Pesticides are widely used throughout the world to control agricultural pests. Owing to their well identified side-effects on wildlife, the release of high quantities of pesticides to the environment should always require responsible use of both science-based information and the precautionary principle, however decision making in wildlife management and conservation is not systematically supported by scientific evidence. This is particularly worrying when decision making involves release of toxic substances to the environment, as often occurs in rodent plague control. Poorly-informed management decisions to control a rodent plague can adversely affect wildlife, especially when chemical-based treatments are generically designed and applied on a broad scale, with high economic cost. Evidence-based and environmentally sustainable management should be used to control rodent plagues in Spain.

The scourge of HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome) is most prevalent in southern Africa. South Africa has the highest number of people in the world living with HIV/AIDS and a prevalence rate of over 30 % for females presenting at antenatal clinics. There are now almost five million orphans within southern Africa, as a result of AIDS deaths of one or more or their parents. AIDS-related mortality and morbidity of care-givers may lead to increased reliance on wild sources of animal protein by surviving children. This increase in hunting pressure has unknown, but potentially important impacts on local animal populations.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) relies on the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) and Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants Programme (MIKE) monitoring systems and trends in elephant numbers and the illegal killing of elephants to put resolutions forward to the Conference of Parties. Imprecision in elephant estimates and trends, as well as the spatial reality of elephant dynamics constrain CITES resolutions. Clusters of populations should instead serve as management units and demographic profiling predicting future population trends may complement existing approaches to inform CITES decisions.

Scientific textbooks deserve substantial scrutiny because they generally appeal to a wider audience than technical papers; book reviews in journals are one mode of critiquing a book's scientific content. It is contended that the review by Lugo of the book Tropical Conservation Biology was based on a superficial reading, and omitted some basic principles and literature in conservation science.

Oil and gas development generates socio-ecological consequences for coastal ecosystems. Within the Caribbean region, rural communities depend heavily on wetland resources, however attitudes and beliefs of these communities regarding the impacts of oil and gas drilling are ambiguous. This paper assesses factors influencing attitudes and behaviours among rural communities of the Nariva Swamp (Trinidad) toward oil development. Interviews and structured questionnaires indicated varying levels of beliefs, concerns and behaviours based on distance of the village from the swamp, gender and type of livelihood the respondent engaged in. Villagers who lived in closer proximity to the swamp demonstrated the greatest health and environmental concerns, pro-environmental beliefs and behaviours, probably due to their greater dependence on the resource for livelihoods. Females illustrated a higher affinity for altruistic and egoistic concerns, while males, engaged in outdoor employment and recreational opportunities, demonstrated greater biospheric concerns and environmental behaviours. Given their intimacy with the natural environment, farmers engaged in environmental behaviours to a greater extent than other groups within the villages. The varying levels of beliefs, concerns and behaviours among villagers toward drilling should be given full consideration by public officials, industrial managers and other decision makers when addressing resource management.

Fundamental to environmental conservation, the spatial location of biodiversity, people and protected areas has been studied for the species richness of various taxa, including plants, invertebrates and birds. However, few avian studies have analysed these three-way interactions for total versus breeding, and for threatened, human-avoiding and human–adapted species. Correlations between bird species richness, human population size and protected areas were studied across Italy's regions, controlling for variations in area, latitude, main land cover and spatial autocorrelation. Whilst total bird species richness increases with increasing human population size, breeding species richness does not vary with human population size. The number of globally threatened bird species is positively correlated with human population size, but this correlation is not significant when controlling for overall region bird species richness. There is no evidence that the increase in total bird species richness with human population size is owing to species typically found in urban habitats, and the proportion of human-avoiding species increases with human population size. For all groups of species, there is a negative correlation of the number of species with the proportion of protected area, indicating that the conservation of Italy's avifauna should be addressed over the entire landscape, and not just in protected areas.

