ABSTRACT In the Galápagos Islands, giant tortoises ( Chelonoidis spp.) engineer terrestrial ecosystems. Endemic tortoise lineages have been lost from Floreana and Pinta Islands, resulting in ecosystem shifts, with tortoise population restoration currently being considered using hybrids that include ancestry from the now extinct C. niger of Floreana Island. We combined long‐term vegetation monitoring with simulation of vegetation responses to tortoises, and tortoise translocation scenarios to assess whether using C. niger hybrids as ecological replacements on Pinta Island could restore ecosystem function without compromising restoration on Floreana Island. Woody plants have increased by >100% on Pinta Island between 2011 and 2022 in the absence of ecologically effective numbers of tortoises, but re‐establishment of tortoises at a moderate density (0.7 tortoises/ha) could reverse those trends and delay restoration on Floreana Island by ca. one decade while preventing continued ecosystem degradation on Pinta Island. We demonstrate the feasibility of restoring ecological replacements and the importance of rewilding ecosystem engineers before ecosystem shifts become irreversible.
ABSTRACT The dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss continue despite overwhelming scientific evidence of their impacts on human well‐being and planetary health. Those of us working in the fields of conservation and ecology are acutely aware that current efforts to avert these crises are profoundly inadequate. But how are we, as professionals working in these fields, responding? We engage in many different activities from generating knowledge and educating students to communicating research findings. Some of us work to implement science‐based evidence and advocate for policy change. A few of us engage in activism. In this perspective, we explore how to increase our impact by re‐prioritizing how we spend our time on various activities and focus our efforts on actions most likely to lead to positive change. We offer an exercise to self‐reflect and identify pathways to increase our impact. The escalating crises demand an urgent re‐think from us all in how we currently spend our time.
Brazil's Equatorial Margin is one of the least studied yet most ecologically significant regions of the Atlantic Ocean. Encompassing the Amazon coast, the region is entering a new phase of industrial expansion. In 2025, Brazil issued its first offshore oil exploration license in two decades, opening the door to large-scale hydrocarbon development. This decision comes amid renewed global commitments to climate following COP30, highlighting persistent policy tensions between energy expansion and sustainability. Here, we present a spatially explicit assessment of cumulative oil spill risk across Brazil's Equatorial Margin. By integrating oceanographic modeling of spill trajectories with habitat distribution and vulnerability scores, we mapped cumulative risk across marine habitats in all sedimentary basins and identified where risk overlaps with conservation priorities. Results indicate that the Potiguar Basin contributes most strongly to cumulative risk for seagrass meadows, rhodolith beds, coral reefs, and seamount ecosystems. In contrast, the Foz do Amazonas Basin presents comparatively lower overall risk, although planned activities there increase projected risk for mesophotic reefs. Building on these insights, we outline policy actions-including strengthened ecological monitoring, improved spill preparedness, and expansion of marine protected areas-to improve governance as offshore oil development is considered along Brazil's Equatorial Margin.
ABSTRACT Human–wildlife coexistence is central to global biodiversity agendas, yet can impose substantial costs on affected communities. Conservation Performance Payments (CPPs), which reward participants for wildlife presence, aim to redistribute these costs and reduce conflicts. Sweden's state‐funded CPP for Indigenous Sámi reindeer herders to share space with wolverines, lynx, and wolves is the oldest scheme of its kind and widely hailed as best practice for coexistence. Drawing on interviews, ecological data, and policy records spanning nearly three decades, we assess its operation in Norrbotten County, a hotspot for wolverines and herding communities. We show that scheme effectiveness has not been sustained: Payments do not match rising coexistence costs, monitoring methods have become unreliable under changing climate conditions, and participants’ trust in the system has eroded. The resulting loss of legitimacy coincides with a reversal of the regional wolverine recovery previously enabled by the scheme. Our findings illuminate a dilemma for results‐based payments: success increases costs, demanding sustained institutional accountability and adaptive management. Without this, pressure mounts on local communities, undermining social justice and conservation goals. We conclude that CPPs can be a valuable complementary tool for coexistence, if designed to adapt to socio‐ecological change, rising costs, and participants’ needs over time.
