The exceptional value of intact forest ecosystems
As the terrestrial human footprint continues to expand, the amount of native forest that is free from significant damaging human activities is in precipitous decline. There is emerging evidence that the remaining intact forest supports an exceptional confluence of globally significant environmental values relative to degraded forests, including imperilled biodiversity, carbon sequestration and storage, water provision, indigenous culture and the maintenance of human health. H
The extent and predictability of the biodiversity–carbon correlation
Protecting biomass carbon stocks to mitigate climate change has direct implications for biodiversity conservation. Yet, evidence that a positive association exists between carbon density and species richness is contrasting. Here, we test how this association varies (1) across spatial extents and (2) as a function of how strongly carbon and species richness depend on environmental variables. We found the correlation weakens when moving from larger extents, e.g. realms, to narr
The contribution of predators and scavengers to human well-being
Predators and scavengers are frequently persecuted for their negative effects on property, livestock and human life. Research has shown that these species play important regulatory roles in intact ecosystems including regulating herbivore and mesopredator populations that in turn affect floral, soil and hydrological systems. Yet predators and scavengers receive surprisingly little recognition for their benefits to humans in the landscapes they share. We review these benefits,
Gaps and opportunities for the World Heritage Convention to contribute to global wilderness conserva
Wilderness areas are ecologically intact landscapes predominantly free of human uses, especially industrial‐scale activities that result in substantial biophysical disturbance. This definition does not exclude land and resource use by local communities who depend on such areas for subsistence and bio‐cultural connections. Wilderness areas are important for biodiversity conservation and sustain key ecological processes and ecosystem services that underpin planetary life‐suppor
Bias in protected‐area location and its effects on long‐term aspirations of biodiversity conventions
To contribute to the aspirations of recent international biodiversity conventions, protected areas (PAs) must be strategically located and not simply established on economically marginal lands as they have in the past. With refined international commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity to target protected areas in places of “importance to biodiversity,” perhaps they may now be. We analyzed location biases in PAs globally over historic (pre‐2004) and recent per
The risks and opportunities of translating terrestrial biodiversity offsets to the marine realm
Biodiversity compensation policy programs such as offsetting are increasingly being expanded to the marine realm. We reviewed the literature on biodiversity offsets and related compensatory policy to determine where marine offset policies occur. We also identified the most important differences between marine and terrestrial systems that are likely to have implications for how offsetting is conducted. We found that 77 nations had compensatory policies that enabled the use of
The Last of the Ocean Wilderness.
This chapter discusses a radical solution to the problem that many protected areas are not in the right places to achieve maximum conservation benefit. The radical solution involves replacing underperforming protected areas with new ones that achieve more for conservation. Such a system revision was successfully undertaken in Bhutan as long ago as 1993. This chapter argues that designing robust policies and processes around reserve replacement will (i) force a thorough assess
The threats to Australia’s imperilled species and implications for a national conservation response
Since European occupation of Australia, human activities have caused the dramatic decline and sometimes extinction of many of the continent’s unique species. Here we provide a comprehensive review of threats to species listed as threatened under Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. Following accepted global categories of threat, we find that invasive species affect the largest number of listed species (1257 species, or 82% of all threaten
Opportunities for biodiversity conservation as cities adapt to climate change
Cities are investing billions of dollars in climate change adaptation to combat the effects of sea‐level rise, temperature extremes, increasingly intense storm events, flooding and water scarcity. Natural ecosystems have enormous potential to contribute to city resilience, and so, actions that rely on this approach could sustain considerable co‐benefits for biodiversity. In this paper we identify the prevalence of key themes of human adaptation response that could have biodiv
The many meanings of no net loss in environmental policy
‘No net loss’ is a buzz phrase in environmental policy. Applied to a multitude of environmental targets such as biodiversity, wetlands and land productive capacity, no net loss (NNL) and related goals have been adopted by multiple countries and organizations, but these goals often lack clear reference scenarios: no net loss compared to what? Here, we examine policies with NNL and related goals, and identify three main forms of reference scenario. We categorize NNL policies as