Clik here to view.
More than leftovers: getting marine parks right in Australia
Image via Wikipedia A few weeks back I cosigned a ‘statement of concern’ about the proposal for Australia’s South West Marine Region organised by Hugh Possingham. The support has been overwhelming by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gagging scientists about marine parks
© Louisa Gouliamaki AFP Apologies to my readers for the lack of a post this past week – I’ve been attending the Ecological Society of America‘s 96th Annual Meeting in an extremely hot (42 °C) Austin,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
No substitute for primary forest
© Romulo Fotos http://goo.gl/CrAsE A little over five years ago, a controversial and spectacularly erroneous paper appeared in the tropical ecology journal Biotropica, the flagship journal of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Where are they? Finding (and conserving) the biggest fish in the sea
A post from my PhD student, Ana Sequeira, on her latest paper just out in Diversity and Distributions: Ocean-scale prediction of whale shark distribution. – © W Osborn (AIMS) The ocean is our major...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Unholy trinity of leakage, permanence and additionality
I begin with the proverbial WTF? The title of this post sounds a little like the legalese accompanying a witchcraft trial, but it’s jargon that’s all the rage in the ‘trading-carbon-for-biodiversity’...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Take a leaf from insurance industry’s book
Just a quick one rehashing today’s media release on the iREDD paper I blogged about a while back. The full, online version is available upon request. Stay tuned for media coverage. – A group of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
To corridor, or not to corridor: size is the question
I’ve just read a really interesting post by David Pannell from the University of Western Australia discussing the benefits (or lack thereof) of wildlife ‘corridors’. I’d like to elaborate on a few key...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Threats to biodiversity insurance from protected areas
A red-eyed tree frog (Agalychnis callidryas) from Barro Colorado Island in Panama. This small island, just 1500 ha (3700 acres) in area, is one of the tropical protected areas evaluated in this study...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tropical protected areas still in trouble
© P. Harris There’s nothing like a bit of good, intelligent and respectful debate in science. After the publication in Nature of our paper on tropical protected areas (Averting biodiversity collapse in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Protected areas work, but only when you put in the effort
Apologies for the delay in getting this latest post out. If you read my last one, you’ll know that I’ve been in the United Kingdom for the last week. I’m writing this entry in the train down from York...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Software tools for conservation biologists
Given the popularity of certain prescriptive posts on ConservationBytes.com, I thought it prudent to compile a list of software that my lab and I have found particularly useful over the years. This...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Learning from danger
Study vehicle, a group of vicuñas and a guanaco in San Guillermo National Park (San Juan, Argentina) [courtesy of Marco Escudero]. Guanacos and vicuñas are native to South America, and are the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Software tools for conservation biologists
Given the popularity of certain prescriptive posts on ConservationBytes.com, I thought it prudent to compile a list of software that my lab and I have found particularly useful over the years. This...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Learning from danger
Study vehicle, a group of vicuñas and a guanaco in San Guillermo National Park (San Juan, Argentina) [courtesy of Marco Escudero]. Guanacos and vicuñas are native to South America, and are the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Our national parks must be more than playgrounds or paddocks
It’s interesting when a semi-random tweet by a colleague ends up mobilising a small army of scientists to get pissed off enough to co-write an article. Euan Ritchie of Deakin University started it off,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Australia’s national parks aren’t ‘national’ at all
Following our The Conversation article a few weeks ago about the rapid demise of national parks in Australia, a few of us (me, Euan Ritchie & Emma Johnston) wrote a follow-up piece on the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Relaxed laws imperil Australian wildlife
Christmas Island pipistrelle bat (Pipistrellus murrayi). © M. Schultz On the continuing theme of the demise of laws designed to protect Australian biodiversity (see here, here and here), I’m...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Guilty until proven innocent
The precautionary principle – the idea that one should adopt an approach that minimises risk – is so ingrained in the mind of the conservation scientist that we often forget what it really means, or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Conservation: So easy a child could do it
I don’t like to talk about my family online. Call me paranoid, but there are a lot of crazy people out there who don’t like what scientists like me are saying (bugger the evidence). Yes, like many...
View ArticleClik here to view.
King for a day – what conservation policies would you make?
I have been thinking a lot lately about poor governance and bad choices when it comes to biodiversity conservation policy. Perhaps its all that latent anger arising from blinkered, backward policies...
View Article
