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Monitoring the governance and management effectiveness of area-based conservation has long been recognized as an important foundation for achieving national and global biodiversity goals and enabling adaptive management. However, there are still many barriers that prevent conservation actors, including those affected by governance and management systems from implementing conservation activities and programs and from gathering and using data on governance and management to inform decision-making across spatial scales and through time. We explored current and past efforts to assess governance and management effectiveness and barriers actors face in using the resulting data and insights to inform conservation decision-making. To help overcome these barriers, we developed Elinor, a free and open-source monitoring tool that builds on the work of Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom to facilitate the gathering, storing, sharing, analyzing, and use of data on environmental governance and management across spatial scales and for areas under different governance and management types. We consider the process of codesigning and piloting Elinor with conservation scientists and practitioners and the main components of the assessment and online data system. We also consider how Elinor complements existing approaches by addressing governance and management in a single assessment at a high level for different types of area-based conservation, providing flexible options for data collection, and integrating a data system with an assessment that can support data use and sharing across different spatial scales, including global monitoring of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Although challenges will continue, the process of developing Elinor and the tool itself offer tangible solutions to barriers that prevent the systematic collection and use of governance and management data. With broader uptake, Elinor can play a valuable role in enabling more effective, inclusive, and durable area-bas

An often-overlooked question of the biodiversity crisis is how natural hazards contribute to species extinction risk. To address this issue, we explored how four natural hazards, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, overlapped with the distribution ranges of amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles that have either narrow distributions or populations with few mature individuals. To assess which species are at risk from these natural hazards, we combined the frequency and magnitude of each natural hazard to estimate their impact. We considered species at risk if they overlapped with regions where any of the four natural hazards historically occurred (n = 3,722). Those species with at least a quarter of their range subjected to a high relative impact were considered at high risk (n = 2,001) of extinction due to natural hazards. In total, 834 reptiles, 617 amphibians, 302 birds, and 248 mammals were at high risk and they were mainly distributed on islands and in the tropics. Hurricanes (n = 983) and earthquakes (n = 868) affected most species, while tsunamis (n = 272), and volcanoes (n = 171) affected considerably fewer. The region with the highest number of species at high risk was the Pacific Ring of Fire, especially due to volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis, while hurricane-related high-risk species were concentrated in the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and northwestern Pacific Ocean. Our study provides important information regarding the species at risk due to natural hazards and can help guide conservation attention and efforts to safeguard their survival.

Governments recently adopted new global targets to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity. It is therefore crucial to understand the outcomes of conservation actions. We conducted a global meta-analysis of 186 studies (including 665 trials) that measured biodiversity over time and compared outcomes under conservation action with a suitable counterfactual of no action. We find that in two-thirds of cases, conservation either improved the state of biodiversity or at least slowed declines. Specifically, we find that interventions targeted at species and ecosystems, such as invasive species control, habitat loss reduction and restoration, protected areas, and sustainable management, are highly effective and have large effect sizes. This provides the strongest evidence to date that conservation actions are successful but require transformational scaling up to meet global targets.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are widely used for ocean conservation, yet the relative impacts of various types of MPAs are poorly understood. We estimated impacts on fish biomass from no-take and multiple-use (fished) MPAs, employing a rigorous matched counterfactual design with a global dataset of >14,000 surveys in and around 216 MPAs. Both no-take and multiple-use MPAs generated positive conservation outcomes relative to no protection (58.2% and 12.6% fish biomass increases, respectively), with smaller estimated differences between the two MPA types when controlling for additional confounding factors (8.3% increase). Relative performance depended on context and management: no-take MPAs performed better in areas of high human pressure but similar to multiple-use in remote locations. Multiple-use MPA performance was low in high-pressure areas but improved significantly with better management, producing similar outcomes to no-take MPAs when adequately staffed and appropriate use regulations were applied. For priority conservation areas where no-take restrictions are not possible or ethical, our findings show that a portfolio of well-designed and well-managed multiple-use MPAs represents a viable and potentially equitable pathway to advance local and global conservation.

Snakes in Africa are responsible for over 20,000 deaths annually, their indiscriminate killing. As a result, snakes are vulnerable to human population increases even at low intensities. Thus, the predicted doubling of Africa's population by 2050 is likely to pose a disproportionate threat to snakes compared to other taxa. Here we quantify the current and future overlap of snake distributions and human population density under three scenarios of population growth. We find that by 2050, on average, 71% of snake ranges of conservation concern will overlap with areas occupied by ten or more people per km2, a 22% increase from 2020. In addition, the number of Least Concern species with most of their range within areas with high human population density will more than double, likely increasing the number of threatened species over the next decades. Our results call for immediate policy action targeting people's perceptions and fears of snakes, and incorporating snakes directly into development and conservation plans to reduce the impact of future urban expansions across Africa.

