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The exponential increase in the availability of genomic data, derived from sequencing thousands of loci or whole genomes, provides exciting new insights into the diversity of life. However, it can also challenge established species concepts and existing management regimes derived from these concepts. Genomic data can help inform decisions about how to manage genetic diversity, but policies that protect identified taxonomic entities can generate conflicting recommendations that create challenges for practitioners. We outline three dimensions of management concern that arise when facing new and potentially conflicting interpretations of genomic data: defining conservation entities, deciding how to manage diversity, and evaluating the risks and benefits of management actions. We highlight the often-underappreciated role of values in influencing management choices made by individuals, scientists, practitioners, the public, and other stakeholders. Such values influence choices through mechanisms such as the Rashomon effect, whereby management decisions are complicated by conflicting perceptions of the causes and consequences of the conservation problem. To illustrate how this might operate, we offer a hypothetical example of this effect for the interpretation of genomic data and its implications for conservation management. Such value-based decisions can be challenged by the rigidity of existing management regimes, making it difficult to achieve the necessary flexibility to match the changing biological understanding. We finish by recommending that both conservation geneticists and practitioners reflect on their respective values, responsibilities, and roles in building a more robust system of species management. This includes embracing the inclusion of stakeholders in decision-making because, as in many cases, there are not objectively defensible right or wrong decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the need for a new approach to conservation that takes into account future changes in biodiversity. While current conservation efforts focus on preserving existing patterns of biodiversity, there is a lack of consideration for how these patterns may change in the future due to factors such as climate change. The authors propose the creation of a "future conservation area" designation that would supplement existing protected area classifications. These areas would be identified based on their potential to become important conservation areas in the medium-term future. The article emphasizes the importance of actively identifying and conserving future conservation areas to address biodiversity losses and adapt to changing environmental conditions. [Extracted from the article]

One Health is a cross‐sectoral and transdisciplinary approach that emphasizes the fundamental ways in which the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, fungi, plants, microbes, and natural and built ecosystems are interdependent. One Health approaches recognize the links between human health and a range of environmental concerns including biodiversity, climate, freshwater, food, harmful chemicals, and healthy oceans. Yet the conservation community and its broad interest in biodiversity and the natural world has been notably lacking in discussions about One Health. Partly as a result, both policy and practice have been narrowly focused on one or a few links between human and other healths, such as the human and wildlife health nexus. We provide a set of principles and components that will balance existing discussions by including the natural world and biodiversity and provide a framework for more active involvement by the conservation community. Incorporating these principles and components will enable One Health practice to guide inclusive, multidisciplinary, and cross‐sectoral efforts that consider the shared costs and benefits of human, animal, plant, and ecosystem health and help readjust humanity's pursuit of a green, just, and equitable sustainability pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although recent advances are changing this, microbes are harder to count with traditional conservation methods (they cannot be observed via satellite), making them even further outside the comfort zone for traditional conservation. Keywords: bacteria; conservation; microbes; microbial world; virus EN bacteria conservation microbes microbial world virus 1 2 2 05/31/23 20230601 NES 230601 Global assessments of biodiversity pay scant attention to the microbial world, and many conservation organizations are largely uninterested in extending their work to microbes. Finally, engage with the synthetic biology community in collaborative work on potential conservation applications of engineered microbes and the imperative to invest in microbial conservation. [Extracted from the article]

Tiger deaths in Nagarhole Park, where he was working, appear to have been the turning point for Karanth, when he went from being a tiger biologist to becoming a tiger conservationist. Realizing that tiger conservation requires a broader perspective than work in a single protected area, Karanth shifted his research from individual tigers to populations. To Karanth, any hope of long-term tiger survival requires an understanding that people and tigers can coexist at the scale of a country or state, but not at the scale of a single protected area. [Extracted from the article]

The US National Park Service (NPS), which manages over 85 million acres and over 400 units, contends with myriad external drivers of ecosystem change that threaten parks. Stressors such as invasive species, habitat fragmentation, warming climates and rising sea level, raise the potential that parks will not attain or sustain their congressionally designated missions. Using invasive animals as a focal example of such changes, we suggest the NPS consider increasing active management of resources, participating in cooperative ecoregional management, increasing the use of public participation, and using formal decision support tools. We illustrate how these management approaches are currently underused. Acknowledging that invasive species are but one of a suite of problems that are threatening to overwhelm park management capacity we believe that the approaches we outline generalize to myriad problems facing the NPS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being afraid of mice, or wise, or fighting with dragons, or feeling grief are all human projections onto elephants that reflect more what we think about them rather than what elephants really are. Throughout these accounts, Rothfels muses on what elephants think and feel and how human lives are affected by encounters with elephants. Of particular interest to him is the display of live elephants and the human gaze that watches them, including his own many encounters with zoo elephants and the people who care for them. [Extracted from the article]

