A new study looking into the impact of human activities on wildlife reports that a staggering number of terrestrial vertebrate species are exposed to ‘intense’ human pressure, spelling trouble ahead for biodiversity and the integrity of wild ecosystems. Read more here.
A new study has found that incorporating threats, actions and costs into the selection of priority species for conservation can markedly increase the efficiency of these efforts. Read more here.
The protection of Australia’s threatened species could be improved by a factor of seven, if more efficient ‘umbrella’ species were prioritised for protection, according to University of Queensland research. Read more here
Conservation efforts often focus on umbrella species whose distributions overlap with many other flora and fauna. However, because biodiversity is affected by different threats that are spatially variable, focusing only on the geographic range overlap of species may not be sufficient in allocating the necessary actions needed to efficiently abate threats. We developed a problem‐based method for prioritizing conservation actions for umbrella species that maximizes the total number of flora and fauna benefiting from management while considering threats, actions, and costs. We tested our new method by assessing the performance of the Australian federal government's umbrella prioritization list,