Uzungwa Scarp Nature Forest Reserve (USNFR), within the Udzungwa Mountains of southcentral Tanzania is a hotspot of biodiversity and home to many endemic and globally threatened species. The area was initially declared as a Forest Reserve in 1929, but low level of protection status and under-resourced management led to its weak performance in the conservation of its biodiversity and natural resources. The Protected Area was upgraded to a Nature Forest Reserve in 2016 and a year later, Southern Tanzania Elephant Program launched a conservation project that aims to enhance the protection of USNFR through patrol-based monitoring, capacity building and participatory law enforcement. The thesis analyses five years of ranger collected data deriving from the project, with the aim to explore spatiotemporal patterns of illegal activities inside the Reserve, assess the effectiveness of the protection project and propose potential actions for future conservation efforts. I used general linear models (GLMs) to investigate the predictors of snares as an indicator of wildlife poaching and logging as the main form of habitat destruction. The main results indicate that the implementation of the patrol project has had a positive impact on the protection of USNFR and has led to a decline in the intensity of both poaching and habitat destruction activities inside the Reserve. Elevation, slope, distance from the main trail and distance from the nearest village were all positively associated with snare occurrence, but only elevation significantly predicted signs of logging. The results reflect how the topography of the region influences the dependence of local communities on the forest’s resources. Wildlife poaching was the predominant form of pressure at higher altitudes on the western side of the Reserve, while illegal logging was more pronounced at lower elevations on the eastern side of USNFR. The protection of USNFR has the potential to be further increased by the adopt

Internationale Geldgeber haben die Finanzierung für den Schutz tropischer Wälder erhöht, um der globalen Herausforderung von Klima, Biodiversität und Nachhaltigkeit zu begegnen. Allerdings fehlen subnationale Informationen darüber, wo und wie die Gelder verteilt werden, welche Faktoren die Finanzierung beeinflussen und wie sie mit der Dynamik der Wälder und geschützten Gebiete korrelieren. Diese Thesis beabsichtigt, diese Fragen zu beantworten, indem sie sich mit drei Jahrzehnten internationaler Naturschutzfinanzierung in den Hauptabholzungsgebieten Südamerikas auseinandersetzt. Mithilfe gemischter Methoden habe ich die Interessen der Geldgeber thematisch und geografisch kartiert, räumliche Determinanten der Mittelvergabe identifiziert und Schwankungen der Finanzierung über Standorte und Zeit hinweg mit der Dynamik der Waldbedeckung und geschützten Gebiete verknüpft. Die Ergebnisse zeigten, dass die internationale Naturschutzfinanzierung eine Mischung aus global relevanten Interessen und bilateralen Interessen darstellt, ermöglicht durch sozioökonomische und biophysikalische Verbindungen zwischen den spendenden und empfangenden Regionen. Trockenwaldökosysteme mit hoher Abholzungsrate waren besonders unterfinanziert und gefährdeten die Ökosysteme, Arten und die lokale Bevölkerung. Die Verknüpfung von Schutzgebieten und Finanzierung mit dem Konzept der Landnutzungsdynamik enthüllte weitere Nuancen und half, kontextspezifische Empfehlungen zu identifizieren. Diese Studie präsentierte die erste subnationale Analyse der internationalen Naturschutzfinanzierung auf kontinentaler Ebene, zeigte Übereinstimmungen und Diskrepanzen zwischen den zugeteilten Ressourcen und den Naturschutzbedürfnissen und beleuchtete die komplexe und dynamische Landschaft der Finanzierungsmöglichkeiten, mit der andere Akteure umgehen müssen., International donors have increased funding for tropical forest conservation to address the global challenge of climate, biodiversity, and sustainability. However, subnational information on where and how funds are allocated, factors influencing funding, and its correlation with forest dynamics and protected areas is lacking. This thesis aims to answer these questions by delving into three decades of international conservation funding in South America’s major deforestation areas. Using mixed methods, I mapped donor interests thematically and geographically, identify spatial determinants of funding allocation, and link funding variations across locations and time with forest cover and protected areas dynamics. Results found that international conservation funding carried a mix of globally relevant interests and bilateral interests enabled by socio-economic and biophysical connections between the donating and receiving regions. Dry forest ecoregions with high deforestation rates have been particularly underfunded, threatening the ecosystems, species, and local people depending on them. Dedicated global biodiversity fund, raising attention to drier ecosystems, targeting highly threatened areas, and making funding more accessible to local actors for local conservation needs, may help address the gap. This study presented the first subnational level analysis of international conservation funding at the continental scale, revealed the matches and mismatches between the allocated resources and the conservation needs, and shed light on the complex and dynamic landscape of funding opportunities that other actors need to navigate in.

