This policy review examines the “conservation paradox” of Brazilian humpback whales (Breeding Stock A): while the population recovers at 7–12% annually and returns to historical habitats, it increasingly overlaps with modernized coastal activities, generating severe socio-environmental conflicts with artisanal fisheries. Unlike previous biologically focused assessments, this review frames the paradox as a governance challenge requiring human-centered mitigation strategies. We analyze existing institutional frameworks—Marine Extractive Reserves (RESEX), the National System of Conservation Units (SNUC), and Brazil’s Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) under Decree 12,491/2025—and evaluate their capacity to operationalize Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) and multi-stakeholder co-management. We assess monitoring technologies (telemetry, Passive Acoustic Monitoring, drones, AIS, machine learning, eDNA, UAV thermal imaging) not as general tools but as decision-support instruments for specific management processes, with particular attention to operational feasibility for small-scale fisheries. We identify critical governance gaps—including enforcement limitations, underreporting driven by punitive regulatory cultures, and insufficient integration of LEK into formal planning—and propose six concrete policy recommendations. Addressing this paradox requires interdisciplinary, community-inclusive policies that reconcile marine megafauna recovery with local livelihoods and build trust between fishers, regulators, and conservation practitioners.
Migratory fish provide food, income, and key ecosystem services for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Hydropower development is widely recognized as a major threat to these species, with impacts often assumed to be proportional to project size or operational type. However, this assumption overlooks a key ecological feature of migratory fish: their dependence on spatially connected habitats to complete their life cycle, particularly spawning grounds. By blocking access to these critical reproductive areas, both small and large dams can disrupt migration routes, reduce reproductive success, and ultimately compromise entire populations. Despite this, projects classified as “small” are often treated as low-impact and may undergo simplified environmental assessment, even when they pose substantial ecological risks. In this Policy Forum, we argue that the impact of hydropower projects on migratory fish, regardless of their generation capacity, can only be properly estimated using a multi-scale framework, grounded in ecological connectivity, population dynamics, and cumulative basin-scale effects.
The current global scientific landscape is structured as a hierarchy that prioritises Global North epistemologies while treating knowledge from the Global South as peripheral. This exclusion is maintained through three primary pillars of inequity: academic dependency, linguistic and financial gatekeeping, and extractive research practices. In the face of planetary-scale crises, we cannot afford to ignore the insights of most of the world’s population due to systemic imbalances. Here we contextualise the Brandt Line’s legacy and argue that the exclusion of southern voices is a critical scientific integrity issue that limits our ability to solve global challenges. To address current asymmetries, we propose a strategy of seven complementary pathways requiring coordinated action by both southern and northern stakeholders. Ultimately, achieving true sustainability requires a scientific ecosystem that is as diverse, representative, and resilient as the planet it seeks to protect.
Land-use change threatens pollination services globally, yet interaction networks may persist through ecological processes that buffer habitat modification. We studied plant-butterfly nectar-feeding interaction networks across a forest-to-agriculture gradient in temperate Mexican forests, comparing juniper-oak forests, eucalyptus forests, and croplands over one year. We evaluated network structure and used probabilistic models to assess the relative predictive power of neutral processes (species abundance), phenological overlap, and morphological matching in explaining observed interaction patterns. We recorded 3,229 interactions among 76 species (34 plants, 42 butterflies) with moderate specialization. Networks showed significant nestedness and modularity across habitats, though weighted nestedness was lower than expected. Model selection revealed that species abundance primarily predicted network structure, with phenology becoming important in croplands where floral resources are temporally concentrated. Generalist butterflies, particularly Battus philenor philenor, maintained consistent structural roles across habitats, demonstrating functional stability. Pieridae and Papilionidae contributed positively to nestedness through generalist interactions, while Hesperiidae and Lycaenidae reduced it through specialized associations. Our findings suggest that abundance-driven processes best predict nectar-feeding interaction patterns in modified landscapes, though we emphasize that structural persistence does not guarantee pollination effectiveness. Conservation strategies could prioritize abundant native flowering plants and habitat heterogeneity that may support generalist populations, while recognizing that network topology may not fully capture functional aspects of pollination such as pollen transfer efficiency and plant reproductive success.