Could companies contribute to farmland biodiversity in temperate landscapes? In order to reverse the decline of biodiversity on approximately 47% of the world's cropland, it is necessary to expand the range of available tools, including novel approaches. Most of the business efforts to enhance sustainability in agricultural supply chains have been focused on the tropics. Globally important temperate crops like cereals and oilseeds are left largely unchecked. But implementation of voluntary sustainability standards to restore biodiversity in temperate and Mediterranean biomes would require doing things differently than in tropical commodities. Temperate agriculture differs both in its operations (lack of divergence between staples and cash crops, crop rotation) and landscape context (lack of agricultural expansion frontiers, complex pressures on biodiversity). Consequently, agricultural certification and similar schemes need to be linked primarily to a unit of space rather than to a specific commodity. Farmers' engagement in the development, design, and operation of standards is important. However, necessary tools such as advanced criteria, metrics, and data infrastructure are largely lacking in temperate agriculture, and their development depends on input from conservation scientists and practitioners.
Coral reef ecosystems are major tourism destinations facing unprecedented decline. Scuba diving, often promoted as sustainable and non-extractive, can directly and indirectly degrade reefs. Using video-assisted observations and post-dive questionnaires, we quantified observed and self-reported reef contacts, damages, and attitudes among 732 scuba divers across Indonesia and the Philippines. Divers made 0.26 +/- 0.02 reef contacts min-1 (mean +/- SE), with a few outliers responsible for disproportionately high rates. Unintentional and/or unnoticed damages dominated impacts, comprising 81.9% of damaging contacts. Divers overestimated their abilities relative to peers (illusory superiority; similar to 75% rated themselves above average) and relative to observed behavior (attitude-behavior gap; underestimating reef contacts by 4.92 +/- 0.93-fold; mean +/- bootstrapped SE). Overconfidence was greatest among the least competent divers, consistent with the Dunning-Kruger effect. Random forest analyses identified accessory use (especially cameras), operator eco-certification status (Green Fins), peer behavior, and wildlife encounters as key correlates of reef contacts. Fixed-effects models showed contacts more than doubled when other contemporaneous divers touched the reef, and wildlife sightings increased intentional, unintentional, and damaging contacts by 220%, 85%, and 106%, respectively, revealing a tourism paradox in which wildlife encounters elevate behaviors that degrade the very habitats upon which those wildlife depend.
Academic conferences are vital spaces for knowledge exchange and professional development, yet conventional structures often reinforce colonial hierarchies, environmental harm, and exclusionary practices. Here, we suggest an anticolonial reimagining of academic conferencing through the principles of authority and reciprocity. Based on our experiences organizing large scientific meetings, we suggest a place-based approach to conference organizing that centers Indigenous sovereignty and relational accountability, enacting shared authority with local custodians and reciprocal engagement with host communities. Recent conferences illustrate how organizers can materially support Indigenous Peoples, and how conference decisions-particularly regarding timing, location, and services-might help to disrupt rather than sustain extractive tendencies. By unsettling default practices and embracing relational ethics, conferences can become transformative spaces that honor place-based knowledge, strengthen community economies, and advance social and environmental justice.
ABSTRACT Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) manage large areas of the world's remaining biodiversity and are essential to achieving global conservation goals. Yet their recognition and representation in global environmental governance remain uneven. Despite decades of stewardship, IPLCs—particularly in South Asia—face systemic underrepresentation driven by epistemic and structural injustices. In India, this is compounded by the absence of formal recognition of “Indigenous Peoples,” with the administrative category “Scheduled Tribes” misaligned with international definitions of indigeneity. Drawing on field‐based engagement, lead author's insights, and analysis of existing literature, we show how traditional governance systems offer culturally embedded, inclusive approaches that extend beyond the technocratic framing of Nature‐based Solutions. We argue that mismatches in terminology contribute to recognition injustice, limiting IPLCs’ participation in governance and access to conservation finance. Beyond calls to decolonize conservation discourse, we emphasize the need for reparative justice to redress historical exclusion, restore land rights, and support IPLC‐led conservation. We call for policy frameworks to recognize IPLCs governance systems, ensure direct access to conservation finance, and embed culturally grounded Nature‐based Approaches (NbA) in biodiversity planning as essential for just and transformative change as envisioned in the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and IPBES.
Evaluating sustained community engagement in co-management is critical for designing durable governance with conservation potential, yet such persistence remains rarely assessed. We analyze 750 co-management initiatives established under Chile's Territorial Use Rights for Fishing policy (1998-2021), examining persistence across conditions theorized to shape collective action in social-ecological systems. Survival analysis shows that initiatives had a 75% probability of persisting beyond 15 years. Abandonment risk declined nonlinearly with initial exploitable abundance and increased with monitoring distances. Exploring combinations of variables through cluster analysis reveals that, while initiatives starting with high abundance showed the highest persistence, some initiatives with lower initial abundance also endured at comparable rates when combined with shorter monitoring distances, proximity to large markets, higher poverty, and stronger upwelling. These findings suggest diverse pathways to sustained community engagement in co-management, generate hypotheses for future research, and show how tracking persistence can inform strategies for durable and equitable conservation.
