Land degradation threatens food security, water resources, and biodiversity by eroding soil health and productivity. In Ethiopia, restoration initiatives like exclosures are widely implemented, yet most studies fail to integrate plot-level ecological evidence with landscape-scale land use and land cover (LULC) dynamics. Furthermore, few studies combine these biophysical trends with long-term economic valuation of ecosystem services (ES) and local knowledge to quantify ES trade-offs. Using the Sire-Dodota district of Ethiopia, as a case study, we (i) evaluated the localized ecological performances of communal exclosures relative to LULC-driven ecosystem service (ES) changes, (ii) quantified spatial and temporal (22 years) LULC impacts on ecosystem service values (ESVs), and (iii) assessed community perceptions of restoration outcomes. We combined vegetation inventories, spatial analysis, household surveys, focus group discussions, and value transfer methods across plot and landscape scales. Our results reveal a clear socio-ecological paradox across scales. At the plot-scale, community-managed exclosures significantly enhanced biomass accumulation and biodiversity, establishing a robust empirical baseline for ecological recovery. At the landscape scale, however, LULC-based ESVs increased over 22 years, driven by gains of US$80.6 million from agricultural lands and US$1.3 million from forest lands, alongside a US$3.4 million decline in shrubland ESVs. These increases are potential values rather than realized ecosystem service flows, masking systemic losses in regulating and supporting services as short-term agricultural expansion dominates valuation outcomes. Social data from 393 households strongly corroborate these patterns. While communities consistently recognized localized ecological recovery, they favored agroforestry integration over static exclosures to offset high opportunity costs of restricted access. Together, these findings caution against reliance on uncontextualized macro-scale economic indicators and underscore the need for integrated, multifunctional landscape strategies that align ecological recovery with livelihood needs. We, therefore, recommend establishing a national, open-access ESV meta-database linked to Ethiopia’s Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) targets, alongside future multi-decadal monitoring of below-ground carbon and soil biodiversity, and the cost-benefit performance of blended finance restoration models.
Tag: biodiversity conservation
Integrating biodiversity goals with community needs in Wallacea, Indonesia
We studied conservation initiatives in Wallacea, a global biodiversity hotspot where numerous endemic plant and animal species are threatened by agricultural and industrial expansion. Seventy per cent of Wallacea’s 391 recognized Key Biodiversity Areas lie outside legally protected habitats. Our research explores biodiversity conservation options in six highly biodiverse landscapes where local farmers actively manage production systems subject to overlapping administrative jurisdictions and exposed to intensifying development pressures. For the past decade we have engaged with local communities in these landscapes to identify scenarios that could meet their development needs and also maintain the region’s biodiversity. Conservation management will need local institutions able to influence the behaviour of numerous local stakeholders. We conclude that there is a need to provide financial incentives to local people for conservation either through profitable nature-based enterprises adapted to local community skills or by providing conditional cash payments linked to conservation goals. Ecosystem boundaries do not align well with administrative jurisdictions and new institutional arrangements will be needed to meet the goals of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
Segregate or integrate nature and agriculture for biodiversity conservation? Criteria for agroforests
Human use of biotic resources (‘agriculture’ in its widest sense) and biodiversity (‘nature’ in its widest sense) are both needed by society at large, but there are generally conflicts between these two aspects of ‘land use’. conflicts between ‘nature’ and ‘agriculture’ can be solved by segregating nature and agricultural land (maximizing agricultural production on relatively small part of the land for nature as it is possible ) or by integrating nature into agricultural land through the adaption of production system that allow sufficient agricultural production while ensuring conservation of considerable parts of biodiversity of the natural system. Multi functional forests and agroforests are examples of the ‘integrate’ option, intensive agriculture plus nature reserves are an example of the segregate pathway.Mixed strategies are feasible where nature reserves coexist with pure agricultural production systems for some commodities and where production system integrate nature and agriculture for the commodities. All three options have strong advocates, and it is not clear which solution is optimum under which conditions.Objective criteria are needed for distinguishing which solution may best meet the multiple goals formulated under different circumstances.A simple model is used to derive a decision scheme. It distinguishes ‘internal’ biodiversity of land use system and ‘external’ biodiversity, by requiring only a part of the area for agriculture. If two production systems are compared, biodiversity conservation will be maximized if the system is chosen with the highest agricultural productivity per unit biodiversity loss. If agricultural intensification is treated as a continuous process, a similar criterion can be used to distinguish between situations where ‘segregation’ or ‘integrate’ forms the best solution. Further research is needed to check the assumptions behind the proposed equations, to quantify the scaling function of biodiversity in order to assess the effectiveness of both ‘ internal’ and ‘external’ biodiversity conservation, and to determine the feasibility of implementation of opinions in the ‘real world’.
