existence at any given time, and to the advantage of those species evolving from the ashes.

For more than 3.5 billion years, species have evolved and gone extinct, such that more than 99% of all species that have ever existed are now confined, permanently, to the vaults of the past.

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Tags: Australia, biodiversity, bushfire, climate change, environment, environmental damage, extinction, fire, Global warming
Categories : agriculture, anthropocene, Australia, biodiversity, biowealth, carbon, climate change, conservation, conservation biology, deforestation, development, economics, ecosystem, ecosystem services, education, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, Flinders University, habitat loss, invasive species, recovery, reforestation, reserve, restoration, sustainability

A brief history of environmentalism in Australia since European invasion

29 06 2020

A (heavily) modified and updated excerpt from our 2015 book Killing the Koala and Poisoning the Prairie

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The Australian awakening to its environmental dilemmas was a little more sluggish than elsewhere in the New World. Not only did Europeans arrive in Australia en masse only about 250 years ago, they had a more limited view of their new landscape, and were, at least initially, constrained by the harshness of their new home. Those mostly British settlers brought with them the fully formed ideas of development and progress shaped by centuries of land use in the Motherland. That ideal of conquering wilderness and transforming it into the bucolic landscape typical of the English countryside was their driving force.

The early settlers viewed the Australian bush as ugly and monotonous, features that could only be overcome by human occupation and cultivation. This neo-classical view, homesickness and the Romantic desire to transform their homes and farms into an image of those from their homeland, were defining forces in early Australian history. Unlike in Europe, though, where there were cultural taboos associated with forest degradation — bound in mysticism, spirituality, folklore and politics — no such restrictions applied to the unfamiliar Australian bush.

In fact, the Australian government passed the Crown Lands Alienation Act in 1861, which was designed to ‘open up’ the colony to settlement, and penalized landholders for not clearing the land (via a forfeit of the land back to the Crown). That single Act guaranteed the deforestation wave would continue for over a 100 years. That, and the persistent desire to make the new land look as much as possible as the old, has ensured that continuing demise of Australia’s biodiversity.

Clearing for agriculture in early settlement. Anonymous, Government Farm at Castle Hill, circa 1803. Watercolour, 24×35 cm. Permission to reproduce courtesy of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Interestingly, clashes over land use between the settlers and Indigenous peoples were probably some of the first demonstrations of what today we would call ‘environmentalism’ in Australia. Aboriginal nations were intent on preserving their way of life (and indeed, their lives) in the face of the settlers’ onslaught. But this was seen, at most, as a mild inconvenience for the new Australians who in response invoked the idea of terra nullius — that no one owned the land, making it available to anyone (white) who wished to ‘improve’ (clear) it. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Australian history, conservation history, Environmentalism, history of environmentalism, national parks
Categories : agriculture, anthropocene, Australia, biodiversity, biowealth, book, conservation, coral reefs, deforestation, development, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, habitat loss, harvest, livestock, logging, planning, preservationist, protected area, reserve, threatened species, University of Chicago Press

Academics and Indigenous groups unite to stand up for the natural world

26 04 2019

Rain forest gives way to pastures in the Brazilian Amazon in Mato Grosso. Photo by Thiago Foresti.

More than 600 scientists from every country in the EU and 300 Brazilian Indigenous groups have come together for the first time. This is because we see a window of opportunity in the ongoing trade negotiations between the EU and Brazil. In a Letter published in Science today, we are asking the EU to stand up for Brazilian Indigenous rights and the natural world. Strong action from the EU is particularly important given Brazil’s recent attempts to dismantle environmental legislation and ‘develop the unproductive Amazon’.

It’s worth clarifying — this isn’t about the EU trying to control Brazil — it’s about making sure our imports aren’t driving violence and deforestation. Foreign white people trying to ‘protect nature’ abroad have a dark and shameful past, where actions done in the name of conservation have led to the eviction of millions of Indigenous people. This has predominantly been to create (what we in the world of conservation would call) ‘protected areas’. The harsh reality is that most protected areas either are or have been ancestral lands of Indigenous people who are closely linked to their land and depend on it for their survival. Clearly, conservationists need to support Indigenous people. This new partnership between European scientists and Brazilian Indigenous groups is doing just that.

