Conservation Letters

Blue Spots: A Novel Framework to Leverage Non‐Extractive Economies for Ocean Conservation The concept of biodiversity hotspots has long guided spatial conservation planning. Although many marine-protected areas (MPAs) overlap with ecological hotspots, they often face resistance when they ...

New rsch on blue spots ("...areas where socio-economic conditions already favor conservation") used simulations in Cabo Pulmo NP to show that protecting these areas could increase tourism revenues by >70% over 10 yrs, + avoid opportunity costs of business-as-usual degradation doi.org/10.1111/conl...

Our systematic overview of how rewilding is practiced in Europe has been published in @consletters.bsky.social. We found five distinct strategies differing in goals, interventions, and people's role as part of the rewilding process.

Read more here👇
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Who Let the Frogs out? Illicit and Unregulated Species Translocations Click on the article title to read more.

Short piece in @consletters.bsky.social exploring social, cultural, political and ecological apsects of illicit and unregulated species translocations - what others (not me, due to homophone errors) might call guerilla rewilding. conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Protecting Brazil and Indonesia’s tropical forests requires political will, law enforcement and public pressure How Brazil and Indonesia have cut down on deforestation.

Public write up of our recent @consletters.bsky.social paper.

"Our results were clear: across both countries, our experts judged that #political will and #law enforcement were by far the most important factors for protecting #forests...

theconversation.com/protecting-b...

You'll hopefully notice and find useful the new infographic on our web site at conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/... ... designed to help you decide which SCB journal would be most suited for your next brilliant article on conservation science.

Large Biodiversity Monitoring Gaps Remain Across Europe @consletters.bsky.social conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Naming It Is Not Enough: An Orienting Map for Understanding Conservation's Entanglement With Power Power is frequently acknowledged in conservation as a limiting factor, something to be cited, problematized, or managed, less frequently is it engaged with as a lived, situated, and multidimensional ...

Naming It Is Not Enough: An Orienting Map forUnderstanding Conservation’s Entanglement With Power @consletters.bsky.social conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Now What? The Conundrum of Successful Recovery of Wolves and Other Species for European Conservation The recent decision to downlist the wolf from a “strictly protected” to “protected” status in the Bern Convention and Habitats Directive marks a turning point for European conservation. While reflect...

Provocative but very necessary argument in @consletters.bsky.social on rethinking politics and definitions in carnivore conservation in Europe, moving away from crisis mode now that meta-populations are healthy. By @hannalp.bsky.social and von Essen
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Naming It Is Not Enough: An Orienting Map for Understanding Conservation's Entanglement With Power Power is frequently acknowledged in conservation as a limiting factor, something to be cited, problematized, or managed, less frequently is it engaged with as a lived, situated, and multidimensional ....

New in Conservation Letters: a guide to understanding power relations in conservation science. "A cross-cutting matrix enables users to trace how their own position shapes what they see, do, and make possible in conservation contexts" doi.org/10.1111/conl...

New paper from the #SteppesinHarmony workshop! Great collab with my favourite scientists in steppe bird ecology and some experts in scenario analysis. Thread below
@consletters.bsky.social

👉 Full article here: conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

"It is insulting that the commitment to the term rewilding is stronger than the commitment to reconciliation & truth-telling...At a time when we need empowerment, the label of rewilding does nothing but strip it from us."

Thought-provoking piece by Michael-Shawn Fletcher in @consletters.bsky.social

Leaves of different Aloe species that were intercepted by customs at London Heathrow Airport. Near-impossible to tell which species they are due to lack of diagnostic morphological characters.

How do you identify plants without flowers, fruits or other diagnostic features? DNA barcoding is your solution! But not all plants are easily barcoded.. I spent several years @rbgkew.bsky.social to develop this for Aloe vera + relatives. Out now in @consletters.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1111/conl...

Title, authors’ names, and abstract from a paper about an index developed to predict the effects of climate-driven disruption in a network of marine protected areas along the eastern coast of Canada

Climate change is increasingly changing biological communities posing marine conservation challenges. Irvine et al. created a climate ecological disruption index that can inform conservation efforts to “build ecological resilience in a warming world” @consletters.bsky.social‬ doi.org/10.1111/conl...

Perverse market incentives related to the desirability of rare items are pushing the European eel to extinction, by favoring its exploitation despite extreme scarcity
@consletters.bsky.social @ebdonana.bsky.social @azti.bsky.social
See thread below
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Note that APC is officially "Article Processing Charge" in publisherese

It was great to meet so many of our authors at #ICCB in Brisbane! Just a reminder for those for whom publication costs may be a barrier: we offer APC (article publishing cost) waivers to authors from less wealthy countries, and have some latitude to help SCB members w/o funding.

Resolving Uncertainties in the Legality of Wildlife Trade to Support Better Outcomes for Wildlife and People Wildlife use and trade support the livelihoods of millions of people worldwide but also threaten thousands of species. Legal instruments, when effectively designed and implemented, can help regulate ...

New paper just published in @consletters.bsky.social ‼️

Our perspective explores the legal uncertainties in wildlife trade, and how to resolve them 🦜

A product of @iccs.bsky.social Interdisciplinary Conservation Network, this works draws insights from a brilliant group of ECRs and mentors

Timeline of events creating four common threads between Japan's withdrawal from the IWC and the ten SADC countries’ suggested withdrawal from CITES: changing organizational ethos, polarization amongst members creating contradictory social orders, influence of non-state actors trumping scientific guidance, and loss of decidability for dissenting nations that causes disenfranchisement. Wildlife illustrations in this figure were contributed by Lalain Iqbal Khan (Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University).