Evaluating socioeconomic and equity outcomes in livelihood interventions: Insights from Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs) in northern Ghana
Over the past 25 years, Ghana’s Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) program has expanded to cover 2 million hectares across 600 communities, aiming to achieve its dual objectives of biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction. As Ghana’s flagship Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) initiative, it has attracted significant investment from international organizations for livelihood interventions to reduce poverty and incentivize conservation. Yet little is known about how these interventions are implemented or who benefits. Using qualitative methods, this study examines stakeholders’ perceptions of the types, socioeconomic impacts, and equity dynamics of livelihood interventions in three CREMAs in northern Ghana. Our findings reveal that interventions that enhance existing livelihoods, such as modern beekeeping, remain the most frequently implemented. Although the socioeconomic impacts of these interventions vary across and within CREMAs, they provide individuals with modest, seasonal income and support community development projects. The gender dimensions of the interventions show that gender-targeted, pro-poor distribution norms have increased women’s inclusion and access to cash income but also raise concerns about exclusion and intersectional inequities. By situating our findings within debates on distributional and contextual equity, we offer insights into how pro-poor norms interact with gender and other contextual factors to shape economic and equity outcomes in incentive-based conservation. This article is relevant beyond the case study, as it can inform the design of equitable, context-sensitive, and sustainable livelihood interventions in current and future incentive-based conservation efforts across the tropics and beyond.
EcoregionsTreeFinder—A Global Dataset Documenting the Abundance of Observations of > 45,000 Tree Species in 828 Terrestrial Ecoregions
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework emphasizes ecological restoration as a key strategy for conserving biodiversity. The Global Biodiversity Standard promotes the use of native tree species, aligning with the Ecoregions2017Resolve global map, which enhances systematic planning for terrestrial biodiversity conservation. EcoregionsTreeFinder, a newly developed database, provides comprehensive lists of native tree species across 828 terrestrial ecoregions, aiding restoration projects, biogeographical studies, and tree presence observations. The dataset includes 48,129 tree species with 453,053 ecoregion-species records, detailing observations across bioclimatic zones based on Climatic Moisture Index, temperature thresholds, and water deficit metrics. The data spans 1946–2021, sourced from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, supporting biodiversity conservation efforts worldwide.
From source to destination: Strengthening policy responses to the songbird trade in the Guiana Shield
Key messages
- The Guiana Shield is a hotspot for songbird endemism and diversity, but also a source for the international songbird trade. Guyana and Suriname drive demand through longstanding cultural traditions and trade networks that link rural trappers to diaspora communities in the U.S. and Europe.
- Songbirds are significantly underrepresented in the CITES Appendices, creating gaps in international trade regulation.
- While both Guyana and Suriname have domestic legislation regulating songbird trade, enforcement remains weak.
- Regulatory gaps in transit and in destination countries for non-CITES-listed species result in weak sanctions that undermine conservation policies in source countries.
- Strengthening destination-country legal frameworks that criminalize trade in wildlife taken in violation of foreign laws can reinforce shared international responsibility.
- Addressing the illegal songbird trade in the Neotropics requires coordinated regional action that recognizes its cultural and socioeconomic importance for local livelihoods, with active involvement by rural and Indigenous communities.
Predicting people’s priorities for reconciling food security and biodiversity conservation in Kasungu, Malawi
Balancing agricultural productivity with biodiversity conservation is a critical challenge in rural Africa, where food insecurity and poverty intersect with growing ecological pressures. Understanding how communities anticipate and respond to socio-ecological change is essential for designing interventions that sustain livelihoods while safeguarding biodiversity. Using scenario-based methods with 317 household interviews near Kasungu National Park, Malawi, we explored how plausible futures, spanning conservation strategies, agricultural policies, and public interventions, might influence food security, natural resource use, people-park relations, and wellbeing. Scenarios involving increased farm input prices and wildlife translocations were widely expected to reduce food security and wellbeing and were perceived as unfair. In contrast, universal input subsidies and wildlife damage compensation were seen as fair and beneficial, though questions remain about their sustainability and governance. Buffer zone restoration generated geographically divergent responses: generally accepted in fenced communities but strongly opposed in unfenced areas due to expected restrictions on farmland and resource access. These findings demonstrate that interventions are experienced unevenly, shaped by geography, history, and social context. Policies that apply blanket approaches risk reinforcing inequities and undermining legitimacy. More effective strategies should integrate local perspectives, anticipate trade-offs, and align biodiversity goals with food security and human wellbeing.
