Traditional policies on using wild species are critical in developing scenarios for community engagement in conserving wild species populations. As such, this study examines the traditional practice of harvesting eggs from Moluccan Scrubfowl Eulipoa wallacei on Haruku Island, Indonesia, and its implications for bird population conservation. Using a closed-ended questionnaire, we surveyed 200 respondents in the productive age group (aged 15–65 years). It was found that most of the community supported adopting the traditional policies due to the high demand for eggs, which required daily harvesting. According to the community, egg harvesting has no adverse effect on bird populations, but hunting and habitat destruction does reduce the number of eggs available for harvesting. The community concluded that traditional conservation policies prioritise the conservation of adult birds and their habitats, not bird eggs. Particular attention should be paid to egg conservation efforts by establishing a quota for egg harvesting and limiting egg-harvesting time. Conservation efforts must also take into account the growing community awareness of the importance of conserving Moluccan Scrubfowl eggs.

The Makira Natural Park (Makira) is the largest terrestrial protected area in Madagascar, supporting nearly 200,000 people living around the park, who derive a significant proportion of their animal-source foods from hunting. Makira is currently managed with three different policies: (1) traditional management with no external assistance; (2) community-based forest management (Gestion Contractualisée des Forêts; GCF) with non-governmental support and externally developed policies; and (3) strict external management policies (Zone d’Occupation Controlée; ZOC), meaning a zone of controlled residence for communities inside the core protected area. Here, we longitudinally assess the impacts of these policies on wildlife hunting and consumption by using a difference-in-differences method to evaluate policy efficacy. We found that externally developed conservation policies led to drastically reduced wildlife hunting and consumption in Makira. We also found that public education in the form of environmental awareness-raising, conducted 1 year before adoption, led to a greater concealment of hunting behaviours. Overall, wildlife hunting and consumption have decreased in the Makira region since the adoption of GCF and ZOC policies and could be effective at reducing the unsustainable wildlife hunting across the Makira, particularly when supported by economic development and the creation of alternative sources of livelihood and food.

Valuing the ecosystem services delivered by conservation and stewardship programs is of interest within USDA and across the federal government. Answering these types of questions requires accurate and scientifically sound measures of Ecosystem Service Values (ESVs). While there is a rich literature on valuation of nonmarket goods, it is often difficult to use for the ESVs provided by USDA and other federal agencies. To advance understanding of the use of ESVs in conservation programs, this special issue of ARER presents selected papers from a 2019 workshop entitled “Applications and Potential of Ecosystem Services Valuation within USDA – Advancing the Science.”

Global marine turtle population assessments highlight the importance of the south-west Indian Ocean region, despite data gaps for the Chagos Archipelago. The archipelago hosts nesting hawksbill Eretmochelys imbricata and green turtles Chelonia mydas, both heavily exploited for 2 centuries until protection in 1968–1970. We assessed available nesting habitat and spatial distribution of nesting activity during rapid surveys of 90% of the archipelago's coastline in 1996, 1999, 2006 and 2016. We quantified seasonality and mean annual egg clutch production from monthly track counts during 2006–2018 along a 2.8 km index beach on Diego Garcia island. An estimated 56% (132 km) of coastline provided suitable nesting habitat. Diego Garcia and Peros Banhos atolls accounted for 90.4% of hawksbill and 70.4% of green turtle nesting. Hawksbill turtles showed distinct nesting peaks during October–February, and green turtles nested year-round with elevated activity during June–October. Estimates of 6,300 hawksbill and 20,500 green turtle clutches laid annually during 2011–2018 indicate that nesting on the Chagos Archipelago has increased 2–5 times for hawksbill turtles and 4–9 times for green turtles since 1996. Regional estimates indicate green turtles produce 10 times more egg clutches than hawksbill turtles, and the Chagos Archipelago accounts for 39–51% of an estimated 12,500–16,000 hawksbill and 14–20% of an estimated 104,000–143,500 green turtle clutches laid in the south-west Indian Ocean. The improved status may reflect > 40 years without significant exploitation. Long-term monitoring is needed to captureinterannual variation in nesting numbers and minimize uncertainty in population estimates.

Many of Europe’s unique habitats are highly threatened. In order to tackle these threats, the European Union (EU) is annually financing, mainly through its LIFE programme, conservation actions aimed at improving the conservation status of its habitats. We analysed the allocation of the programme’s budget since its inception in 1992 and we found that the number of projects implemented within the EU member states is only weakly related to the number of habitats within them (R2 = 0.39). In some states, fewer than 25% of the habitats have been funded, while in others, more than 75% of the habitats have been funded. There are also disparities in terms of which habitats are being funded; a quarter of them have never received any funding, while others have been targeted by multiple projects. Transnational cooperation between the states is low, further perpetuating the aforementioned disparities. Projects are implemented almost exclusively within the recipient state, often irrespectively of the conservation status of the targeted habitats in other states. We recommend that the EU addresses these disparities by encouraging projects in underfunded states, especially in habitats with unfavourable conservation statuses. Moreover, the EU should encourage transnational cooperation in order to promote effective conservation across the EU and to help underfunded states build their capacity.

