July - 2017

Field work in Kiribati

Field work in Kiribati

In April and May I spent two months in Kiribati undertaking field work toward my PhD. Kiribati is an island nation made up of 32 atolls (and one raised limestone island) with a total land area of 800 km2 spread over 3.5 million km2. To put that into perspective, on a ratio basis it is equivalent to chopping Cairns into 33 pieces and scattering it across Australia. I was in awe when flying in that people had found their way to these tiny pockets of land in the middle of the Pa

Staring at the abyss

Staring at the abyss

Having already lost much of its habitat in the last 30 years, the Southern Black-throated Finch will plummet towards extinction if Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine goes ahead as planned, experts have warned. Image courtesy of Eric Vanderduys In a report submitted to Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg today, the Black-throated Finch Recovery Team—charged with safeguarding this Endangered species—describes a fundamentally flawed offset plan that will have grave conseq

Trade‐offs in triple‐bottom‐line outcomes when recovering fisheries

Trade‐offs in triple‐bottom‐line outcomes when recovering fisheries

Almost all environmental management comes at an economic cost that may not be borne equitably by all stakeholders. Here, we investigate how heterogeneity in catch and profits among fishers influences the trade‐off among the triple‐bottom‐line objectives of recovering a fish population, maximizing its economic value and distributing restrictions equitably across fishers. As a case‐study, we examine management reform of an ecologically and economically important coral reef fish

Temporally inter-comparable maps of terrestrial wilderness and the Last of the Wild

Temporally inter-comparable maps of terrestrial wilderness and the Last of the Wild

Wilderness areas, defined as areas free of industrial scale activities and other human pressures which result in significant biophysical disturbance, are important for biodiversity conservation and sustaining the key ecological processes underpinning planetary life-support systems. Despite their importance, wilderness areas are being rapidly eroded in extent and fragmented. Here we present the most up-to-date temporally inter-comparable maps of global terrestrial wilderness a

Patterns of forest loss in one of Africa’s last remaining wilderness areas: Niassa National Reserve

Patterns of forest loss in one of Africa’s last remaining wilderness areas: Niassa National Reserve

Niassa National Reserve (NNR) supports Mozambique’s largest populations of endangered fauna and sustains the livelihoods of> 40,000 people who utilise its natural resources. Accurately monitoring finescale spatial and temporal trends in land-use and tree-cover is increasingly used for monitoring the ecological state of conservation areas. Here we provide essential information on land-use changes in NNR to support ongoing conservation efforts in the region. We examined pattern

Ecology: a global plan for nature conservation

Ecology: a global plan for nature conservation

Climate change and biodiversity loss are the two greatest environmental challenges of our time. The 2015 Paris climate agreement states that global warming must be limited to a rise in temperature of less than 2 oC above pre-industrial levels to avoid the greatest impacts of climate change1. This goal has served as a rallying point for global efforts to limit carbon emissions. However, a comparably clear, agreed target for the amount of natural space that should be conserved

The impact of urbanization and climate change on urban temperatures: a systematic review

Defending the scientific integrity of conservation‐policy processes

Defending the scientific integrity of conservation‐policy processes

Government agencies faced with politically controversial decisions often discount or ignore scientific information, whether from agency staff or nongovernmental scientists. Recent developments in scientific integrity (the ability to perform, use, communicate, and publish science free from censorship or political interference) in Canada, Australia, and the United States demonstrate a similar trajectory. A perceived increase in scientific‐integrity abuses provokes concerted pre

Renewal ecology: conservation for the Anthropocene

Renewal ecology: conservation for the Anthropocene

The global scale and rapidity of environmental change is challenging ecologists to reimagine their theoretical principles and management practices. Increasingly, historical ecological conditions are inadequate targets for restoration ecology, geographically circumscribed nature reserves are incapable of protecting all biodiversity, and the precautionary principle applied to management interventions no longer ensures avoidance of ecological harm. In addition, human responses t

Opportunities and constraints for implementing integrated land–sea management on islands

Opportunities and constraints for implementing integrated land–sea management on islands

Despite a growing body of literature on integrated land–sea management (ILSM), very little critical assessment has been conducted in order to evaluate ILSM in practice on island systems. Here we develop indicators for assessing 10 integrated island management principles and evaluate the performance of planning and implementation in four island ILSM projects from the tropical Pacific across different governance structures. We find that where customary governance is still stron

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