Effective conservation strategies must ensure that species remain not just extant, but able to maintain key roles in species interactions and in the maintenance of communities and ecosystems. Such ecological functions, however, have not been well incorporated into management or policy. We present a framework for quantifying ecological function that is complementary to population viability analysis (PVA) and that allows function to be integrated into strategic planning processes. Ecological function analysis (EFA) focuses on preventing secondary extinctions and maintaining ecosystem structure, biogeochemical processes, and resiliency. EFA can use a range of modeling approaches and, because most species interactions are relatively weak, EFA needs to be performed for relatively few species or functions, making it a realistic way to improve conservation management. Highlights Most current conservation strategies focus on preventing extinctions, but without explicit regard for the maintenance of sufficient abundance so that species can continue to interact with other species or impact the structure and function of their ecosystems. We develop the concepts and tools for ecological function analysis (EFA), to measure and quantify the roles that species play. EFA focuses on preventing cascading extinctions as well as maintaining ecosystem resiliency and critical biogeochemical processes. Because relatively few species have such strong ecosystem roles, EFA needs to be considered for manageable numbers of species and functions. EFA is flexible and adaptive, making it a critical complement to species-based approaches in improving conservation management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Conservation practice has demonstrated an increasing desire for accountability of actions, particularly with respect to effectiveness, efficiency, and impact to clearly identified objectives. This has been accompanied by increased attention to achieving adaptive management. In 2002, practitioners representing several prominent conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) launched a community of practice called the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP). The partnership CMP has worked to establish standards of conservation practice to improve accountability of conservation actions through adaptive management. The focal organizing framework for CMP has been the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation (OS). We evaluated, through an online survey and personal interviews, the first decade of CMP and the OS. The CMP has garnered a positive reputation among agencies, NGOs, and funders and has succeeded in developing a large user base of the OS. However, CMP has not fully achieved its goal of making the OS standard operating procedure for the largest NGOs (e.g., The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund), despite it being widely used within these organizations. This lack of institutionalization is attributable to multiple causes, including an increase in the number of partially overlapping decision‐support frameworks and challenges achieving full‐cycle adaptive management. Users strongly believed the OS fosters better conservation practice and highly valued the OS for improving their practice. A primary objective of the OS is to assist practitioners to achieve full‐cycle adaptive management to better integrate learning into improving the effectiveness and efficiency of actions. However, most practitioners had not yet achieved cycle completion for their projects. To improve the effectiveness of CMP, OS, and conservation practice in general, we recommend collaborative efforts among the proponents of multiple decision‐support frameworks to foster strong institutional adoption of a common set of adaptive‐management standards for conservation accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Convention on Biological Diversity and the Bern Convention both call for reversing the decline of species through conservation translocation, creating a policy framework within which much of the work described in the book can flourish. First, without intending to, they moved disease organisms and parasites with them, and later, with intent, domesticated animal and plant species. The chapters cover virtually all aspects of conservation translocations, from legal constraints and animal welfare to the use of structured decision-making and issues around infectious diseases and parasites. [Extracted from the article]

The boreal forest gets little international love; it is the poor cousin of tropical, temperate and montane forests. Yet boreal forests cover vast areas, reportedly harbour one-third of all trees on Earth, and after the oceans are the largest ecosystem. These rapid changes mean that, as the author points out, some places where trees could once sprout have become inhospitable for future generations of trees, whereas places that were once unsuitable are becoming viable habitats where those same tree species can now grow. [Extracted from the article]

Applications being discussed include engineering of the genomes of invasive species or disease vectors (to stop them breeding), and of the genomes of threatened species to enhance their probability of survival. Increasingly, these focus not on cloning but on gene editing and the harnessing of the techniques of synthetic biology for conservation purposes. The cloning project recovered genetic material not currently represented in the living black-footed ferret population, and inserted it into a captive animal (Elizabeth Ann), with the plan that Willa's genes could be spread through the captive and wild populations. One approach to the novel technologies of gene editing, as with cloning, is to embrace them as a much-needed new conservation tool: an innovative, efficient and potentially rapid fix for otherwise difficult or intractable conservation problems. [Extracted from the article]

The authors talk about efforts toward full ecological restoration of North American bison. Topics covered include a broad-based ecological restoration effort led by the American Bison Society and the Wildlife Conservation Society, initiatives that have grown from significant cultural and social action, and the Mass Extinction Monitoring Observatory (MEMO) being built on the Jurassic Coast of Great Britain that will contain sculptures of extinct species.