📢 New in @consletters.bsky.social

Protect the Integrity of CITES: Lessons From Japan's IWC Withdrawal
by Cheung&al doi.org/10.1111/conl...

Can elephans learn from whales? We think conservation policy can: effective wildlife trade governance requires international cooperation, not polarization

🍄 🧪🌍 #CitizenScienceMonth ends today, so I thought I'd share our review published last year in @consletters.bsky.social "The Power of Citizen Science to Advance Fungal Conservation"
#citizenscience #conservationscience #conservation #ICYMI

conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

To save nature, AI needs our help AI is a computing tool. It can process and interrogate huge amounts of data, expand human creativity, generate new insights faster and help guide important decisions. It's trained on human expertise, ...

To save nature, #AI needs our help:
"People may believe AI tools will be the answer to all their problems, but it's important to understand that they're only as good as the data they've been trained on."
Paper from @consletters.bsky.social
🌍🍄🐛🦑

What Is(n't) Environmental Stewardship? Eliciting Unspoken Assumptions Using Fisheries as a Model Environmental stewardship is often invoked as a net social good and an approach for achieving equitable and sustainable conservation outcomes, but it is rarely defined explicitly in management settin...

What Is(n't) Environmental Stewardship? 🦺🐟🌿

Now out & open access in @consletters.bsky.social

#fishes #oceanoptimism #conservation

Collaborative effort with @fisheriesprof.bsky.social, @valeriosbra.bsky.social, @rarlinghausfish.bsky.social et al.

conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Chain-link fencing protects livestock from big cat attacks in Tanzania: Study NAIROBI ― For the last two decades, Matambire Mgemaa, a pastoralist in southern Tanzania in the environs of Ruaha National Park, nighttime has meant staying vigilant to protect his goats, sheep and ca...

A recent study published in @consletters.bsky.social highlights that chain-link fences effectively protect livestock from big cat attacks in Tanzania, benefiting entire communities by deterring predators.
#bigcats #wildlifeconflict
news.mongabay.com/2025/03/chai...

New study reveals carbon-rich peatlands are dangerously under-protected - Water Magazine A new study has revealed that peatlands are dangerously under-protected, putting the global climate at risk.

New study in @consletters.bsky.social reveals #peatlands are dangerously under-protected. Covering just 3% of Earth’s surface, these terrestrial #wetlands store 600 billion tons of #carbon — more than all the world’s #forest biomass combined — yet only 17% of peatlands fall within a protected area.

A Survey of Mammal and Fish Genetic Diversity Across the Global Protected Area Network Global conservation targets aim to expand protected areas and maintain species’ genetic diversity. Whether protected areas capture genetic diversity is unclear. We examined this question using a glob...

In their new article, @chloology.bsky.social et al. dig into molecular diversity from 2513 locations. Mammal pops, particularly large spp, were more genetically diverse when near multiple protected areas; & older MPAs contained more genetically diverse fish populations. doi.org/10.1111/conl...

Concrete Habitat Severely Decreases the Reproductive Output of Two Urban Birds | doi.org/10.1111/conl... | @consletters.bsky.social | #ornithology 🪶

Good fences make good neighbors (with carnivores) A new study has found that fortified enclosures also benefit nearby livestock keepers by preventing carnivore attacks.

A new @consletters.bsky.social study has found that fortified enclosures also benefit nearby livestock keepers by preventing carnivore attacks.
#wildlife #conservation
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...

a couple of rabbits laying in the sand with the word wild on the bottom Alt: a couple of bilbies in sand looking like they are having a meeting over a root

We're really grateful to everyone who submitted art for our new cover design. Thank you! Our review panel is a bit undecided... several pieces have potential but would need graphic design input to be cover-suitable. We're trying to coordinate a mtg across multiple time zones to discuss next steps.

Rewilding and Indigenous Community‐Led Land Care In the 1990s, pioneers of rewilding described a bold vision of wilderness connected at the continental scale, with thriving populations of large, wild animals. Much of the resulting discourse has emp...

New review on 'Rewilding and Indigenous Community-Led Land Care' dropped recently. Two key principles: "...shifting focus from wilderness to the creative agency of wild beings, and framing restoration as a collaborative endeavor between humans and wildlife" doi.org/10.1111/conl...

Land area of high ecological integrity according to a selection of nine maps (a) and national-level percentage of area of high ecological integrity (b), with bars ranging from 0% to 100%. Countries are grouped on the basis of their economic category in “developed,” “emerging,” “developing,” and “least developed.” Gray areas in the bar plots mean no integrity value according to any of the maps of high ecological integrity. We excluded countries with land area <10,000 km2 from the figure (n: 85).

Overlap among nine maps of high ecological integrity illustrating the agreement among the different maps analyzed (a), with zoom on West Canada (c) and the Congo basin (d); and the spatial overlap between structure-oriented (yellow) and composition-oriented (blue) approaches (b), with zoom on Scandinavia (e) and the Congo Basin (f).

📢 New in @consletters.bsky.social

Reconciling Different Forms of Ecological Integrity
by Mendez Angarita &al doi.org/10.1111/conl...

We sourced global maps of ecological integrity and found 3/4 of land holds high value according to one or more maps but only 1% has high value according to all!

Long‐distance Friends and Collective Action in Fisheries Management Much received wisdom in the conservation literature is that individual connections across community boundaries undercut natural resource management. However, when multiple communities access the same....

Smith et al. found that trust builds conservation success, even if relationships are long-distance. In conservation, people and their relationships to each other are critical elements of success. conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...