Gap analysis of social science resources for conservation practice.

Conservation is an inherently social process-people collectively endeavor to enact conservation. Yet, in conservation social science, research methodologies, training, and competency are less common than in natural sciences. Globally, formal education and training in the social sciences are often unavailable or inaccessible to conservation practitioners, and nonformal education may help fill this gap.

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on livelihoods and wild meat use in communities surrounding the Dja Faunal Reserve, South-East Cameroon.

The COVID-19 outbreak has had considerable negative impacts on the livelihoods and living conditions of communities around the world. Although the source of COVID-19 is still unknown, a widely spread hypothesis is that the virus could be of animal origin. Wild meat is used by rural communities as a source of income and food, and it has been hypothesised that the pandemic might alter their perceptions and use of wild meat.

Saigas on the brink: Multidisciplinary analysis of the factors influencing mass mortality events.

In 2015, more than 200,000 saiga antelopes died in 3 weeks in central Kazakhstan. The proximate cause of death is confirmed as hemorrhagic septicemia caused by the bacterium type B, based on multiple strands of evidence. Statistical modeling suggests that there was unusually high relative humidity and temperature in the days leading up to the mortality event; temperature and humidity anomalies were also observed in two previous similar events in the same region.

Drivers of coral reef marine protected area performance.

Coral reefs are severely threatened and a principal strategy for their conservation is marine protected areas (MPAs). However the drivers of MPA performance are complex and there are likely to be trade-offs between different types of performance (e.g.

Quantifying habitat impacts of natural gas infrastructure to facilitate biodiversity offsetting.

Habitat degradation through anthropogenic development is a key driver of biodiversity loss. One way to compensate losses is "biodiversity offsetting" (wherein biodiversity impacted is "replaced" through restoration elsewhere). A challenge in implementing offsets, which has received scant attention in the literature, is the accurate determination of residual biodiversity losses.

Management strategy evaluation: a powerful tool for conservation?

The poor management of natural resources has led in many cases to the decline and extirpation of populations. Recent advances in fisheries science could revolutionize management of harvested stocks by evaluating management scenarios in a virtual world by including stakeholders and by assessing its robustness to uncertainty. These advances have been synthesized into a framework, management strategy evaluation (MSE), which has hitherto not been used in terrestrial conservation.

A global evaluation of coral reef management performance: are MPAs producing conservation and socio-economic improvements?

There is a consensus that Marine Protected Area (MPA) performance needs regular evaluation against clear criteria, incorporating counterfactual comparisons of ecological and socio-economic performance. However, these evaluations are scarce at the global level. We compiled self-reports from managers and researchers of 78 coral reef-based MPAs world-wide, on the conservation and welfare improvements that their MPAs provide.