Brazil’s forest loss 2001-2013 shown in red. Indigenous lands outlined. By Mike Clark; data from GlobalForestWatch.org

In Brazil, many Indigenous groups still have a right to their land. This land is predominantly found in the Amazon rainforest, where close to a million Indigenous people live and depend on a healthy forest. Indigenous people are some of the best protectors of this vast forest, and are crucial to a future of long-term successful conservation. But Brazilian Indigenous groups and local communities are increasingly under attack. Violence on deforestation frontiers in Brazil has spiked this month, with at least 9 people found dead. The future is particularly scary for Indigenous people when there are quotes such as this from the man who is currently the President “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.”

On top of human rights and environmental concerns, there is a strong profit driven case for halting deforestation. For example, ongoing deforestation in the Amazon risks flipping large parts of the rainforest to savanna – posing a serious risk to agricultural productivity, food security, local livelihoods, and the Brazilian economy. Zero-deforestation doesn’t harm agri-business, it allows for its longevity. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: agricultural expansion, agriculture, Brazil, carbon footprint, Cerrado, deforestation, EU, European Union, eviction, feed, genocide, indigenous, livestock, livestock feed, native people, Pantanal, Protected Areas, rain forest, Rainforest, savanna, violence
Categories : agriculture, Amazon, anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, carbon, cattle, climate change, conservation, corruption, decline, deforestation, development, ecosystem services, environmental policy, Europe, extinction, food, fragmentation, governance, habitat loss, harvest, livestock, logging, rain forests, reserve, South America, sustainability, tropical, vegetation

How to improve (South Australia’s) biodiversity prospects

9 04 2019

Figure 2 (from the article). Overlaying the South Australia’s Protected Areas boundary data with the Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia layer indicates that 73.2% of the total protected area (excluding Indigenous Protected Areas) in South Australia lies in the arid biogeographic regions of Great Victoria Desert (21.1%), Channel Country (15.2%), Simpson Strzelecki Dunefields (14.0%), Nullarbor (9.8%), Stony Plains (6.6%), Gawler (6.0%), and Hampton (0.5%). The total biogeographic-region area covered by the remaining Conservation Reserves amounts to 26.2%. Background blue shading indicates relative average annual rainfall.

If you read CB.com regularly, you’ll know that late last year I blogged about the South Australia 2108 State of the Environment Report for which I was commissioned to write an ‘overview‘ of the State’s terrestrial biodiversity.

At the time I whinged that not many people seemed to take notice (something I should be used to by now in the age of extremism and not giving a tinker’s about the future health of the planet — but I digress), but it seems that quietly, quietly, at least people with some policy influence here are starting to listen.

Not satisfied with merely having my report sit on the virtual shelves at the SA Environment Protection Authority, I decided that I should probably flesh out the report and turn it into a full, peer-reviewed article.

Well, I’ve just done that, with the article now published online in Rethinking Ecology as a Perspective paper.

The paper is chock-a-block with all the same sorts of points I covered last year, but there’s a lot more, and it’s also a lot better referenced and logically sequenced.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: biodiversity, ecological restoration, Environment Protection Authority, environmental legislation, EPA, invasive species, restoration, Rethinking Ecology, SOER, South Australia, State of the Environment
Categories : agriculture, Australia, biodiversity, biowealth, birds, carbon, climate change, connectivity, conservation, conservation biology, conservation ecology, decline, deforestation, development, drought, ecology, economics, ecosystem, ecosystem function, endemic, endemism, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, extinction debt, Flinders University, fragmentation, function, governance, habitat loss, harvest, human-wildlife conflict, invasive species, investment, livestock, management, meso-predator release, monitoring, Murray-Darling, planning, pollination, predation, prioritisation, protected area, recovery, reforestation, research, reserve, restoration, South Australia, southern Australia, sustainability, threatened species, vegetation

