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Continuing declines in abundance of many waterbird species on wetland ecosystems require explanations to support effective management interventions. We used 6 year survey data from Shengjin Lake National Nature Reserve in the Yangtze River Floodplain, China, to study the effects of ecological and anthropogenic variables as determinants of waterbird species abundance. Our results showed that effects were guild-dependent, although distance to nearest human settlements had the largest adverse effects on bird abundance across all guilds. These results suggested that although the abundance of waterbird species could be affected by habitat conditions and buffalo grazing activities, Yangtze River Wetlands would most likely benefit most from reduced pressure from the proximity to the surrounding human population. We suggest that screening and/or restricting public access at some key sites may be the most cost-efficient way to restrict or reduce human activity in these wetlands, to improve the conservation status and wintering conditions for these waterbirds. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-018-1076-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Crop-raiding elephants affect local livelihoods, undermining conservation efforts. Yet, crop-raiding patterns are poorly understood, making prediction and protection difficult. We hypothesized that raiding elephants use corridors between daytime refuges and farmland. Elephant counts, crop-raiding records, household surveys, Bayesian expert system, and least-cost path simulation were used to predict four alternative categories of daily corridors: (1) footpaths, (2) dry river beds, (3) stepping stones along scattered small farms, and (4) trajectories of shortest distance to refuges. The corridor alignments were compared in terms of their minimum cumulative resistance to elephant movement and related to crop-raiding zones quantified by a kernel density function. The “stepping stone” corridors predicted the crop-raiding patterns. Elephant presence was confirmed along these corridors, demonstrating that small farms located between refuges and contiguous farmland increase habitat connectivity for elephant. Our analysis successfully predicted elephant occurrence in farmland where daytime counts failed to detect nocturnal presence. These results have conservation management implications.

We compared the European and eastern Chinese waterbird assemblages and checked whether the effects of human disturbance could be detected in the assemblages’ composition. For the different Chinese provinces, we expected to find a negative effect of economic development on the mean bird species mass and on the proportion of bentivorous, piscivorous and insectivorous bird species. We also expected to find relatively fewer large species in the Chinese assemblage. Species rank–abundance curves were relatively similar, but China had significantly more species with smaller body masses. The China assemblage was characterized by relatively higher abundance of heavy-bodied species, contrary to our expectations. Mean bird body mass decreased in China with increasing disturbance and increasing gross domestic product (GDP). For coastal provinces in China the percentage of bentivorous, piscivorous and insectivorous bird species declined with increasing GDP, maybe through the increased use of pesticides or fertilizer.