Roadway seizures reveal widespread illegal wild meat use and faunal downsizing in Brazil
Illegal and unsustainable wild meat use is simplifying vertebrate assemblages across the Neotropics, yet robust information on offtake magnitude and use patterns remains scarce. We used nationwide road-seizure records from Brazil’s Federal Highway Police (Polícia Rodoviária Federal; PRF) from 2017 to 2024, focusing on hunted animals and wild meat intercepted during transport, to quantify the scale and composition of illegal offtake. We then tested whether these enforcement records reproduce expected ecological signals of illegal hunting by examining whether seizure yield and taxonomic composition track state-level defaunation. Across 314 independent events, PRF intercepted ∼9,479 individual animals, totalling ∼9.3 t of biomass, revealing substantial and taxonomically structured pressure on wildlife. The Amazon and Caatinga biomes accounted for the largest shares of events and individuals, respectively. Seized birds dominated numerically in Caatinga, whereas mammals supplied most biomass overall, with reptiles contributing disproportionately in the Amazon and Cerrado–Pantanal biomes. Generalized linear models showed that with increasing defaunation, events involved more individuals but less biomass per seizure, and the mean body mass of seized vertebrates declined. In addition, the proportion of mammals decreased while birds became more prevalent. This convergence with known depletion patterns indicates that road-seizure data can serve as a cost-effective barometer of illegal wild-meat use and its defaunation-linked “downsizing” effect. Targeted responses should pair highway and riverine enforcement, standardize inter-agency reporting (species, counts, biomass, geolocation, product form), and combine access control with community partnerships, livelihood alternatives, and health-risk communication to reduce demand and long-term ecological and public-health impacts.
Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Protected Areas
The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching impacts on global socioeconomic systems, with profound effects on human health and well-being. Measures to contain the spread of the virus, such as lockdowns and travel restrictions, significantly altered how humans interact with one another and the environment. This article examines the impact of the pandemic on protected areas (PAs) supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the primary financial mechanism for the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, and the most significant funding source for biodiversity conservation. Using project documentation and spatiotemporal geospatial analysis of fire regimes and forest cover, the study finds that PAs faced significant implementation and management challenges, which were exacerbated by the pandemic. Only a third of the projects applied strategies to mitigate these challenges, highlighting the need for more proactive measures. Although most GEF-supported PAs experienced fire frequency and deforestation rates within the predicted range, some exceptions highlight the importance of continued efforts to monitor and mitigate environmental threats to PAs. The pandemic also had a significant negative impact on livelihoods, particularly in areas reliant on tourism revenue. The findings underscore the need for proactive and adaptive measures, effective monitoring and evaluation systems, and the importance of more diversified and resilient income-generating activities to increase the effectiveness and sustainability of PA systems.
Guiding action on invasive alien species towards meeting the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy for 2030
Invasive alien species (IAS) are a major threat to global biodiversity. The total cost of biological invasions across all European Union member states has been estimated at 129.9 billion US dollars between 1960 and 2020. It is, therefore, crucial to implement effective measures for IAS management. In Europe, the overarching mechanism for this is established through the European Union (EU) Biodiversity Strategy 2030, which aims to halve the number of Red List species threatened by IAS by 2030, namely by stepping up the implementation of the EU IAS Regulation. To support the implementation of the strategy, we use the Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) methodology to identify and quantify opportunities to reduce species extinction risk in the EU by managing invasive alien species (IAS), focusing specifically on its threat abatement component (STAR-t). Using data from the European Red List on extinction risk, threats and distribution for terrestrial and freshwater species groups (both animals and plants) threatened by IAS, we identified key geographic areas and species for intervention. The countries and territories providing the largest opportunities to contribute towards reducing EU species extinction risk through managing IAS are the Canary Islands [Spain] (20.8% of total EU STAR-t attributed to IAS), Madeira [Portugal] (14.2%), mainland Spain (11.9%), Italy (9.3%), Azores [Portugal] (5.4%) and Greece (5.3%). For specific IAS, the greatest opportunities to reduce regional species extinction risk by mitigating threats from IAS come from managing feral goats (12.4%), mouflons (8.1%), rabbits (5.3%) and rats (4.6%). This work showcases the first application of STAR at a regional scale to measure opportunities for threat abatement caused by IAS and provides practical application in guiding the management actions with the highest conservation gains towards the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030.