Fjords are deep-water estuaries that support a wide range of marine habitats for pelagic fish. Yet, knowledge gaps in fish distribution and habitat use limit the implementation of efficient marine conservation strategies within fjords. Using five British Columbia fjords as a case study, we demonstrated that eDNA metabarcoding combined with species traits can enhance the detection and monitoring of conservation priority species (CPS) within systematic conservation planning frameworks. Spatiotemporal eDNA patterns confirmed the presence of endangered eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus) across three fjords and identified deep fjord habitats as conservation priorities for mesopelagic species, including sensitive elasmobranchs and diel vertical migrators such as northern lampfish (Stenobrachius leucopsarus). eDNA peaks for several CPS during winter and spring matched documented spawning windows, underscoring the importance of fjords as seasonal spawning habitat. This globally transferable approach can supplement local stewardship initiatives and long-term monitoring efforts, contributing to more effective marine conservation area design and management.
ABSTRACT As global biodiversity faces a steep decline and transnational environmental crises intensify, calls to criminalize conservation harms have gained momentum. This Perspective argues that criminal law can indeed play a legitimate role in conservation governance, but only under limited and identifiable conditions. While criminalization can serve as a deterrent against conservation harms and signal societal condemnation, its implementation poses challenges, including the imposition of more complex rules on evidence, punitive excess, and the risk of further marginalizing (Indigenous) communities. From the legal practitioners’ perspective, we argue that conservation policy must approach criminal justice with sufficient caution. Criminalization is most defensible where harms are serious, culpability is sufficiently clear, civil and administrative remedies are inadequate, and enforcement can be implemented without disproportionately burdening marginalized communities or undermining local legitimacy. By mapping where criminal law complements or otherwise complicates conservation goals, we propose a conditional criminal justice framework for designing more just, efficient, and effective responses to environmental and conservation harms. Rather than endorsing punitive expansion in general, we provide when preventive, restorative, or community‐led approaches are preferable.
Climate change increases drought frequencies and intensities, posing risks to biodiversity. Species inhabiting arid regions may be vulnerable to drought because they live near their physiological limits, while species with low historical drought exposure may lack adaptations to cope with unprecedented drought. Using a breeding bird dataset and the Standardized Precipitation-Evaporation Index, we assessed drought vulnerability of 37 bird species across deserts of the western United States. We tested drought effects on community and species-level relative abundance, how species' long-term drought exposure influences these effects, and for drought-induced range shifts. Drought was associated with abundance declines and distributional shifts for over 40% of species, with shift directions reflecting regional drought patterns. Species with lower historical drought exposure declined more strongly, though several highly exposed species were among the most vulnerable. These findings demonstrate that climatic history modulates species' responses to increasing aridity. Under intensifying drought, incorporating regional drought dynamics and climatic legacies into climate change vulnerability assessments is essential for anticipating conservation issues.
Dingoes, mainland Australia's sole terrestrial apex mammal for over 3000 years, are important components of many ecosystems and Indigenous cultural heritage. Yet, conflicts with farmers over livestock predation following European colonization led to widespread lethal control. These measures are further reinforced by perceptions of hybrid ancestry with European dogs. Accurate estimation of European dog ancestry is, therefore, essential for effective conservation, but existing tests yield highly conflicting results. Leveraging precolonial dingo paleogenomes and a robust ancestry modeling framework, we reassess the genetic ancestry of contemporary populations. Our approach corrects limitations and biases in existing methods, producing consistent estimates even with as few as 10,000 genome-wide transversion genetic markers. Accounting for admixture uncovers population structure that has persisted for over two millennia and reveals patterns of genetic admixture coinciding with human activity during the colonial era. This study underscores the value of paleogenomes as a vital conservation tool, offering insights unattainable from modern DNA alone. By clarifying ancestry and population structure, our study offers a robust foundation for effective regionally informed dingo management across Australia.