Biodiversity is everyone’s responsibility

13 07 2018

Workspace: Team Of Diverse Workers Put Hands Together I’m not sure if many South Australians are aware of this, but the Parliamentary Inquiry into Biodiversity by the Environment, Resources and Development Committee presented a report to the 53rd Parliament of South Australia in March 2017. I thought it worthwhile reproducing their executive summary here on CB.com (I’ve highlighted the text that I deem to be rather insightful and simultaneously damning from our own elected government representatives):

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This report summarises the findings and recommendations of the South Australian Parliament’s Environment, Resources and Development Committee’s inquiry into biodiversity in South Australia. Specifically, the inquiry investigated the regulatory and policy framework to determine whether it appropriately supports terrestrial and marine ecological processes, biodiversity values and abates species extinction.

The Committee found that in spite of the efforts of the State and Federal governments, industry and private landholders in South Australia, the condition of biodiversity in the State continues to decline. Species extinctions have occurred in the past and a further “extinction debt” still exists. There is no reason to believe that this trend will improve without a change to the way we approach biodiversity conservation.

A key theme to emerge from the Inquiry is that biodiversity conservation needs to be everyone’s responsibility; State and Federal government, industry, the broader community, and private landholders.

This also means that biodiversity conservation needs to occur across both public and private land, with actions coordinated at a landscape scale.

Making biodiversity conservation everyone’s responsibility requires a range of measures, including legislative reform, improved management of threats and greater involvement of the community. The provision of greater resources would yield faster results.

This report has focused on several key themes that emerged from submissions to the Inquiry.

Regulating for better biodiversity – South Australia’s legislative framework

South Australia’s current legislative framework does not provide for optimum biodiversity outcomes.

Three key issues contribute to this –

an out-of-date suite of environmental legislation that lacks cohesion and consistency, particularly regarding enforcement and compliance provisions;

inadequate and incomplete processes for identifying and protecting at-risk elements that need special measures (e.g. for protection of specific threatened species and ecological communities); and

inadequate consideration of biodiversity conservation in legislation that regulates human activities. In particular, there is a lack of cohesion between the environmental legislative and policy framework and land use planning, assessment and approval.

Statutory fragmentation of biodiversity considerations – that is, consideration of different aspects of biodiversity under different pieces of legislation – results in lack of cohesion and consistency, duplication and inefficiency, and makes it difficult to implement a landscape approach or to identify strategic opportunities and risks.

Taken as a whole, current enforcement provisions do not provide for effective and proportionate compliance action. Enforcement and compliance provisions across the relevant legislation are uneven in their approach. For example, penalties appear to be disproportionate and not risk-based (although there are some exceptions). Modern enforcement tools such as compliance orders, civil remedies and alternative penalties (such as administrative penalties, payment of damages including exemplary damages, remediation orders etc) are not included in all relevant legislation. There is some duplication in offences and inconsistency in the types of sanctions and penalty ranges.

There is an urgent need to amend the legislative framework to support any attempt to improve biodiversity outcomes.

The best approach will be based on clear, shared responsibility for biodiversity outcomes, supported by individual accountability. However, such a change will require policy development and drive.

To ensure forward momentum and improvements in the short term while developing the policy settings to support such a step-change, a staged approach could be implemented. There are various ways this could be achieved.

The Committee suggests a 3-stage approach to reforming the legislative framework. The Committee recommends the creation of a Biodiversity Expert Panel that is responsible for advancing this 3-stage approach.

The first stage will involve amendments to improve operation and effectiveness of the regulatory regime within current policy settings, acknowledging that as a result of Stage 3, provisions may be altered or moved into different pieces of legislation. Amendments generally would be to the existing ‘environmental’ Acts, and primarily to the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972 and Native Vegetation Act 1991. They would include many of the specific areas for amendment identified in EDO submissions (2011 & 2015) as well as in the SA Government submission, for example, beginning with amendments to improve current environmental legislation.

Stage 2 would progress to amendments to improve integration between Acts and improve support for landholders and community participation.

