Kathy MacKinnon

One Hundred Questions of Importance to the Conservation of Global Biological Diversity

We identified 100 scientific questions that, if answered, would have the greatest impact on conservation practice and policy. Representatives from 21 international organizations, regional sections and working groups of the Society for Conservation Biology, and 12 academics, from all continents except Antarctica, compiled 2291 questions of relevance to conservation of biological diversity worldwide. The questions were gathered from 761 individuals through workshops, email requests, and discussions. Voting by email to short-list questions, followed by a 2-day workshop, was used to derive the final list of 100 questions. Most of the final questions were derived through a process of modification and combination as the workshop progressed. The questions are divided into 12 sections: ecosystem functions and services, climate change, technological change, protected areas, ecosystem management and restoration, terrestrial ecosystems, marine ecosystems, freshwater ecosystems, species management, organizational systems and processes, societal context and change, and impacts of conservation interventions. We anticipate that these questions will help identify new directions for researchers and assist funders in directing funds.

The link between international trade and the global distribution of invasive alien species

Invasive alien species (IAS) exact large biodiversity and economic costs and are a significant component of human-induced, global environmental change. Previous studies looking at the variation in alien species across regions have been limited geographically or taxonomically or have not considered economics. We used a global invasive species database to regress IAS per-country on a suite of socioeconomic, ecological, and biogeographical variables. We varied the countries included in the regression tree analyses, in order to explore whether certain outliers were biasing the results, and in most of the cases, merchandise imports was the most important explanatory variable. The greater the degree of international trade, the higher the number of IAS. We also found a positive relationship between species richness and the number of invasives, in accord with other investigations at large spatial scales. Island status (overall), country area, latitude, continental position (New World versus Old World) or other measures of human disturbance (e.g., GDP per capita, population density) were not found to be important determinants of a country’s degree of biological invasion, contrary to previous studies. Our findings also provide support to the idea that more resources for combating IAS should be directed at the introduction stage and that novel trade instruments need to be explored to account for this environmental externality.

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. Wild 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.

Natural Solutions: Protected areas helping people cope with climate change

This report provides an exhaustive overview of the literature regarding the role protected areas play in reducing emissions from land use change, and sustaining ecosystem services that will be vital to reducing the vulnerability of humans to climate change. Section 3, Adaptation – The role of protected areas, looks at reducing the impacts of natural disasters, safeguarding water, addressing health issues and biodiversity conservation and maintaining ecosystem resilience.

New resources for assessing the effectiveness of management in protected areas

One of the goals set out in the Convention of Biological Diversity’s Programme of Work on Protected Areas (CBD, 2004; http://www.cbd.int/protected/) is to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of protected areas management across the world’s protected area estate. A key activity is to implement management effectiveness evaluations for at least 30% of each Party’s protected areas by 2010. To measure progress towards the CBD goal on management effectiveness various tools have been developed and applied worldwide, using the guidance provided by the World Commission on Protected Areas (Hockings et al., 2006, Assessing Effectiveness: A Framework for Assessing Management Effectiveness of Protected Areas. 2nd edition. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland).

The role of protected areas in supplying ten critical ecosystem services in drylands: a review

Well-designed and effectively managed protected areas can be a key component of strategies to address the breakdown of ecosystem services in drylands. Environmental degradation has led to food and water insecurity, dust storms and desertification. Protected areas allow maintenance and where necessary restoration of natural vegetation regimes, thus reducing erosion, reviving aquifers and maintaining sustainable livelihoods for local communities. Protected areas in drylands embrace a full range of management approaches, from strict protection to ‘protected landscapes’ where conservation is integrated with traditional lifestyles; a certain amount of grazing is often beneficial to vegetation management for instance. They vary from government-run national parks to ancient examples of community conserved areas, such as the hima of the Arabian Peninsula, which are closely linked to Islam and are currently being revived. A detailed review of options is presented, with numerous examples from dryland regions of the world, along with a typology of ecosystem services maintained. Implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Programme of Work on Protected Areas and establishment of effective protected area networks in drylands would address many of the challenges identified by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. But this implies new attitudes to protected areas, involving greater willingness to consider community-led approaches and different and more diverse governance structures, alongside government efforts.

Conserving dryland biodiversity: a future vision of sustainable dryland development

Water scarcity has largely driven the adaptations of organisms to survive dryland conditions. As a result, there are many animal and plant species and habitats found only in drylands: some semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas are among the most biodiverse regions in the world. Despite the value of such biomes, protected areas in drylands are not representative of all the dryland subtypes. For example, deserts are disproportionately represented whilst temperate grasslands have amongst the lowest level of protection of all biomes at approximately 3.4%. Nevertheless, local communities inhabiting drylands have informally conserved large areas as a by-product of sustainable management practices or cultural beliefs. The drylands offer significant opportunities for achieving both conservation and development objectives simultaneously and in many cases have been shown to do so. The Aichi targets (targets established by Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity at the tenth Conference of Parties in 2010) on protected areas could be more easily achieved, or even surpassed, in drylands by legitimising and supporting Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs), and traditional natural resource management strategies. A more nuanced vision of sustainably managed drylands is therefore needed: one that reflects social and ecological realities and provides a framework against which policies and investments can be assessed. Such a vision should be based on the intersection between sustainable land management and biodiversity conservation, which encompasses the following four components: adapting green economic growth to the drylands; conservation and sustainable management of dryland biodiversity; and health as the basis for secure food and water provision; and resilience and risk management in uncertain environments. To realise such an ambitious vision in the drylands requires a strategic and broad suite of actions in the following four fields: innovation, knowledge and science; incentives and investment; governance and empowerment; mainstreaming dryland biodiversity.

IUCN/WCPA protected areas program: making space for people and biodiversity in the anthropocene

Protected areas have emerged as a cultural feature and perhaps the largest land resource allocation decision in human history. Yet they are not without controversy on their adequacy for conservation and social justice. We argue that protected areas not only are necessary for conservation, they also contribute to human well-being and social justice in the Anthropocene. The World Parks Congresses have been a major forum for advancing global protected area policy and practice. Recently the IUCN-World Commission on Protected Areas and the IUCN-Global Protected Areas Program has been moving toward a vision parallel and complementary to the proposed Earth Stewardship initiative of the Ecological Society of America. This novel view of IUCN is also called “The Promise of Sydney” because it will be the focus of the 2014 World Parks Congress in Australia. ICUN’s novel view suggests that protected areas are an effective way to put Earth stewardship into action.