The effects of diving activity in different Mediterranean subtidal habitats are scarcely known. This study evaluates diver behaviour (for example time spent in each habitat), use (contacts made with the substrate) and immediate effects of diver contact on benthic species in a marine protected area (MPA) in Sicily. Over a two-year period, intentions of 105 divers were observed within seven subtidal habitats: algae on horizontal substrate, algae on vertical substrate, Posidonia oceanica, encrusted walls, caves, sand and pebbles. Divers selected a habitat in proportion to its availability along the scuba trail. On average, each diver made 2.52 contacts every seven minutes, and no differences were detected among the levels of diver scuba certification. The highest rates of total and unintentional contacts were recorded on caves and encrusted walls, and the slow growing species Eunicella singularis and Astroides calycularis were the most frequently injured by divers. Most of the contacts were concentrated in the first minutes of the dives. The identification of diving effects in different habitats will enable management strategies to specifically control this impact at a habitat scale, for example restricting the start of the dive to low vulnerability habitats would reduce damage to benthic organisms, allowing sustainable use of MPAs.

Effective management of anthropogenic threats is key to sustaining biological diversity in protected areas. Types and distribution of threats to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda were investigated to assess the Park's status 12 years after it was upgraded from a forest reserve to a national park. Bwindi, like many tropical forested parks, is surrounded by dense human populations. Threats were quantified in 104 1-km edge-interior transects set around the Park. The distribution of threats was patchy and was most common within 300–350 m of the edge. The commonest threat was harvesting of wood and poles. Other threats included occurrence of exotic species, degradation of adjacent habitat fragments and high impact of problem animals on some of the neighbouring communities. The fact that threats were primarily associated with the edges of the Park, when previously they were widespread throughout the Park, suggests that illegal resource harvesting has been reduced since the forest was upgraded to a national park. Park legislation, enforcement and related conservation efforts have been effective, and there should be increased effort to manage the people-park interface. Edge-based assessments appear to be useful for quantifying threats to protected areas and identifying areas in which they are concentrated.

Non-timber forest product (NTFP) extraction contributes significantly to household incomes across India. This study aimed to understand the relationship between market proximity, NTFP dependence and forest condition, and assess how it is mediated by local forest institutions. Three villages with different degrees of access to markets for sale of forest products, in an area of high poverty and forest dependence in the dry tropical forest belt in central India, were examined. The village with the greatest access to the market had a greater proportion of income coming from non-forest sources, the least dependence on NTFP harvest and the most degraded forests. The strongest forest institution was found in the village closest to the market, owing largely to its access to support from the Forest Department. This emphasizes the extreme vulnerability of forest villages located distant from local markets, which are forced to depend on forests for most of their livelihood and income requirements, and left to deal with degrading forests in the absence of technical and financial support from the Forest Department. There is a critical need to strengthen local institutions for sustainable forest management in such villages, and to provide them with alternate sources of income generation.

The shorelines of coral islets are subject to strong anthropogenic pressure, being highly coveted for tourism. These landforms contain unique biotic assemblages but unfortunately are limited in size making them extremely vulnerable to perturbation. Robust information linking habitat structure and species requirements is urgently needed to promote and guide the conservation of these fragile areas. New Caledonia contains critical shore habitats for two species of amphibious sea snakes. One species (Laticauda laticaudata) shelters almost exclusively under mobile beach rocks, which are both easily accessible from the sea and regularly submerged at high tide. The scarcity of such specific and spatially limited habitat restricts the distribution of this species to highly localized areas. The other species (L. saintgironsi) uses a greater variety of terrestrial refuges, but has a preference for shores with abundant beach rocks. These findings offer a robust basis to promote the conservation of these crucial habitats and to justify their inclusion in marine protected areas (MPA), which in turn should benefit a wide array of other organisms also dependent on beach rocks.

Paddy fields in north-eastern Thailand are heterogeneous agro-ecosystems that can be described as mosaics of paddy rice plots, dykes and termite mounds. The aim of this study was to determine if this heterogeneity influences soil macrofauna biodiversity. While biodiversity did not vary as a result of different rice management practices (direct seeding and transplanting), dykes and mounds were vital to the maintenance of soil macrofauna biodiversity. Diversity and density were higher in termite mounds and field dykes, compared to rice plots, especially during the rainy season. Consequently, termite mounds and dykes can be considered to be biodiversity hotspots that behave as refuges for other soil macrofauna during the rainy and dry seasons, providing protection against flooding and dryness. The importance of these patches of biological activity in terms of ecosystem functioning and services are discussed.