Stage 3 would implement a system whereby all resource use and management would be managed by one piece of legislation, with protection of biodiversity and sustainable development at its core. Provisions for protected area management, and for the scientific work involved in identifying threatened species and communities, may be contained in separate legislation.

Threats, ecological resilience and restoration

The State’s native biodiversity is facing myriad of current threats, including habitat loss and fragmentation (due to development and changing land-use), pest plants and animals, and control burn regimes. There is a need for more stringent vegetation protection, better informed and enacted control and management strategies of known pest plants and animals, and a revision of burning regimes.

Future threats to the State’s biodiversity will be largely driven by climate change impacts and the interaction with existing major threats (e.g. urbanisation and changing land use). Adequately preparing for and managing such future threats will require knowledge of projected changes and pro-active preparation for such changes.

Working with the community

Involvement of the community is an essential part of any biodiversity conservation strategy for the State. It is a foundation stone for moving to a point where biodiversity conservation is everyone’s business.

Community engagement will become increasingly important for biodiversity conservation, especially given the growing role of volunteers to support works on public land as well as the voluntary conservation efforts of private landholders. The expanding role of volunteers reenforces that biodiversity conservation is everyone’s business.

South Australia’s approach to biodiversity conversation on private land needs to be reinvigorated.

Cross cutting themes

There were several cross cutting themes identified in submissions to the Inquiry. There was broad recognition of the strong cultural and historic significance of elements of biodiversity to Aboriginal people, and that this is often poorly understood outside those communities. Continuing to identify ways for Aboriginal people to contribute to land and water management in South Australia remains a priority.

With respect to knowledge generation, critical knowledge gaps exist that need to be filled and existing knowledge is not being adequately understood, communicated or applied. From a resourcing perspective, there is concern that insufficient funds are being allocated to biodiversity conservation, which is affecting work on public and private lands.

The management of over-abundant species in South Australia remains a challenge, noting the recent impacts of long-nose fur seals in the Lower Lakes and Coorong, and ongoing concerns regarding the impact of animals such as little corellas and some species of kangaroos on negative vegetation.

Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, climate change, ecological resilience, environmental legislation, management, South Australia, State of the Environment
Categories : anthropocene, Australia, biodiversity, cat, climate change, climate shift, conservation, deforestation, development, ecosystem, environmental policy, extinction, extinction debt, fragmentation, function, habitat loss, invasive species, living dead, management, monitoring, Murray-Darling, planning, prioritisation, protected area, recovery, reserve, restoration, South Australia, southern Australia, sustainability, threatened species, water

A life of fragmentation

9 05 2018

Laurance What do you say to a man whose list of conservation awards reads like a Star Wars film intro, who has introduced terms like the ‘hyperdynamism hypothesis’ to the field of ecology, and whose organisation reaches over one million people each week with updates of the scientific kind?

Interview with Bill Laurance by Joel Howland (originally published in Conjour)

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Well, I started by asking what it is that leads him to love the natural world to the extent he does. His answer was disarmingly simple.

“I grew up in the country, on an Oregon cattle ranch, and I think my love of nature just evolved naturally from that. When I was a young kid my dad and I did some fishing and ‘rock-hounding’— searching for rare stones and fossils. As an adolescent and teen I loved heading off into a forest or wilderness, rifle in hand – back in those days you could do that – to see whatever I could find. I watched red foxes hunting, eagles mating, and even heard a mountain lion scream. I got to be a pretty good duck and game-bird hunter.”

He’s quick to point out, however, he realised his taste for guns was not so developed as his love of nature.

“I gave up my rifles for a camera, and enjoyed that even more. I really got into photography for a while. Nature has always just calmed and fascinated me —I guess that’s partly why I became a conservationist.”

Who is Bill Laurance?

William F. Laurance is one of the leading ecology and conservation scientists globally, publishing dozens of papers in journals like Nature and Science, and rewriting the way scientists in the field research the complex interactions between flora and fauna — particularly in rainforests like the Amazon.

