Gustavo A. B. da Fonseca

Bringing the Tiger Back from the Brink—The Six Percent Solution

The Tiger Summit, to be hosted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Russia in November 2010—the Chinese Year of the Tiger and the International Year of Biodiversity—promises to be the most significant meeting ever held to discuss the fate of a single non-human species. The Summit will culminate efforts by the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI), launched in 2008 by Robert Zoellick, World Bank President. Leaders of 13 tiger range states, supported by international donors and conservationists attending the summit, are being asked to commit to substantive measures to prevent the unthinkable: extinction of the worlds last wild tiger populations. n nWild tiger numbers are at an historic low. There is no evidence of breeding populations of tigers in Cambodia, China, Vietnam, and DPR Korea. Current approaches to tiger conservation are not slowing the decline in tiger numbers [1]–[3], which has continued unabated over the last two decades. While the scale of the challenge is enormous, we submit that the complexity of effective implementation is not: commitments should shift to focus on protecting tigers at spatially well-defined priority sites, supported by proven best practices of law enforcement, wildlife management, and scientific monitoring. Conflict with local people needs to be mitigated. We argue that such a shift in emphasis would reverse the decline of wild tigers and do so in a rapid and cost-efficient manner.

Warfare in biodiversity hotspots

Conservation efforts are only as sustainable as the social and political context within which they take place. The weakening or collapse of sociopolitical frameworks during wartime can lead to habitat destruction and the erosion of conservation policies, but in some cases, may also confer ecological benefits through altered settlement patterns and reduced resource exploitation. Over 90% of the major armed conflicts between 1950 and 2000 occurred within countries containing biodiversity hotspots, and more than 80% took place directly within hotspot areas. Less than one-third of the 34 recognized hotspots escaped significant conflict during this period, and most suffered repeated episodes of violence. This pattern was remarkably consistent over these 5 decades. Evidence from the war-torn Eastern Afromontane hotspot suggests that biodiversity conservation is improved when international nongovernmental organizations support local protected area staff and remain engaged throughout the conflict. With biodiversity hotspots concentrated in politically volatile regions, the conservation community must maintain continuous involvement during periods of war, and biodiversity conservation should be incorporated into military, reconstruction, and humanitarian programs in the worlds conflict zones.

Indigenous Lands, Protected Areas, and Slowing Climate Change

Recent climate talks in Copenhagen reaffirmed the crucial role of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). Creating and strengthening indigenous lands and other protected areas represents an effective, practical, and immediate REDD strategy that addresses both biodiversity and climate crises at once.

Key Neotropical ecoregions for conservation of terrestrial vertebrates

Conservation planning analyses show a striking progression from endeavors targeted at single species or at individual sites, to the systematic assessment of entire taxa at large scales. These, in turn, inform wide-reaching conservation policies and financial investments. The latter are epitomized by global-scale prioritization frameworks, such as the Biodiversity Hotspots. We examine the entire Neotropical region to identify sets of areas of high conservation priority according to terrestrial vertebrate distribution patterns. We identified a set of 49 ecoregions in which 90, 82 and 83%, respectively of total, endemic and threatened vertebrates are represented. A core subset of 11 ecoregions captured 55, 27 and 38% of these groups. The Neotropics hold the largest remaining wilderness areas in the world, and encompass most of the tropical ecosystems still offering significant options for successful broad-scale conservation action. Our analysis helps to elucidate where conservation is likely to yield best returns at the ecoregion scale.

Biodiversity Conservation Demands Open Access

Open access is vital to the progress of scientific thought and advancement of many disciplines, but particularly so for conservation science

Mainstreaming Biodiversity: Conservation for the Twenty-First Century

Insufficient focused attention has been paid by the conservation community to conservation of biodiversity outside of protected areas. Biodiversity mainstreaming addresses this gap in global conservation practice by “embedding biodiversity considerations into policies, strategies and practices of key public and private actors that impact or rely on biodiversity, so that it is conserved, and sustainably used, both locally and globally” (Huntley and Redford 2014). Biodiversity mainstreaming is designed to change those policies and practices that influence land uses outside of protected areas as well as to change economic and development decision-making by demonstrating the importance of conserving biodiversity for achieving development outcomes. The practice of mainstreaming is tied to implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity and is practiced with billions of dollars of investment by development agencies, national government agencies, and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and its implementing organizations as well as other donors. It is essential for the long-term survival of biodiversity inside and outside protected areas. However, it is virtually unheard of in the main conservation science field. This must change so as to bring careful documentation, analysis, monitoring, publishing and improvement of practices – all things that conservation science should provide as partners to practitioners of biodiversity mainstreaming. The situation is ripe for informed coordination and consolidation and creation of a science-driven field of biodiversity mainstreaming.