For many species abundance data from across their entire range are incomplete, and therefore it is difficult to accurately assess their conservation status. Even for species that are large, charismatic and relatively easy to study, conservation assessments are often hampered by lack of data. Here we report a marked, previously undescribed, increase in numbers at a breeding colony of the loggerhead turtle Caretta caretta, a species that is Critically Endangered in several parts of its range, and place this report in the global context for this species. We present a 10-year (2008–2017) dataset of nesting activities for this species on the island of Sal, one of the Cape Verde islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Foot patrols recorded 21,938 nests during the study period. We estimate that the annual number of nests on Sal increased from 506 in 2008 to 7,771 in 2017. Taking into account that there are only two known loggerhead turtle rookeries (on Masirah Island, Oman, and in Florida, USA) with > 50,000 nests reported annually, and few with > 1,000 nests per year, our results suggest that Sal is one of the 10 largest loggerhead turtle rookeries globally. Our work highlights the conservation significance of reporting trends in abundance at breeding sites for marine turtles and other taxa.

South Africa's private sector is vital to rhino conservation yet there is a lack of research into the attitudes of current and potential rhino owners towards rhino conservation and horn trade. We surveyed 169 members of the South African private wildlife ranching industry to examine these matters. We sought to understand: (1) ranchers’ motivations for owning or not owning rhinos, (2) how rhino ownership affects ranchers’ income and operations, and (3) the attitudes of wildlife industry members towards legalization of global rhino horn trade. Our findings indicate that all respondents recognize the risks of rhino ownership and tend to distrust national and provincial environmental departments. In addition to these concerns, rhino owners have substantial monthly security and management expenditures. We found positive attitudes overall towards global rhino horn trade. Rhino owners strongly agreed that legalization would benefit rhino owners and rhino conservation. Documenting the realities of private rhino ownership and the opinions of the wildlife industry is important for policy design and for informed debate about the legalization of the rhino horn trade.

Ecuador, a country with nearly unparalleled levels of biodiversity and endemism, has one of the highest deforestation rates of South America. I examined whether governmentally protected areas in Ecuador have been effective at reducing deforestation. After estimating deforestation rates from existing land cover change data for 2000 to 2008, I used a matching approach to compare the rates of forest loss inside and outside protected areas, which corrected for geographic biases in the locations of protected areas. I tested for the effects of protected area age, size and level of protection on the rate of deforestation using generalized linear models. Governmentally protected areas still experienced deforestation – with no apparent effect of age, size and level of protection – of nearly 10,000 ha per year, but deforestation rates were lower inside compared to outside protected areas. Governmental protection led to the avoidance of additional deforestation of 2600–7800 ha of natural forest per year. Actions to mitigate deforestation in Ecuador are of global importance and as such it is promising that protected areas can help diminish deforestation, although the effectiveness of Ecuador's protected areas can still be improved upon.

The mitigation hierarchy is a decision-making framework designed to address impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services through first seeking to avoid impacts wherever possible, then minimizing or restoring impacts, and finally by offsetting any unavoidable impacts. Avoiding impacts is seen by many as the most certain and effective way of managing harm to biodiversity, and its position as the first stage of the mitigation hierarchy indicates that it should be prioritized ahead of other stages. However, despite an abundance of legislative and voluntary requirements, there is often a failure to avoid impacts. We discuss reasons for this failure and outline some possible solutions. We highlight the key roles that can be played by conservation organizations in cultivating political will, holding decision makers accountable to the law, improving the processes of impact assessment and avoidance, building capacity, and providing technical knowledge. A renewed focus on impact avoidance as the foundation of the mitigation hierarchy could help to limit the impacts on biodiversity of large-scale developments in energy, infrastructure, agriculture and other sectors.

This study investigates the environmental impacts of several forms of policies that offer farmers subsides in return for the adoption of conservation tillage. The policies differ as to whether the tillage practice or one of several environmental benefits is targeted. We develop an Environmental Lorenz Curve which fully represents the performance of the targeting policies, and show that this curve can be directly used to help select the optimal targeting strategy for special classes of social welfare functions. The model is applied to the state of Iowa.

Using data from a survey of farm operators in two Virginia counties, the authors analyze farmers' soil conservation decisions. Results indicate that financial factors, including income and debt, are the most important influences on the sample farmers' use of conservation practices. Additional factors such as perception of erosion, education level, off-farm employment, and tenancy also influence conservation expenditures. Factors influencing conservation tillage acreage differ from those influencing expenditures for other conservation practices. In particular, age and race of the operator and on-farm erosion potential are significantly related to the use of conservation tillage but not other practices. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for conservation programs.