Synthetic biology is a broad and fast-moving field of innovation involving the design and construction of new biological parts, and the redesign of existing, natural biological systems to address real world problems. It has many potential applications that may change human relations to the natural world. Synthetic biology is virtually unknown to the conservation community. Based on a meeting in 2013 that brought together these two communities we consider first the differences between the two fields, and second the kinds of opportunities and risks that arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A divergence of values has become apparent in recent debates between conservationists who focus on ecosystem services that can improve human well-being and those who focus on avoiding the extinction of species. These divergent points of view fall along a continuum from anthropocentric to biocentric values, but most conservationists are relatively closer to each other than to the ends of the spectrum. We have some concerns with both positions but emphasize that conservation for both people and all other species will be most effective if conservationists focus on articulating the values they all share, being respectful of divergent values, and collaborating on common interests. The conservation arena is large enough to accommodate many people and organizations whose diverse values lead them to different niches that can, with good will and foresight, be far more complementary than competitive. Los Nichos Complementarios de los Conservacionistas Antropocéntricos y Biocéntricos [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] We use a review of other fields to propose a “burden of proof” in conservation. [•] This will help decision makers decide what “standard of proof” they need to meet. [•] A burden of proof standard will enable conservationists to act when appropriate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The authors discuss the strategies developed towards biodiversity conservation since the 20th century. They highlight the issues that should be addressed by conservation scientists and practitioners including attempts to recreate endangered species through synthetic biology and interactions between synthetic and natural organisms. The also mention the use of advanced technology in engineering techniques in nature conservation.

