The illegal theft of old trees threatens China’s ecological and cultural heritage. Despite legal protections, their high-value timber has persistently fuelled illicit trade driven by economic incentives and weak enforcement in remote areas, endangering biodiversity and cultural traditions. This Comment article proposes comprehensive and alternative approaches to combat the illegal theft of old trees by advocating for a strengthened legal framework, enhanced monitoring systems and increased support for local authorities. It highlights the importance of public awareness and community engagement in conservation efforts to address the ingrained economic drivers of this illegal trade.

The relationship between ecosystem disturbance and biodiversity levels has been a central focus of ecological research for the past half-century. The intermediate disturbance hypothesis, which suggests that maximum biodiversity is achieved through the coexistence of early and late successional species, however, has been challenged for its lack of clarity regarding the intensity, duration and extent of disturbances. This Perspective article advocates for a broader biocultural framework to move from the notion of disturbance to an understanding of human–environment mediations. Our proposed biocultural hypothesis acknowledges that, in certain cultural contexts, interventions by Homo sapiens at different environmental scales – mainly at the landscape level – can generate peaks in beta and gamma biodiversity compared to reference ecosystems. We illustrate these human–environment mediations through studies conducted in the biocultural region of Mesoamerica and comparative research findings, particularly from the Amazon Basin and West and Central Africa. In our conclusions, we discuss the need to establish collaborative research programmes around the proposed biocultural hypothesis, addressing management and institutional actions that will strengthen the engagement of Indigenous people and rural local communities with their historical territories that we name ‘Priority Biocultural Areas’.

Brazilian landowners are obligated to conserve a minimum percentage of native vegetation within their properties (termed a ‘legal reserve’), but non-compliance can be compensated elsewhere through a biodiversity offset. Recent changes in rules for legal reserve compensation (LRC) have increased the allowed spatial scale and softened the ecological criteria required to select properties for compensation, potentially leading to considerable biodiversity losses. In this paper, we analyse whether these rules promote the conservation of tree species on private lands through LRC in the Cerrado biome, the most biodiverse savannah in the world. We modelled the potential distribution of 126 Cerrado tree species and simulated several potential biodiversity offsets to calculate expected species losses under former and current LRC rules. Our results show that biodiversity offsets established under current and former LRC rules can lead to up to 100% tree species losses. In contrast, setting a minimum similarity threshold between watersheds can reduce median tree species loss in biodiversity offsets to as low as 3% and prevents LRC with no common species between sites. Therefore, the current rule is expected to strongly impact biodiversity in the Cerrado. Similarity in species composition between watersheds must be considered in order to implement LRC offsets that effectively conserve Cerrado biodiversity on private lands.

Since the 1950s, the United Nations (UN) has designated days (e.g., World Wetland Day), years (e.g., Year of the Gorilla) and decades (e.g., Decade on Biodiversity) with a commonly stated goal to raise awareness and funding for conservation-oriented initiatives, and these Days, Years and Decades of ‘…’ (hereafter ‘DYDOs’) continue. However, the effectiveness of these initiatives to achieve their stated objectives and to contribute to positive conservation outcomes is unclear. Here we used a binary analysis change model to evaluate the effectiveness of UN conservation-oriented DYDOs observed between 1974 and 2020. We also examined four case studies to understand the different strategies employed to meet specified conservation goals. We found that DYDOs apparently contributed to positive conservation outcomes when they were tied to social media campaigns and/or when they were strategically situated in current events or global discourse. Although the outcomes of DYDOs were varied, those with longer timescales and those that engaged local communities were more likely to be successful. We suggest that DYDO organizers should identify all possible paths of action through the lens of the change model outlined in this paper to strengthen the value and effectiveness of these initiatives in the future. Using this approach could help ensure that resources are used efficiently and effectively, and that initiatives yield positive conservation outcomes that benefit people and nature.

Agricultural intensification has led to significant species losses and has been associated with a decline in ecosystem services provided by insects. In Asia, particularly in Lao PDR (Southeast Asia), biodiversity-friendly agricultural practices such as the production of organic crops have been promoted to address these challenges, although intensification has continued. In this study, we examined beetle community composition in three organic farms (using, for example, manure and compost and not employing synthetic fertilizers and pesticides) and three conventional farms (using, for example, synthetic fertilizers and insecticides) in Vientiane (Lao PDR). Our results indicate that total beetle abundance was similar between farm types, while species richness was greater, predators were over 18 times more abundant and insect pests were 9 times less abundant in organic compared to conventional farms. These findings can inform government organic farming policy in Lao PDR and the promotion of sustainable agriculture in Southeast Asia generally.