He is a Distinguished Research Professor at James Cook University in Australia, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has received an Australian Laureate Fellowship from the Australian Research Council.

All this for a man from western USA who dreamed of running a zoo. Instead, he has travelled a path of intricate and game-changing research, trailblazing awareness campaigns and inspirational writings that have driven the way many see the environment over the past few decades.

Despite this profile, Laurance gave some time to tell Conjour about his life, his passion and his aims. I asked him what — considering his impressive CV — the future holds.

His response seems a real insight to the man. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Bill Laurance, conservation, conservation biology, fragmentation, roads, William Laurance
Categories : Amazon, anthropocene, Asia, Australia, biodiversity, Central America, climate change, connectivity, conservation, conservation biology, conservation ecology, conservation scholars, deforestation, development, environmental policy, environmental science, extinction, fragmentation, governance, habitat loss, harvest, logging, protected area, research, reserve, roads, science, South America, tropical

Four decades of fragmentation

27 09 2017

fragmented

I’ve recently read perhaps the most comprehensive treatise of forest fragmentation research ever compiled, and I personally view this rather readable and succinct review by Bill Laurance and colleagues as something every ecology and conservation student should read.

The ‘Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project‘ (BDFFP) is unquestionably one of the most important landscape-scale experiments ever conceived and implemented, now having run 38 years since its inception in 1979. Indeed, it was way ahead of its time.

Experimental studies in ecology are comparatively rare, namely because it is difficult, expensive, and challenging in the extreme to manipulate entire ecosystems to test specific hypotheses relating to the response of biodiversity to environmental change. Thus, we ecologists tend to rely more on mensurative designs that use existing variation in the landscape (or over time) to infer mechanisms of community change. Of course, such experiments have to be large to be meaningful, which is one reason why the 1000 km² BDFFP has been so successful as the gold standard for determining the effects of forest fragmentation on biodiversity.

And successful it has been. A quick search for ‘BDFFP’ in the Web of Knowledge database identifies > 40 peer-reviewed articles and a slew of books and book chapters arising from the project, some of which are highly cited classics in conservation ecology (e.g., doi:10.1046/j.1523-1739.2002.01025.x cited > 900 times; doi:10.1073/pnas.2336195100 cited > 200 times; doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2010.09.021 cited > 400 times; and doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01294.x cited nearly 600 times). In fact, if we are to claim any ecological ‘laws’ at all, our understanding of fragmentation on biodiversity could be labelled as one of the few, thanks principally to the BDFFP. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Amazon, BDFFP, Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, Brazil, edge effects, extinction, extirpation, fragmentation, rarity, South America, synergies
Categories : Allee effect, Amazon, anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, carbon, climate change, community ecology, connectivity, conservation, conservation biology, conservation ecology, decline, deforestation, demography, development, drought, ecosystem, ecosystem function, endemic, endemism, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, extinction debt, fire, flood, fragmentation, habitat loss, invasive species, logging, management, metapopulation, monitoring, population dynamics, population viability analysis, protected area, recovery, research, reserve, South America, tropical

Which countries protect the most of their land?

1 09 2017

forest One potentially useful metric to measure how different nations value their biodiversity is just how much of a country’s land its government sets aside to protect its natural heritage and resources. While this might not necessarily cover all the aspects of ‘environment’ we need to explore, we know from previous research that the more emphasis a country places on protecting its biodiversity, the more it actually achieves this goal. This might sound intuitive, but there is no shortage of what have become known as ‘paper parks’ around the world, which are essentially only protected in principle, but not in practice.

For example, if a national park or some other type of protected area is not respected by the locals (who might rightly or wrongly perceive them as a limitation of their ‘rights’ of exploitation), or is pilfered by corrupt government officials in cahoots with extractive industries like logging or mining, then the park does not do well in protecting the species it was designed to safeguard. So, even though the proportion of area protected within a country is not a perfect reflection of its environmental performance, it tends to indicate to what extent its government, and therefore, its people, are committed to saving its natural heritage.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: biodiversity, conservation, environment, legislation, national park, paper park, Protected Areas, protection
Categories : conservation, environmental policy, habitat loss, logging, management, protected area, reserve

Not all wetlands are created equal

13 02 2017

little-guy Last year I wrote what has become a highly viewed post here at ConservationBytes.com about the plight of the world’s freshwater biodiversity. In a word, it’s ‘buggered’.

