Abstract High demand for wild birds as pets stimulates overexploitation and threatens global avian biodiversity. Unlike commonly traded birds valued for colourful plumage or attractive songs, crows (e.g. Corvus , Pyrrhocorax and Coloeus ) have increasingly appeared in online records of rearing, acquisition and trade, yet these activities remain overlooked. To investigate these activities using massive online datasets, we developed a large language model‐based pipeline with manual verification to identify the validity of 21,846 forum posts from Baidu Tieba, achieving an accuracy of 89.51%. The main motivations of crow rearing were flight training and companionship, relying on the high cognitive capabilities of crows rather than the aesthetic or vocal traits valued in traditional bird markets. Local pickup was the dominant transaction mode, with hotspots concentrated in prefectures with high per capita GDP, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Xiamen. Corvus and Pyrrhocorax accounted for 14,426 recorded individuals and exhibited dense intercity trafficking networks. Routes followed a clear directional pattern, from origins with high wild crow sightings to economically developed southeastern China. The trafficking network of Coloeus may be at an early stage, but related records increased rapidly. This study provides evidence and data to support targeted law enforcement efforts to curb such potentially illegal activities. With adapted search phrases and prompts and manual validation, our pipeline could be extended to other species threatened by illegal online trade, integrating digital monitoring into routine conservation efforts. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Abstract Market‐based conservation instruments such as REDD+ and Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) have been promoted to curb deforestation in the Colombian Amazon. Yet these schemes remain contested, as they advance neoliberal conservation and reproduce gender inequalities. Although feminist scholarship has documented these problems, less attention has been paid to how market‐based conservation shapes the politics of care. We examine how, within Colombia's REDD+ strategy REM Visión Amazonía (VA), the PES Amazon Forestry Incentive enacts, organizes and recognizes forest care, and how this intersects with campesina (smallholder farmers) women's forest care practices in Guaviare. Drawing on feminist political ecology and care scholarship, we analyse the forest ontologies, care practices, environmental subjectivities and political projects sustained and obscured by VA. We rely on fieldwork combining semi‐structured interviews, document analysis and focus groups with programme staff and campesina women. Our findings show that VA enacts forests as discrete land units, made legible through carbon accounting and satellite monitoring and valued for their economic contributions. Care, in turn, becomes a contractual responsibility enacted through conservation agreements, financial incentives and monitoring systems, cultivating subjectivities aligned with economic rationalities and contract compliance. These framings reproduce structural gendered inequalities that value ‘productive’ work while rendering invisible the reproductive labour sustaining life and forested landscapes. In contrast, campesina women enact forests as a mosaic of life‐sustaining relations embedded in the finca (small farm). Through embodied, affective labour and sustained attentiveness to local ecologies, they practise forest care to secure campesino life across generations. These practices inform collective political projects such as La Guardiana del Chiribiquete , a grassroots initiative through which campesino communities contest institutional definitions of forest conservation and assert alternative caring subjectivities grounded in territorial permanence, self‐determination and intergenerational responsibility. An analytics of care highlights the multiplicity of relations that sustain forests and the exclusions through which some forms of care are recognized while others are not. Thereby, we contribute to debates on market‐based conservation by raising questions, beyond its economic logics, about the worlds and socio‐ecological relations nourished through forest governance arrangements. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Perceived inequities lie at the core of many conservation conflicts, yet empirical comparisons of how different stakeholders conceptualise equity remain rare. Despite its prominence in global policy frameworks, equity is context‐dependent and understood differently by different actors, making it difficult to define and operationalise. Using an empirical environmental justice lens, we compared the notions of distributional, procedural, and recognitional equity held by coastal residents and government actors in a co‐managed marine protected area in Indonesia. We drew on semi‐structured interviews with 26 coastal residents and three government officials and analysed the protected area's management plan. We identify three key findings. First, both groups shared similar distributional and procedural criteria in principle, but they carried different meanings in practice. Second, recognitional equity was relational and internally derived for residents but externally conferred and legalistic for government actors. Third, misaligned notions of equity generated perceived inequities that undermined local support for conservation. Our findings highlight the central role of recognition in shaping notions of equity and show that agreement in principle does not ensure alignment in practice. Crucially, these divergences influence how coastal residents relate to, engage with, and support marine conservation, with significant implications for conservation legitimacy, stewardship and socio‐ecological outcomes. To foster more equitable and sustainable conservation co‐management, governance approaches must centre local understandings of equity and legitimacy by aligning formal rules with community values, practices and lived relationships with marine environments. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Context : Agrobiodiversity depends on multiple interconnected socioecological processes. The loss of crop diversity represents a critical challenge for global food security and for the resilience and adaptation of small‐scale farming communities to climate change. However, the role of kinship and the transmission of variety in the formation of agrobiodiversity have not been systematically addressed. Objectives : Our objective was to examine how kinship and transmission of varieties influence the dynamics of the diversity of cassava ( Manihot esculenta) in traditional socioecological systems. Methods : We employed an agent‐based model to simulate the vertical diffusion of cassava varieties by considering different postmarital residence norms, variety of transmission rules and two marriage norms (Endogamy and Dual Organization). Results : The model successfully captured the expected loss of diversity over time, while also demonstrating that social norms slow down this process. We further showed that the interaction between postmarital residence rules and variety transmission consistently impacts diversity patterns between groups and clans. Conclusions : By showing how the transmission of varieties' dynamics shapes ecological outcomes, this work underscores the central role of human social institutions in sustaining agrobiodiversity. Moreover, our study highlights the importance of exploring, both ethnographically and theoretically, the complementarities between horizontal and vertical transmission. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Abstract As interactive technologies and playful storytelling increasingly explore posthuman and more‐than‐human perspectives, opportunities emerge to reframe natureculture heritage—as it recognizes that human lives, technologies and societies are always connected with the lives and environments of other species and ecosystems—as intrinsically entangled and participatory. Traditional heritage games, however, often remain anthropocentric in their narratives and perspectives. This paper introduces Rock, Paper, Pigeon (RoPPi), a board‐based storytelling game designed as a participatory artefact to challenge these conventions by immersing players in speculative more‐than‐human storytelling and mediating human–nonhuman engagement. Set in Madeira Island's luscious landscape and ecosystems, RoPPi invites players to embody nonhuman entities, encouraging alternative perspectives on natureculture heritage entanglements. Through two user studies—involving (i) Biologists and (ii) cross‐disciplinary human–computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design professionals—we analysed observational playtesting, pre‐ and post‐play reflections, and the narratives generated through play. Our findings point to how different disciplinary backgrounds shape engagement with more‐than‐human storytelling, highlighting the potential of speculative, role‐based gamification in fostering empathy, facilitating multispecies ecological awareness and supporting reflective relationships with nonhuman lives. By positioning more‐than‐human play as a participatory method, RoPPi contributes to the expanding discourse on natureculture heritage engagement, reimagining ecological storytelling and environmental interaction design beyond anthropocentrism. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
