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Land use changes associated with habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation exert profoundly detrimental impacts on biodiversity conservation. Urban development is one of the prevailing anthropogenic disturbances to wildlife habitat, because these developments are often considered permanent and irreversible. As a result, the potential benefits of built-up land relocation for biodiversity conservation have remained largely unexplored in environmental management practices. Here, we analyze recent built-up land relocation in Shanghai and explore how such restoration programs can affect future land change trajectories with regards to biodiversity conservation. Results show that 187.78 km2 built-up land in Shanghai was restored to natural habitat between 2017 and 2020. Further simulation analysis highlights that relocating built-up land can substantially promote conserve biodiversity. In particular, there would be less habitat loss, better natural habitat quality and more species habitat-suitable range under the scenarios with built-up land relocation. Species extinction assessment suggest that amphibians, mammals, and reptiles will all have an increasingly high extinction risk without built-up land relocation. However, there will even be a marginal decrease in extinction risk over time for mammals and reptiles if the relocation of built-up land is permitted, but still a moderate increase in extinction risk for amphibians. This study highlights the importance of incorporating rigorous conservation planning prior to development activities, thereby underpinning a sustainable approach to environmental management. • Urban development is overwhelmingly portrayed by the one-way process of expansion. • We elaborate the policy initiative of built-up land displacement in Shanghai. • Built-up land displacement is represented in our land use simulation model. • Relocating built-up land complements the global efforts on biological conservation. • We envision a desirable future for biological conservation and urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An ecosystem services-based SWOT analysis is proposed in order to identify and quantify internal and external factors supporting or threatening the conservation effectiveness of protected areas. The proposed approach concerns both the ecological and the social perspective. Strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats were evaluated based on 12 selected environmental and socio-economic indicators for all terrestrial Italian protected areas, belonging to the Natura 2000 network, and for their 5-km buffer area. The indicators, used as criteria within a multi-criteria assessment, include: core area, cost-distance between protected areas, changes in ecosystem services values, intensification of land use, and urbanization. The results were aggregated for three biogeographical regions, Alpine, Continental, and Mediterranean, indicating that Alpine sites have more opportunities and strengths than Continental and Mediterranean sites. The results call attention to where connectivity and land-use changes may have stronger influence on protected areas, in particular, whereas urbanization or intensification of agriculture may hamper conservation goals of protected areas. The proposed SWOT analysis provides helpful information for a multiple scale perspective and for identifying conservation priorities and for defining management strategies to assure biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Permanent protection of biodiversity on private lands is achieved through various mechanisms around the world. In Australia, conservation covenants are widely used to dedicate private lands to biodiversity conservation. The permanency of covenants necessitates similarly long-term commitment by landholders to meet and maintain the conservation obligations under the covenant. To better understand the effectiveness of conservation covenants as a tool for on-going environmental stewardship, we examined the relationship between landholders' initial motivations to covenant, their current perspectives on covenants and their management practices. We compared two groups of covenantors, those who initiated a covenant (original signees) and those who acquired a property with a covenant already in place (successive owners). We found the motivations and views of original signees and successive owners were similar overall, showing strong pro-environmental perspectives, and the majority of landholders were continuing to undertake management activities for the benefit of biodiversity. A small portion of respondents were dissatisfied with the covenant mechanism or covenant provider. This group tended to include successive owners and landholders who covenanted for regulatory reasons or financial incentives. Fewer dissatisfied landholders were actively managing the covenanted land compared to those who were satisfied. Considering the impending increase in successive owners as aging covenantors transfer ownership of their properties, the growing potential for covenants required under regulatory arrangements, and decreasing support within covenanting programs, this study identifies a risk that the satisfaction of landholders may decrease over time. Recognizing and addressing the challenges faced by landholders can bolster the commitment to covenant obligations and the longevity of covenants as a mechanism for positive conservation outcomes. • On-going landholder engagement is required for successful private land conservation. • Desire to protect a property's natural values drives decisions to covenant. • Most landholders continue to manage the land years after covenant was established. • Successive owners' views are generally positive but they show some dissatisfaction. • Dissatisfaction may lead to reduced land management and impact long-term outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In agroecological mosaic landscapes, the potential of the landscape to provide a broad range of ecosystem services (ES) is vital to human well-being. Landscape structure and composition plays an important role in