But there are steps we can take to avoid losing even more of that precious freshwater biodiversity. The first, of course, is to stop sucking all the water out of our streams and wetlands. With a global population of 7.5 billion people and climbing, the competition for freshwater will usually mean that non-human life forms lose that race. However, the more people (and those making the decisions, in particular) realise that intact wetlands do us more good as wetlands rather than carparks, housing developments, or farmland (via freshwater filtering, species protection, carbon storage, etc.), the more we have a chance to save them.

My former MSc student, the very clever David Deane¹, has been working tirelessly to examine different scenarios of wetland plant biodiversity change in South Australia, and is now the proud lead author of a corker of a new paper in Biological Conservation. Having already published one paper about how wetland plant biodiversity patterns are driven by rare terrestrial plants, his latest is a very important contribution about how to manage our precious wetlands. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: South Australia, wetland, wetlands
Categories : agriculture, Australia, biodiversity, biowealth, carbon, climate change, climate shift, connectivity, conservation, conservation biology, development, ecology, ecosystem, ecosystem services, endemism, environmental policy, flood, habitat loss, human overpopulation, management, prioritisation, protected area, reserve, South Australia, species-area curve, water

Disadvantages of marine protected areas

29 02 2016

Stop wasting time

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Tags: biodiversity, environment, Fish, fisheries, marine reserves
Categories : conservation, conservation biology, marine, marine protected area, MPA, protected area, reserve

Outright bans of trophy hunting could do more harm than good

5 01 2016

In July 2015 an American dentist shot and killed a male lion called ‘Cecil’ with a hunting bow and arrow, an act that sparked a storm of social media outrage. Cecil was a favourite of tourists visiting Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, and so the allegation that he was lured out of the Park to neighbouring farmland added considerable fuel to the flames of condemnation. Several other aspects of the hunt, such as baiting close to national park boundaries, were allegedly done illegally and against the spirit and ethical norms of a managed trophy hunt.

In May 2015, a Texan legally shot a critically endangered black rhino in Namibia, which also generated considerable online ire. The backlash ensued even though the male rhino was considered ‘surplus’ to Namibia’s black rhino populations, and the US$350,000 generated from the managed hunt was to be re-invested in conservation. Together, these two incidents have triggered vociferous appeals to ban trophy hunting throughout Africa.

These highly politicized events are but a small component of a large industry in Africa worth > US$215 million per year that ‘sells’ iconic animals to (mainly foreign) hunters as a means of generating otherwise scarce funds. While to most people this might seem like an abhorrent way to generate money, we argue in a new paper that sustainable-use activities, such as trophy hunting, can be an important tool in the conservationist’s toolbox. Conserving biodiversity can be expensive, so generating money is a central preoccupation of many environmental NGOs, conservation-minded individuals, government agencies and scientists. Making money for conservation in Africa is even more challenging, and so we argue that trophy hunting should and could fill some of that gap. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 13 Comments »
Tags: Africa, animal ethics, Big Five, canned hunting, Cecil, Cecil the Lion, conservation, land use, lion, safari, safari hunting, trophy hunting
Categories : Africa, agriculture, animal welfare, biodiversity, buffalo, conservation, corruption, decline, economics, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, genetic diversity, governance, habitat loss, harvest, inbreeding depression, management, minimum viable population, mvp, poaching, population viability analysis, poverty, predator, preservationist, protected area, reserve, sustainability, threatened species, tourism

Social and economic value of protected areas

2 03 2015

I’ve just come across an exceptionally important paper published recently in PLoS Biology by a team of venerable conservation biologists led by the eminent Andy Balmford of the University of Cambridge. My first response was ‘Holy shit’, and now that I contemplate the results further, I can now update that sentiment to ‘Holy shit!’.