Although mammals are often seen as important objects of human interest and affection, many are threatened with extinction. A range of efforts have been proposed and much work has been done to try to conserve mammals, but there is little overall understanding of what has worked and why. As a result, there is no global-scale, coordinated approach to conserving all mammals. Rather, conservation efforts are usually focused at jurisdictional levels where relevant legislation and policies are in force. To help build the framework for a global-scale approach, in this paper we review the many ways that have been proposed for conserving mammals. First, we examine the overall pattern of threat faced by mammals at the global level. Secondly, we look at the major structuring issues in prioritizing and planning mammal conservation, examining in particular the roles of values and scale and a set of approaches to conservation, each of which varies along a continuum. Finally, we lay out the steps necessary to move from planning to implementing mammalian conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unsustainable hunting in tropical forests threatens biodiversity and rural livelihoods, yet managing these harvests in remote forests with low scientific capacity and funding is challenging. In response, some conservationists propose managing harvests through spatial management, a system of establishing no-take zones where hunting is not allowed. Spatial management was commonly used in customary management and is increasingly used for fisheries management today, but is not yet widely implemented in tropical forests. Through this review, we trace the development of spatial management and examine its proposed benefits in tropical forests. We find that while spatial management offers promise for managing the complex, multispecies harvests common in tropical forests, designing no-take zones will require more investment in ecological research and monitoring. Given these challenges, a reasonable first goal of no-take zones is to protect resident wildlife populations, not enhance harvests through dispersal. A greater understanding of socioeconomic impacts will also be required to ensure successful implementation. Past work in marine fisheries offers valuable insights for management in tropical forests, and greater integration between the bodies of literature should be pursued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social sciences are often seen as being in opposition to conservation and the practice of conservationists. Yet social scientists have made important contributions to conservation and could make even more contributions if they are willing to use their perceptive, insightful tools as a means of both improving the practice of conservation and sharpening social science’s critique of conservation ideas and practices. I provide two lists: first, a list of the ways in which I think social science work has already improved conservation practice and, second, a set of generalizations made by some social scientists about the practice of conservation that are incorrect or incomplete. I argue that a more careful application of social science tools and approaches could begin an active and informed exploration of the diversity of values, histories, institutions, politics and approaches in conservation. This would facilitate the sharpening of social science’s critique of conservation ideas and practices and, through these, improve the practice of conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The conservation of species is one of the foundations of conservation biology. Successful species conservation has often been defined as simply the avoidance of extinction. We argue that this focus, although important, amounts to practicing conservation at the "emergency room door," and will never be a sufficient approach to conserving species. Instead, we elaborate a positive definition of species conservation on the basis of six attributes and propose a categorization of different states of species conservation using the extent of human management and the degree to which each of the attributes is conserved. These states can be used to develop a taxonomy of species "recovery" that acknowledges there are multiple stable points defined by ecological and social factors. With this approach, we hope to contribute to a new, optimistic conservation biology that is not based on underambitious goals and that seeks to create the conditions under which Earth's biological systems can thrive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we provide an empirically-based way to address the general question of the broad-scale spatial relationship between poverty occurrence and areas of interest to those seeking conservation of large wild areas. We address the question of the spatial relationship between poor people and areas less impacted by human activity by asking three questions about the global spatial relationship between poor people and ecological intactness and how it varies by major biome and geographical region. We use infant mortality rate as a proxy for poverty and the Human Footprint as a proxy for ecological intactness, comparing global terrestrial maps of both. The analysis shows that the vast majority of the world's poor people live in extremely urban and very transformed (pen-transformed) areas. Only a small percentage of the world's most poor are found in areas that are somewhat or extremely wild: about 0.25% of the world's population. This fact has implications for the calls being made for conservation organizations to under- take poverty alleviation, suggesting that at a global scale those groups with interest in conserving wild areas would be able to contribute little to globally significant poverty alleviation efforts. However, these conservation groups are well positioned to develop new partnerships for delivery of benefits to some of the least accessible poor people in the wildest places of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many wide-ranging mammal species have experienced significant declines over the last 200 years; restoring these species will require long-term, large-scale recovery efforts. We highlight 5 attributes of a recent range-wide vision-setting exercise for ecological recovery of the North American bison (Bison bison ) that are broadly applicable to other species and restoration targets. The result of the exercise, the “Vermejo Statement” on bison restoration, is explicitly (1) large scale, (2) long term, (3) inclusive, (4) fulfilling of different values, and (5) ambitious. It reads, in part, “Over the next century, the ecological recovery of the North American bison will occur when multiple large herds move freely across extensive landscapes within all major habitats of their historic range, interacting in ecologically significant ways with the fullest possible set of other native species, and inspiring, sustaining and connecting human cultures.” We refined the vision into a scorecard that illustrates how individual bison herds can contribute to the vision. We also developed a set of maps and analyzed the current and potential future distributions of bison on the basis of expert assessment. Although more than 500,000 bison exist in North America today, we estimated they occupy <1% of their historical range and in no place express the full range of ecological and social values of previous times. By formulating an inclusive, affirmative, and specific vision through consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, we hope to provide a foundation for conservation of bison, and other wide-ranging species, over the next 100 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before widespread, informed collaboration can take place in conservation there must be a process of understanding the different approaches employed by different conservation organizations to conserve biodiversity. To begin this process and to help build understanding and collaboration, we provide a conceptual map of 21 approaches currently being implemented by 13 conservation organizations. We examined each of these approaches according to (1) the nature of the conservation target—the object(s) of the conservation action; ( 2 ) whether the question addressed is where conservation should be done or how conservation should be done; ( 3 ) the scale ( both grain and extent ) of the approach; and (4 ) the principles that underlie the approach. These questions provide a good way of distinguishing between most of the approaches and reveal that there is less competition between them than is assumed. We conclude that only with explicit understanding can the conservation community and its supporters critically compare approaches and come to a consensus about a set of metrics for measuring and achieving global conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International conservation planning at the end of the twentieth century is dominated by coarse-filter, supra-organismal approaches to conservation that may be insufficient to conserve certain species such as the jaguar ( Panthera onca ). If we are to retain broadly distributed species into the next century, we need to plan explicitly for their survival across their entire geographic range and through political boundaries while recognizing the variety of ecological roles the species plays in different habitats. In March 1999 the Wildlife Conservation Society sponsored a priority-setting and planning exercise for the jaguar across its range, from northern Mexico to northern Argentina. Field scientists from 18 countries reached consensus on four types of information: (1) the spatial extent of their jaguar knowledge, (2) the known, currently occupied range of jaguars, (3) areas with substantial jaguar populations, adequate habitat, and a stable and diverse prey base, and (4) point localities where jaguars have been observed during the last 10 years. During the exercise, these experts also conducted a range-wide assessment of the long-term survival prospects of the jaguar and developed an algorithm for prioritizing jaguar conservation units occurring in major habitat types. From this work, we learned that the known, occupied range of the jaguar has contracted to approximately 46% of estimates of its 1900 range. Jaguar status and distribution is unknown in another 12% of the jaguar's former range, including large areas in Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil. But over 70% of the area where jaguars are thought to still occur was rated as having a high probability of supporting their long-term survival. Fifty-one jaguar conservation units representing 30 different jaguar geographic regions were prioritized as the basis for a comprehensive jaguar conservation program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies of the sustainability of wildlife hunting in the Neotropics have not considered the potential dispersal of animals into hunted areas. A literature review of studies of subsistence hunting in the Neotropics suggests that hunting is often conducted in areas adjacent to relatively undisturbed habitat that may act as sources of animals for the hunted sites. We compared studies of tapir ( Tapirus terrestris) hunting at different sites to illustrate the potential bias of sustainability evaluations based on local productivity. The limited information available suggests that dispersal could have a key role in rebuilding animal populations depleted by hunting. Thus, factors that strongly affect dispersal—such as spatial distribution and size of areas with and without hunting, population size in source areas, and social behavior—should be considered when the sustainability of hunting is evaluated in areas with heterogeneous hunting pressure. We suggest the application of two models that use spatial controls (recognizing the potential source-sink nature of some hunted systems and protecting unhunted refugia) to avoid wildlife overexploitation when biological data and enforcement capabilities to regulate harvests are limited. This approach may produce more reliable evaluations of sustainability, provide information on the dynamics of hunting systems, and help local communities and policymakers conserve key areas (including protected areas) that may act as game sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity conservation has become the stated objective of national governments, state agencies, local communities, and scientific organizations. Yet despite this attention the term biodiversity remains poorly defined. One of the unfortunate consequences of this lack of definition is a proliferation of claims that biodiversity can be both used and conserved. This claim is difficult to assess without a more precise way of defining biodiversity. We offer a heuristic framework for measuring the consequences of human use for biodiversity. Our definition of biodiversity includes three components: genetic, population/species, and community/ecosystem. Each component has its own three attributes: composition, structure, and function. Using this definition, we assessed the effects of different types of human use on the different components and attributes of biodiversity. We show that (1) different degrees of human use or alteration result in differential conservation of biodiversity components; (2) some components and attributes of biodiversity are more sensitive to human use than others; and (3) only extremely limited use or virtually no alteration will protect all components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss human health as a judicious conservation opportunity. They explore the connection between ecosystem alteration and human health based on the view that the natural world is a source of disease and disability. They also reflect on the importance of studying the connection between conservation and public health which could result in policy-relevant research.

