What to do in the face of multiple threats? Incorporating dependencies within a return on investment framework for conservation

Megan C. Evans, Hugh P. Possingham, and Kerrie A. Wilson. What to do in the face of multiple threats? Incorporating dependencies within a return on investment framework for conservation. Diversity and Distributions 17:437-450. doi.10.1111/j.1472-4642.2011.00747.x Abstract Aim Our study aimed to determine priority areas for conservation investment with explicit consideration of the impacts of multiple threatening processes, and…

Resolving the ‘Environmentalist’s Paradox’, and the role of ecologists in advancing economic thinking

– Megan Evans Cross posted on ConservationBytes.com Aldo Leopold famously described the curse of an ecological education as “to be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise”. Ecologists do have a tendency for making dire warnings for the future,…

The “success” of the COP16 climate negotiations in Cancun

– Liz Law After the media circus around COP15 in Copenhagen, COP16 barely managed a blip on the radar. What was it like? Interesting. Absurd. Atrocious. Intriguing. These words would all fit the bill. I wasn’t sure what to expect at first, and still am not quite sure what to make of it. The setting…

Wilson Lab Journal Club: Paying for Environmental Services from Agricultural lands

– Andrea Fullagar I was recently involved in exploring a range of possible actions for reducing biodiversity loss in Australia to include in a submission to the Biodiversity 100 campaign. One of the actions that we discussed (but which was not included in the final set published in the Guardian) was to secure a proportion…

Making better monitoring decisions through wise selection of indicator species

– Ayesha Tulloch It is good practice to evaluate the returns and effectiveness of investments, whether the investment be on the stock exchange or in managing threats to native flora and fauna. While it’s easy to keep track of the performance of investments on the stock exchange using an indicator such as the Dow Jones…

Conserving biodiversity in production landscapes

A new study published in Ecological Applications has examined the contribution of production landscapes towards biodiversity conservation in East Kalimantan.

Wanted: another planet Earth by 2030

– Megan Evans The latest Living Planet Report was released yesterday by WWF and the Global Footprint Network, which finds we are now using resources and producing carbon dioxide at a rate 50 percent faster than the Earth can sustain.

Biodiversity 100: actions for Australia

In this International Year of Biodiversity, the Conference of Parties (COP10) will meet this month to adopt a new target to slow the global loss of biodiverity. The Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) was ratified in 1993, and in 2002 a commitment was agreed upon by all Parties to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction…

Celebrating our biodiversity

– Jessica Walsh This year has been declared as the United Nations International Year of Biodiversity. It aims to promote the valuable role biodiversity plays in our lives, increase awareness about its threatened state, and highlight what people are doing to reduce the rate of global species loss. We, as citizens of the world, are…

Wilson Lab Journal Club: The Convention of Biological Diversity’s Target for 2010, and beyond

By Jessica Walsh The Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) had global target for significantly reducing the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. There has recently been a flurry of activity to establish a new target for beyond 2010, and to develop indicators that will measure the progress made towards reaching it. We, as conservation…

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