Most people reading this blog wouldn’t bother questioning the importance of protected areas for the preservation of biodiversity – for them, it’s a given. While the effectiveness of protected areas globally is highly variable in that regard, there’s little contention among conservationists that we do not yet have enough of them to conserve biodiversity effectively, especially in the oceans that cover some 70% of the planet’s surface.

But that justification isn’t good enough for some people – perhaps even the majority. Even our own myopic, anti-environment political bungler Prime Minister has stated publicly that national parks just ‘lock up‘ areas to the exclusion of much more important things like jobs and income generation. He’s even stated that Australia has ‘too many‘ national parks already, and that timber workers are “the ultimate conservationists“. As I type those words, I can feel the bile accumulating in my throat. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 7 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, Economics, national parks, Protected Areas, value, value of nature
Categories : conservation, economics, ecosystem services, environmental policy, MPA, protected area, reserve, threatened species

The Abbott-oir survives another day to wreak more environmental havoc

9 02 2015

Tone Abbott-oir, easily the most environmentally destructive Prime Minister this country has seen in the modern era, has survived the party room spill for a leadership change. Although 39% of his own Fiberal Party MPs voted to dump him, he remains standing (limping) – for now.

I’ve seen rather a lot lately in the Australian media about the impending spill vote, and the potential political repercussions of a change (or not), but there’s been nearly no mention of what it all means for the continually degrading Australian environment.

As is typical in Australian politics, the environment takes a very distant back seat to the those oh-so-important societal issues like knighthoods, paid parental leave and where to put the next road in Melbourne, so I certainly wasn’t hopeful that a leadership change (or not) would have any positive environmental outcomes. This particular latte-snorting, quinoa-flavoured-pinot-grigio-in-the-artisanal-underpants-pouring, erect-nipple-paper-rubbing environmental scientist has nothing at all to celebrate, even if the no-confidence in The Great Red Underpants is potentially a positive sign. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: Abbott-oir, Abbottoir, Australia, environment, Liberals, LNP, Prime Minister, spill, Tony Abbott
Categories : Australia, biodiversity, carbon, climate change, conservation, corruption, ecology, economics, ecosystem services, environmental policy, protected area, reserve, threatened species

We generally ignore the big issues

11 08 2014

I’ve had a good week at Stanford University with Paul Ehrlich where we’ve been putting the final touches¹ on our book. It’s been taking a while to put together, but we’re both pretty happy with the result, which should be published by The University of Chicago Press within the first quarter of 2015.

It has indeed been a pleasure and a privilege to work with one of the greatest thinkers of our age, and let me tell you that at 82, he’s still a force with which to be reckoned. While I won’t divulge much of our discussions here given they’ll appear soon-ish in the book, I did want to raise one subject that I think we all need to think about a little more.

The issue is what we, as ecologists (I’m including conservation scientists here), choose to study and contemplate in our professional life.

I’m just as guilty as most of the rest of you, but I argue that our discipline is caught in a rut of irrelevancy on the grander scale. We spend a lot of time refining the basics of what we essentially already know pretty well. While there will be an eternity of processes to understand, species to describe, and relationships to measure, can our discipline really afford to avoid the biggest issues while biodiversity (and our society included) are flushed down the drain?

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 9 Comments »
Tags: agriculture, ecological society, ecology, electricity, energy, food supply, human overpopulation, navel gazing, Population, sustainability
Categories : agriculture, anthropocene, biodiversity, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, conference, conservation, conservation biology, economics, ecosystem, environmental policy, extinction, food, human overpopulation, planning, population viability analysis, protected area, PVA, research, reserve, science, threatened species

South Australia’s tattered environmental remains

16 04 2014

South Australia State budget percentage expenditures for health, education and environment

Yesterday I gave the second keynote address at the South Australia Natural Resource Management (NRM) Science Conference at the University of Adelaide (see also a brief synopsis of Day 1 here). Unfortunately, I’m missing today’s talks because of an acute case of man cold, but at least I can stay at home and work while sipping cups of hot tea.

