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Influential conservation papers of 2015

25 12 2015

As I did last year and the year before, here’s another arbitrary, retrospective list of the top 20 influential conservation papers of 2015 as assessed via F1000 Prime.

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Changing habitat areas and static reserves: challenges to species protection under climate change — the finding that species’ ranges are shrinking in situ, instead of shifting in location, is important and novel, which can only be discovered by taking such a spatially realistic landscape approach ...
Have ecosystem services been oversold? — … provides a much needed questioning of current frameworks for the valuation of ecosystem services and the uses they are put to …
Reframing the land-sparing/land-sharing debate for biodiversity conservation — This is an excellent paper, and one I’ve already covered. The F1000 review has this to say: … there need not be a choice between land sparing and land sharing; … [rather], a sustainable future will need to involve both large reserves as well as biodiversity-friendly farming practices …

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Tags: Anthropocene, assemblage, bees, biodiversity, carbon, climate change, coral reefs, decline, deforestation, disease, ecosystem services, ecosystems, extinction, fisheries, forests, grazing, health, IPBES, metapopulation, MPA, neonicotinoids, payments for ecosystem services, pollination, Predation, predators, Protected Areas, resilience, species loss
Categories : conservation

Influential conservation papers of 2014

22 12 2014

Another year, another arbitrary retrospective list – but I’m still going to do it. Based on the popularity of last year’s retrospective list of influential conservation papers as assessed through F1000 Prime, here are 20 conservation papers published in 2014 that impressed the Faculty members.

Once again for copyright reasons, I can’t give the whole text but I’ve given the links to the F1000 assessments (if you’re a subscriber) and of course, to the papers themselves. I did not order these based on any particular criterion.

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Tags: Anthropocene, assemblage, biodiversity, carbon, climate change, coral reefs, decline, deforestation, disease, ecosystem services, ecosystems, extinction, fishing, forests, grazing, payments for ecosystem services, rays, resilience, sharks, species loss
Categories : conservation

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

14 06 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our national parks must be more than playgrounds or paddocks

24 05 2013

It’s interesting when a semi-random tweet by a colleague ends up mobilising a small army of scientists to get pissed off enough to co-write an article. Euan Ritchie of Deakin University started it off, and quickly recruited me, Mick McCarthy, David Watson, Ian Lunt, Hugh Possingham, Bill Laurance and Emma Johnston to put together the article. It’s a hugely important topic, so I hope it generates a lot of discussion and finally, some bloody action to stop the rapid destruction of this country’s national parks system.

Note: Published simultaneously on The Conversation.

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It’s make or break time for Australia’s national parks.

National parks on land and in the ocean are dying a death of a thousand cuts, in the form of bullets, hooks, hotels, logging concessions and grazing licences. It’s been an extraordinary last few months, with various governments in eastern states proposing new uses for these critically important areas.

Australia’s first “National Park”, established in 1879, was akin to a glorified country club. Now called the “Royal National Park” on the outskirts of Sydney, it was created as a recreational escape for Sydney-siders, with ornamental plantations, a zoo, race courses, artillery ranges, livestock paddocks, deer farms, logging leases and mines.

Australians since realised that national parks should focus on protecting the species and natural landscapes they contain. However, we are now in danger of regressing to the misguided ideals of the 19th Century.

Parks under attack

In Victoria, new rules will allow developers to build hotels and other ventures in national parks. In New South Wales, legislation has been introduced to allow recreational shooting in national parks, and there is pressure to log these areas too. Read the rest of this entry »