Phylogeny and Conservation: Conservation status and geographic distribution of avian evolutionary history

Phylogeny affects conservation at multiple levels. At the level of the vision of conservation – of the long-term persistence of the processes that maintain biodiversity – phylogeny informs how we should represent these evolutionary processes (see, for example, Chapter 11). At the level of the goal of conservation – of representing the planet’s biodiversity in a comprehensive conservation system – phylogeny reveals the units requiring representation (see, for example, Chapter 2). Finally, at the level of conservation strategies, phylogeny gives an extra dimension of biodiversity value that can be incorporated into conservation prioritisation (see, for example, Chapter 5). Here, we explore this third level. Efficient biodiversity conservation requires systematic prioritisation of efforts; ad hoc planning has significant economic and societal costs (Pressey 1994). In a major review of systematic conservation planning, Margules & Pressey (2000) conceptualised the framework for conservation strategy as requiring two variables: ‘irreplaceability’ and ‘vulnerability’. Irreplaceability refers to uniqueness, or the extent to which a given biodiversity feature will be needed to contribute to a set of conservation values; vulnerability refers to threat, or probability of loss of biodiversity value (Pressey & Taffs 2001). This framework was originally conceived as operating across geographic space (i.e. applied to the prioritisation of sites, whether specific protected sites or broad biogeographic regions). Here, we extend the concept to application across phylogenetic space: prioritisation between species.

Assessing changes in the conservation status of threatened Brazilian vertebrates

Threatened species assessments are one of the tools used to evaluate the degree of human impact on biodiversity, particularly in the assignment of extinction probabilities to individual species. Heavily altered habitats or biomes harbor a high proportion of the threatened species that have been assessed globally—80% of all of threatened species in IUCN’s Red List owe their poor status at least partly to the loss of habitat. Some taxonomic groups, however, may be well represented in the Red Lists either because they are naturally more sensitive to the most pervasive threats, or simply because they have been better studied. Here we look at the threat patterns on a temporal scale of Brazilian animal species included in the IUCN Red List, evaluating the hypotheses that directions of changes in red list status can be explained by the increase in scientific knowledge or by actual changes in threat factors. We analyzed changes in patterns of threatened vertebrates in IUCN’s list between 2002 and 2006. During that period, 120 species changed their status. 42 of these changes referred to inclusions and 78 to changes of threat category. For the latter group, 23 had their status upgraded to categories of higher threat, and 55 downgraded to others of lower threat. Most of the downgrades were caused by increase in scientific knowledge, while most of the upgrades resulted from the deterioration of the environmental conditions.

Deep-sea protection: Coordinate efforts

The plight of deep-sea ecosystems in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) has been persistently overlooked. As a consequence, they remain very poorly protected despite calls for action dating back more than a decade. In 2002, the United Nations General Assembly called upon intergovernmental organizations including the Food and Agriculture Organization, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the UN Secretariat itself to urgently consider means to reduce risks to the biodiversity of seamounts and other vulnerable deep-sea habitats within the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) ([ 1 ][1]). Since then, various international and regional bodies such as the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the International Seabed Authority (ISA), and Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) began exploring measures and regulations pertaining to shipment; oil, gas, and mineral extraction; and fishing and trawling ([ 2 ][2]). However, these efforts have been slow to materialize, in addition to lacking effective coordination. Therefore, we praise the call by K. J. Mengerink et al. (“A call for deep-ocean stewardship,” Policy Forum, 16 May, p. [696][3]) for the UN General Assembly to consider the resolution of governance issues of the ABNJ as a priority in its 2015 deliberations.nnStates agreed during the Rio+20 Conference to address the issue of conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of ABNJ ([ 3 ][4]). This includes a call for the UN General Assembly to consider the wisdom of establishing an international instrument under the UNCLOS to overcome the lack of coordination between different intergovernmental organizations and their respective mandates. Such an instrument could become more effective in promoting comprehensive oceans governance reform within the framework of an already established convention, together with fostering complementarity among relevant organizations.nnWe also recognize the paucity of funding to generate baseline, protection, and mitigation actions. At the same time, we question whether the multiplication of funding mechanisms would be practical or even desirable. We believe that the finance question should complement the resolution of the key governance issues, while building on existing platforms.nn1. [↵][5] United Nations, A/RES/57/141 ([www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/57/141&Lang=E][6]).n nn2. [↵][7] 1. E. B. Barbier 2. et aln ., Nature 505, 475 (2014).n [OpenUrl][8][CrossRef][9][PubMed][10][Web of Science][11]nn3. [↵][12] United Nations, The Future We Want ([www.uncsd2012.org/thefuturewewant.html][13]).nn [1]: #ref-1n [2]: #ref-2n [3]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1251458n [4]: #ref-3n [5]: #xref-ref-1-1 View reference 1 in textn [6]: http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/57/141&Lang=En [7]: #xref-ref-2-1 View reference 2 in textn [8]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DNature%26rft.volume%253D505%26rft.spage%253D475%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Adoi%252F10.1038%252F505475a%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Apmid%252F24459714%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actxn [9]: /lookup/external-ref?access_num=10.1038/505475a&link_type=DOIn [10]: /lookup/external-ref?access_num=24459714&link_type=MED&atom=%2Fsci%2F344%2F6190%2F1352.atomn [11]: /lookup/external-ref?access_num=000329995000012&link_type=ISIn [12]: #xref-ref-3-1 View reference 3 in textn [13]: http://www.uncsd2012.org/thefuturewewant.html

The Global Environment Facility: Financing the Stewardship of Global Biodiversity

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) serves as financial mechanism for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The goal of GEFs BD program is the conservation and sustainable use of BD, the maintenance of the ecosystem goods and services that BD provides to society, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources. Since 1991, the GEF has provided