Many people came up afterwards and congratulated me for “being brave enough to tell the truth”, which both encouraged and distressed me – I am encouraged by the positive feedback, but distressed by the lack of action on the part of our natural resource management leaders.

The simple truth is that South Australia’s biodiversity and ecosystems are in shambles, yet few seem to appreciate this.

So for the benefit of those who couldn’t attend, I’ve uploaded the podcast of my slideshow for general viewing here. I’ve also highlighted some key points from the talk below: Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 10 Comments »
Tags: biodiversity, conservation, degradation, environment, loss, native vegetation clearing, South Australia, State of the Environment
Categories : alien species, Australia, biodiversity, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, coasts, conservation, deforestation, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental policy, extinction, fragmentation, function, habitat loss, invasive species, kelp, logging, mammal, management, marine, marine protected area, monitoring, planning, prioritisation, protected area, recovery, reforestation, reserve, restoration, South Australia, The University of Adelaide, threatened species, water

Australia’s (latest) war on the environment

3 03 2014

Yes, the signs were there, but they weren’t clandestine messages written in the stars or in the chaos of tea-leaf dregs. We saw this one coming, but Australians chose to ignore the warning signs and opt for the American political model of extremism, religiosity, plutocracy and science denial.

Enter the ‘Tea Party’ of Australia – the ‘new’ Coalition where reigning Rex perditor Prime Minister Tony The Monk Abbott¹ has, in just a few short months, turned back the clock on Australian environmental protection some 40 years.

Yes, we saw it coming, but it wasn’t a tautological fait accompli just because it concerned a ‘conservative’ government. It’s difficult to remember, I know, that conservative governments of yesteryear implemented some strikingly powerful and effective environmental legislation. Indeed, it was the former incarnation of the Coalition government that implemented the once-formidable Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act under the direction of then Environment Minister, Robert Hill. A colossus of sorts, the EPBC suffers from many ailments. While it’s the only really bitey environmental legislation we’ve got, that colossus is a lumbering, limping giant missing more than a few teeth – it needs a complete overhaul.

As most Australians are unfortunately aware, The Monk repeatedly and defiantly promised to repeal the Labor-government carbon price implemented in July 2012, despite the absolute necessity to tax the heaviest polluters. While somewhat sheepish about his recent climate disruption denialism following his election in 2013, a denialist he remains:

Let us re-familiarise ourselves with some of his historical pearlers: Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 15 Comments »
Tags: Australia, Coalition, environment, environmental policy, environmental protection, policy, Tony Abbott
Categories : anthropocene, Australia, biodiversity, carbon, carbon trading, climate change, conservation, corruption, decline, deforestation, economics, ecosystem, ecosystem services, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, governance, habitat loss, logging, marine protected area, protected area, recovery, reserve, restoration, threatened species

Biodiversity needs more than just unwanted leftovers

28 02 2014

The real measure of conservation progress, on land or in the sea, is how much biodiversity we save from threatening processes.

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A new paper co-authored by Memorial University’s Dr Rodolphe Devillers and an international group of researchers argues that established global marine protected areas are too often a case of all show with no substance and do not adequately protect the most vulnerable areas of the world’s oceans.

“There is a big pressure internationally to expand global MPA coverage from around 3 % of the oceans to 10 %, resulting in a race from countries to protect large and often unused portions of their territorial waters for a minimal political cost,” said Mr. Devillers. “Marine protected areas are the cornerstone of marine conservation, but we are asking whether picking low-hanging fruit really makes a difference in the long-term, or if smaller areas currently under threat should be protected before, or at the same time as, those larger areas that are relatively inaccessible and therefore less used by people.

“We need to stop measuring conservation success in terms of square kilometres,” he added. “The real measure of conservation progress, on land or in the sea, is how much biodiversity we save from threatening processes. Metrics such as square kilometres or percentages of jurisdictions are notoriously unreliable in telling us about the true purpose of protected areas.” Read the rest of this entry »