The authors discus the role of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in conservation science. The authors mention the IPBES functions including identification of scientific information, doing assessments on biodiversity and ecosystem services, and supporting policy formulation and implementation. They add that IPBES has the ability to give conservation science the visibility given by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to climate science.

The author reflects on the significance of researches about human microbiome. He states that researches on microorganisms including bacteria, Archaea, and fungi found on human bodies are significant in understanding human health. He mentions that every human has more than 100 trillion microbial symbionts. He suggests that studies conducted on human microbiome be also applied in to meet the challenges of conservation of native plant and animal life.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics related to conservation science including how to boost the success of conservation in the next 25 years, conservation professionals' consensus on conservation strategies, and societal priorities.

The authors reflect on the strategic approach on how to restore ecosystem services as a tool for conservation biology. They cited some constructive criticisms which would provide solutions for ecosystem services problems, especially in animal diversity conservation. They further emphasized that Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was made to develop the concept of conservation's mainstream and environmental policy.

Comments on an article by S. Schwartzman, D. Nepstad and A. Moreira in the October 2000 issue of 'Conservation Biology,' on tropical forest conservation. Points raised in the paper which could be politically dangerous for both conservation and forest-dwelling peoples; Weakness in the authors' argument about the evidence supporting the effect of human hunting on animals.

The article discusses the importance of wildlife conservation dealing with why one must save the wild relatives of domesticated animals.