ABSTRACT Conservation policies worldwide promise to halt biodiversity loss, yet implementation frequently lags intent. We examine this disconnect through wild Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) in Canada, where sustained declines have occurred despite the federal Wild Salmon Policy and legal protections available under the Species at Risk Act. Drawing on population data, policy analyses, and documented governance failures, we show that conservation outcomes have been compromised by declining monitoring capacity, weakened scientific integrity and independence, and limited political willingness to act on evidence. Long‐term monitoring has declined substantially, leaving many populations data‐deficient and delaying detection of risk. Scientific advice has at times been compromised by political and sectoral pressures that weaken evidence‐based decision‐making. Governments have repeatedly failed to implement timely protections for at‐risk populations despite clear scientific warnings. Together, these failures illustrate how discretionary governance and weak institutional safeguards can undermine conservation commitments. Canada's experience illustrates a broader global challenge: conservation policies lacking accountability mechanisms, enforceable obligations, and safeguards for scientific integrity are unlikely to deliver intended biodiversity outcomes. Preventing further loss will require sustained investment in monitoring and assessment, timely conservation action, and governance systems capable of translating scientific evidence into effective protection.
Policies for nature-based climate solutions and biodiversity conservation are intrinsically linked but seldom aligned, potentially leading to inefficient use of limited environmental budgets. We propose that countries can harness species-specific legislation to simultaneously conserve biodiversity and natural carbon stocks, helping bridge this gap. For instance, this approach has proven effective in India, where tiger conservation has delivered both biodiversity and climate benefits through area-based protection. Expanding this model, we identify additional species with similar potential. Focusing on 160 legally protected and threatened vertebrates in India, we find that protecting the habitat of any one of nine key species could safeguard over a third of the nation's above-ground carbon (similar to 1.1 GtC) and vertebrate diversity (> 700 species). We further evaluate whether expanding protection within each candidate species' unprotected habitat aligns with high-value conservation areas outside the existing protected area network. This offers a tangible, underused strategy for aligning India's climate and biodiversity goals.
ABSTRACT Global biodiversity decline has breached safe limits, prompting ambitious goals to halt and reverse nature loss. Meeting these goals requires a shift from minimizing losses to securing an absolute net gain of nature and biodiversity. We argue that foundational to this is respecting ecological irreplaceability—the recognition that some ecological assets, such as certain ecosystem types and habitat features upon which species depend, cannot plausibly be restored or replaced within timeframes relevant to the conservation of those ecosystems and species. Despite this ecological reality, many policy settings, particularly around environmental impact assessment and planning, are underpinned by the assumption that lost nature is replaceable. We outline ecological irreplaceability and its implications in the context of nature‐positive ambitions. We show how it can be operationalized as the basis of a necessary, fundamental shift in biodiversity policy and conservation decision‐making. Embedding the concept in policy is essential to safeguard the potential to achieve nature‐positive goals and restore credibility to policy mechanisms that have too often enabled cumulative and irreversible biodiversity loss.
Mycorrhizal fungi are essential to ecosystem functioning but have been overlooked in conservation agendas due to data limitations and a historical focus on plants and animals. We present the first global, species-level assessment of the area-based conservation of mycorrhizal fungi. Using 16.5 million site-by-taxon presence-absence records, we created kilometer-scale range maps for 189 arbuscular mycorrhizal and 2669 ectomycorrhizal species hypotheses. By intersecting these range maps with protected areas, we show that arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are less protected than expected by random chance, and both guilds are less protected than terrestrial mammals. The Species Protection Index (SPI) measures the protection of species ranges, but it is sensitive to estimated range size. Nonetheless, the SPI framework can be used with our maps to monitor and inform mycorrhizal fungal habitat protection. Our findings highlight the value of species-level spatial data in fungal conservation planning to mitigate extinction risks associated with habitat loss.
ABSTRACT Expanding conservation on private land is essential for many countries to achieve global biodiversity conservation and restoration targets. Planning in these socially and environmentally diverse landscapes requires approaches that are fit for purpose that account for both human and ecological values. Although systematic conservation planning offers a structured framework to address human‐nature interdependencies, its applicability to private land conservation is not well understood. We reviewed 66 peer‐reviewed systematic conservation planning studies across 44 countries to evaluate how people, including landholders and other stakeholders, are incorporated into private land conservation planning. Although landholders and other stakeholders are central to private land conservation outcomes, 21% of studies did not consider these perspectives at all, and only 29% engaged these groups directly through stakeholder workshops, participatory planning, or landholder surveys. Most studies (73%) relied on indirect socio‐economic proxies to represent social values, which may miss key insights into feasibility and long‐term success. We apply the results of the review to propose an enhanced systematic conservation planning framework tailored to private land conservation contexts. We argue that when landholders’ and other stakeholders’ perspectives are integrated into the planning process, private land conservation efforts are more likely to be beneficial for both people and nature.