ecosystem functioning and the production of ES. In this study, we aim to evaluate the potential of natural land use types within an agroecological mosaic landscape to provide biodiversity and ES, and evaluate landscape scales more suitable to identify ES production. We conducted our study in the Credit River Watershed, in southern Ontario (Canada). We assessed the proportion of land use types in the surrounding land cover for each site and, using field-based measurements, analyzed its association with the following parameters: plant species richness (biodiversity), aboveground carbon stock (global climate regulation), atmospheric temperature (local climate regulation), and several parameters for water quality regulation. Our results show that a higher percentage of natural areas within an agroecological mosaic landscape was associated with increased provision of many of the studied parameters. For three of them, the smallest spatial scales of assessment (site and local) had the highest proportion of the variance explained. Atmospheric temperature was the variable that could be assessed in all spatial scales, indicating that natural habitats, especially forests, can regulate temperature in both site, local and regional scales. Our findings highlight the importance of conserving natural ecosystems within the landscape mosaic, enabling the provision of biodiversity and ES. These results have implications for landscape management, as actions conducted at specific landscape scales, such as conservation/restoration efforts or urban expansion, can potentially impact biodiversity and the provision of ES that benefit human well-being. • Natural areas within mosaic landscapes can improve values of several ES. • Natural areas are associated with ES production, especially at smaller scales. • Local climate regulation can be assessed at site, local and regional scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface water is one of the constraining resources for herbivore populations in semi-arid regions. Artificial waterpoints are constructed by wildlife managers to supplement natural water supplies, to support herbivore populations. The aim of this paper is to analyse how a landowner may realize his ecological and economic goals by manipulating waterpoints for the management of an elephant population, a water-dependent species in the presence of water-independent species. We develop a theoretical bio-economic framework to analyse the optimization of wildlife management objectives (in this case revenue generation from both consumptive and non-consumptive use and biodiversity conservation), using waterpoint construction as a control variable. The model provides a bio-economic framework for analysing optimization problems where a control has direct effects on one herbivore species but indirect effects on the other. A landowner may be interested only in maximization of profits either from elephant offtake and/or tourism revenue, ignoring the negative effects that could be brought about by elephants to biodiversity. If the landowner does not take the indirect effects of waterpoints into consideration, then the game reserve management, as the authority entrusted with the sustainable management of the game reserve, might use economic instruments such as subsidies or taxes to the landowners to enforce sound waterpoint management. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Mongolian marmot (Marmota sibirica) is a relatively large-bodied, social rodent that lives in colonies across the Mongolian steppes and parts of China and Russia. Marmots serve as ecosystem engineers that display multiple functions on the steppe environments they inhabit. Mongolian marmots experienced a >75% decline across Mongolia in the 1990s that led their listing as endangered globally. The decline of marmots likely affected other species given their importance to the ecosystems. To examine the role of marmots on vertebrate species, we set camera traps on and off marmot colony sites in the forest-steppe, steppe, and semi-desert zones of Mongolia. In total, we recorded 39 vertebrate species within 3 study areas, including 19 species in 2012 in Ikh Nart NR; 21 in 2016 in Hustai NP; and 27 in the Halzan region of Sukhbaatar in 2019. Species abundance and some diversity indices were significantly higher on colonies compared to off colony sites. Our research provides insights into how marmots create important habitats for associated fauna and demonstrates that this engineering species plays an irreplaceable role in this ecosystem. We hope that this and similar experimental approaches will allow us to better understand the biodiversity patterns in and around marmot burrows. • Marmot burrows provided a network of basking sites for thermoregulation, foraging locations, and refuges for other species across the landscape, likely resulting in more favorable habitat and higher survivorship at the landscape-scale. Species abundance and some diversity indices were significantly higher on colonies compared to off colony sites. Our research provides insights into how marmots create important habitats for associated fauna and demonstrates that this engineering species plays an irreplaceable role in this ecosystem. • Marmots are highly endangered in Mongolia (IUCN Red List 'EN'; criteria A2ad) and have declined 85% since the mid-1970s from over-hunting. The decline of marmots likely affected other species given their importance to the ecosystems. Understanding these links is important for prioritizing conservation efforts in protected areas, nature reserves, where funds for conservation activities are limited and marmots are declining rapidly. • One of important step of regional biodiversity conservation is re-introduction the ecosystem engineering species in old distributed areas. Our Steppe Wildlife RCC (NGO) has already started to re-introduced the marmots in Sukhbaatar province in 2019. We include 1 year of camera trap results of re-introduced marmot burrow from Halzan village. We found the greatest difference between on and off colony sites in Ikh Nart, while Halzan and Hustai showed only moderate differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]