Target 3 in the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) calls for protecting at least 30% of the world's lands and waters in area‐based conservation approaches by 2030. This ambitious 30×30 target has spurred great interest among policy makers, practitioners, and researchers in defining and measuring the effectiveness of these types of approaches. But along with this broad interest, there has also been a proliferation of terms and their accompanying abbreviations used to describe different types of conservation areas and their governance, planning, management, and monitoring. The lack of standard terms is hindering the use and assessment of area‐based approaches to conserve the world's biodiversity. It is difficult to track progress toward GBF Target 3 or to share learning with other practitioners if different groups of people are using different words to describe the same concept or similar words to talk about different concepts. To address this problem, the International Union for Conservation of Nature's World Commission on Protected Areas commissioned a task force to review existing terms and recommend a standard English‐language lexicon for this field based on key criteria. The results were definitions of 37 terms across 6 categories, including types of protected and additional conservation areas (e.g., protected area, additional conservation area), sets of these areas (protected area network, protected area system), their governance and management (governance, rightsholders), assessment (effectiveness, equitability), spatial planning (key biodiversity area), and action planning (value, outcome, objective). Our standard lexicon can provide a common language for people who want to use it and a shared reference point that can be used to translate various terms used by different groups. The common understanding provided by the lexicon can serve as a foundation for collaborative efforts to improve the policies, implementation, assessments, research, and learning about this important set of conservation approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editorial. Comments on lessons in the dependency of conservation science to brokering deals. Failures of conservationists; Argument on the role of conservation scientists; Guidance for conservation scientists in influencing resource management plans and policies.

The author discusses the practice of augury by the humans that looks for signs of what the future will bring. He is critical about the results of the studies done by the Psychologists which states that that the humans often try to predict the future by sampling from the past and projecting that sample onto the future. He discusses the importance of synthetic biology. He discusses the role of nature to seek the future of humans in the discoveries of humans.

The authors reflect on the long-term issues of animal conservation. They discuss the definition of fads that embraces enthusiastically and part of conservation on human endeavor whether in business, economics or psychology. They also explores the evidence of fads that relates to biological diversity conservation. It notes that fads include various fields of ecotourism, reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) and payment for ecosystem or environmental services (PES).

The article offers the authors' insights on abundance of species and the collapse of American chestnut Castanea dentate. The authors say that collapses of species abundance have been occurring around the world, citing Astrochelys radiate, which is considered one of the abundant tortoises in the world and is almost extinct. They mention an evidence which showed the variation of individuals within populations which has behavioural and ecological import.

The article discusses the integration of captive and wild animal populations in conservation management. The authors note that conservation biology was founded by a group of scientists that included representatives of the zoo and botanical garden communities focused on the plight of species. They note that conservation management has increasingly integrated approaches developed in zoos with those from the wild to actively manage populations. Topics include efforts by zoos to minimize their impact on populations of wild animals while using captive populations to educate the public about conservation, the challenges facing species conservation, such as emerging diseases requiring active methods of veterinary management, and the challenges of species management in zoos.

A response by William M. Adams to a letter to the editor about his article "Payment for Ecosystem Services and the Challenge of Saving Nature" that was published in the previous issue is presented.

The article presents a perspective on the issues surrounding the May 18, 2005 kidnapping incident by immigrants at Parque Nacional Laguna del Tigre in Guatemala. The immigrants demanded that their development needs must take precedence over the rights of the Qeq'chi Indians. This issue is a simple dispute between local people and conservationist. The main loser in the incident are the Qeq'chi Indian whose livelihood is tied to the park.

Focuses on the loss of tropical forest wild life as a result of increased access to the tropical forests. The impact on the forest-dwelling people; The estimate on the wild life harvest in the Brazilian Amazon; The threat to the sustainability of tropical forestry; Commercial logging helping the harvest of wild life; The demand for wild meat; The need for policy discussion on the wild life harvest.

The author discusses the collaboration between social scientists and conservationists, in response to the comments by J. Igoe and S. Lele on his essay in the 2011 issue. The author relates social scientists and conservationists to blue crabs in a basket, where a crab fails to escape as being grabbed by another crab. He adds that the professions have reached their kairos, a time for making an action, to convince the world that their disciplines are highly significant than foreign aid and defence.

The article offers information on the publication's new directions for book reviews. It states that the publication will be adopting a new scheme of reviewing sets of books. It suggests that conservation professionals who are trained in the natural sciences should learn about books published in other disciplines from which conservation has much to learn.