During the past century, humans converted extensive areas of tropical forest into cultivated lands. Three distinct processes, each predominant during a different historical period, have driven the destruction of the forests. This review describes each of these deforestation dynamics: natural resource degrading poverty traps that predominated during the colonial era, new land settlement schemes that prevailed for two decades after decolonization, and finally, financialized, large enterprise dynamics that have predominated during the past quarter century. Each dynamic has, over time, given rise to different opportunities for conservation. Peasants emigrated from the sites of the poverty traps, and regrowth began to cover these degraded landscapes. Smallholders in the new land settlement areas became better acquainted with tropical tree species and allowed some trees to recolonize their fields, creating silvopastoral and agroforested landscapes. The heads of large enterprises relied on credit to clear land, so government regulators found that they could curb corporate-led deforestation by restricting access to credit when landowners failed to comply with laws against forest clearing. These links between deforestation's dynamics during past eras and conservation policies during the present era illustrate how a historical understanding of tropical deforestation can provide the basis for effective conservation policies.

Attempts to mitigate conflict between wolves and livestock breeding in the Mugello area of central Italy have so far proven to be costly, resource-intensive and fraught with tension. I applied frame analysis as a tool for investigating the roots of such tensions. The frame-analytical perspective highlighted that, while current policy focuses on improving technical approaches, conflict is also fuelled by a discrepancy in the frames of meaning that groups of stakeholders construct around the issue of wolf management. I outline two discordant frames: a dominant valuable wolf frame, currently underlying policy, and a political wolf frame that challenges existing management aims. Barriers to communication and potential points of mediation are identified. In addition, I outline a third, problematic wolf frame that may act as a potential aid in the process of bridging the two discordant frames, which is identified as a condition for successful wolf management.

The recovery goal for the jaguar Panthera onca in the USA should be to restore significant presence with some reproduction, consistent with historical records. Nevertheless, the prevailing conservation strategy for the jaguar does not include restoration in peripheral range and merely seeks long-term survival of the jaguar within its existing northern range, which is almost entirely in Mexico. Broader issues are whether recovery programmes should include peripheral populations, range expansion and species representation across ecoregions. Considering jaguar history, habitat, population requirements, wildlife management and other factors in the southwestern USA, efforts to re-establish the species would have a reasonable chance of success. Recovery of the jaguar in the USA would improve prospects for the adaptation and survival of the species within its northern range, given habitat loss, conflicts with humans and climate change.

Assisted colonization, or the translocation of species threatened with extinction to habitats outside their indigenous range (usually as a response to predicted climate shifts), is a divisive issue for conservationists. Yet, history shows that wildlife scientists were discussing the trade-offs and challenges of translocating species for conservation purposes, including introducing them to new habitats, long before anthropogenic climate change was recognized as posing a conservation problem. Here we examine a case of the scientific and policy deliberations of a high profile group of scientists and policy advisers from the 1960s (the U.S. Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife's Committee on Rare and Endangered Wildlife Species) to provide a useful historical context for assessing current debates on assisted colonization. The Committee's attempt to produce a consistent policy for the ‘transplantation’ of threatened species illustrates how translocation debates have long hinged on an unresolved set of scientific and conceptual concerns, including the relative value of individual species and historically intact ecosystems and the philosophical status of human-assisted movement of wildlife. Bringing the Committee's deliberations to light places contemporary debates over assisted colonization in the USA in their historical context and illustrates how what often appear to be highly technical and scientific disagreements over conservation translocations are ultimately driven by deeper conceptual issues about the means and ends of conservation.

One of the most difficult situations for conservation is where state capacity to regulate is weak, major corporate organizations are absent, and the population does not have a strong culture of wildlife conservation. All these apply to the hugely popular urban Indonesian pastime of keeping wild songbirds, thought to be responsible for rolling local extinctions of several native species. In such situations the introduction of a voluntary, market-based approach could interact with regulation to create new and more effective approaches to reducing the negative conservation impacts of the associated trade. Here we assess the potential of such an approach through an in-depth analysis of the socio-economic and cultural aspects of bird keeping. We project that overall the pastime contributes USD 78.8 million to the economies of the six cities surveyed, supporting a range of associated small-scale rural and urban livelihoods relating to the production of cages and collection of live bird food. Finally, we describe five general bird-breeding models with the capacity to scale up the production of captive-bred birds that may substitute for wild-caught conspecifics. Based on this information we argue that a market-based policy instrument that is capable of shifting bird-keeping trends from wild-caught birds to captive-bred alternatives would align easily with macro-policy agendas in Indonesia relating to pro-poor growth and the creation of more and better jobs. Such a policy instrument could provide exciting opportunities for conservationists to engage the interest and support of non-conservation sectors in Indonesia in efforts to conserve diminishing populations of wild birds.

Conservation policy typically excludes people from national parks and manages encroachment by law enforcement. However, local people continue to extract resources from protected areas by boundary encroachment and poaching. This paper quantifies the patterns of illegal resource extraction from Kibale National Park in Uganda, the demand for Park resources by communities bordering the Park, and examines whether designated resource access agreements reduce illegal extraction. Sections of the Park boundary were examined and human entry trails, wood extraction, livestock grazing, and animal poaching signs were quantified. Levels of illegal extraction were compared with the demand for and admitted illegal access to resources inside the Park, collected in a survey of households located near the Park. Extraction was also compared between villages with and without negotiated resources access agreements. The most wanted and extracted resource from the Park was wood for fuel and construction. Implementation of resource access agreements with local community associations was found to be an effective means of reducing illegal extraction, but only if the association members profited from the agreement.