Increased conservation action to protect more habitat and species is fueling a vigorous debate about the relative effectiveness of different sorts of protected areas. Here we review the literature that compares the effectiveness of protected areas managed by states and areas managed by Indigenous peoples and/or local communities. We argue that these can be hard comparisons to make. Robust comparative case studies are rare, and the epistemic communities producing them are fractured by language, discipline, and geography. Furthermore the distinction between these different forms of protection on the ground can be blurred. We also have to be careful about the value of this sort of comparison as the consequences of different forms of conservation for people and nonhuman nature are messy and diverse. Measures of effectiveness, moreover, focus on specific dimensions of conservation performance, which can omit other important dimensions. With these caveats, we report on findings observed by multiple study groups focusing on different regions and issues whose reports have been compiled into this article. There is a tendency in the data for community-based or co-managed governance arrangements to produce beneficial outcomes for people and nature. These arrangements are often accompanied by struggles between rural groups and powerful states. Findings are highly context specific and global generalizations have limited value.

Well-resourced marine protected areas (MPA) are better managed, leading to improved ecological outcomes. Tourism is often cited as an important source of financial support for MPA management, yet it is unclear whether funding from visitor entry fees improves the effectiveness of the world's MPAs. Here we ask whether fees to enter MPAs associate with enhanced fish biomass, a key ecological goal of many MPAs, and whether relations exist among entry fees and management effectiveness. In an analysis of 86 MPAs, we found entry fees were associated with greater fish biomass when compared to parks without entry fees, but only for parks with lower scores for management effectiveness. A global assessment of management survey responses from 214 MPAs suggested the hypothesis that MPA entry fees benefit budget security and staff capacity to carry out critical management activities. Together, the results suggest a mechanism whereby entry fees support greater capacity to educate parks users on rules and enforce those rules. Future work should look at the details of MPA budgets to unravel the relationship between funding, management activities and ecological outcomes. Dependency on tourism also comes with the important implication that declines in tourism caused by socio-economic shocks and geopolitical events may have affected the financial security and therefore possibly the ecological effectiveness of MPAs.

Protected and conserved areas are one of the most important conservation tools, with international targets aiming to protect 30% of Earth by 2030. However, for this extraordinary commitment to effectively safeguard biodiversity, we need to better understand when and why protected and conserved areas are effective.

Hunting and its impacts on wildlife are typically studied regionally, with a particular focus on the Global South. Hunting can, however, also undermine rewilding efforts or threaten wildlife in the Global North. Little is known about how hunting manifests under varying socioeconomic and ecological contexts across the Global South and North. Herein, we examined differences and commonalities in hunting characteristics across an exemplary Global South-North gradient approximated by the Human Development Index (HDI) using face-to-face interviews with 114 protected area (PA) managers in 25 African and European countries. Generally, we observed that hunting ranges from the illegal, economically motivated, and unsustainable hunting of herbivores in the South to the legal, socially and ecologically motivated hunting of ungulates within parks and the illegal hunting of mainly predators outside parks in the North. Commonalities across this Africa-Europe South-North gradient included increased conflict-related killings in human-dominated landscapes and decreased illegal hunting with beneficial community conditions, such as mutual trust resulting from community involvement in PA management. Nevertheless, local conditions cannot outweigh the strong effect of the HDI on unsustainable hunting. Our findings highlight regional challenges that require collaborative, integrative efforts in wildlife conservation across actors, while identified commonalities may outline universal mechanisms for achieving this goal.

Sustainable use of wildlife is a core aspiration of biodiversity conservation but is the subject of intense debate in the scientific literature, including the extent to which use is impacting species and whether management can mitigate any impact. Although positive and negative outcomes of sustainable use are known for specific taxa or local communities, a global and regional picture of trends in wildlife populations in use is lacking. We use a global dataset of more than 11,000 time series to derive indices of “utilized” and “not utilized” wildlife populations. Our results show that population trends globally are negative on average but that utilized populations tend to decline more rapidly, especially in Africa and the Americas. Crucially, where populations are managed, they are more likely to be increasing. This evidence can inform global biodiversity assessments and provide an operational indicator to track progress toward the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

Area-based conservation measures, including protected areas (PA) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECM), play an important role in biodiversity conservation. In the Brazilian Amazon, even though Conservation Units and Indigenous Lands have been shown to reduce deforestation, few studies have addressed Quilombola Territories, and none of the above-mentioned areas were evaluated according to their role in promoting native vegetation regrowth. Here, we used a matching analysis to show that Brazilian Amazon Indigenous Lands, Quilombola Territories, and two types of protected areas (Conservation Units of Restrict Use and Sustainable Use) contribute to reduced native vegetation conversion, when compared to their control areas. Indigenous Lands and Conservation Units of Restrict Use lost respectively 17 and five times less native vegetation cover than their unprotected control areas, between the years of 2005–2012. Similarly, Quilombola Territories had native vegetation loss rates 5.6 times lower than in matched controls. Importantly, our results demonstrate for the first time that between 2012 and 2017 Indigenous Lands and Quilombola Territories contributed two and three times more to native vegetation regrowth – a critical process for safeguarding biodiversity in many, if not all, parts of the world. Our results underscore the importance of areas beyond the formal protected areas system in conserving biodiversity and promoting forest regrowth.