The ‘arc of deforestation’ of southern Amazonia has one of the highest deforestation rates documented anywhere in the world. Landscape changes in a poorly studied but strategically important region in the Brazilian Amazon were studied using biennial Landsat TM/ETM+ images from 1984 to 2004. Deforestation rate for the period 1984–2004 was 2.47% yr−1 in the 7295 km2 study area, but decreased to 1.99% and 2.15% in 2000–2002 and 2002–2004, respectively. Landscape structure changes were characterized by smaller forest patches that were further apart, but increasingly complex in shape. Deforestation was mainly driven by cattle ranching, which in turn was affected by distance to roads, with forest cover increasing at greater distances from roads. A multi-layer perceptron was used to develop future scenarios based on Markov Chain analysis. Based on current land use, forest cover in the region will decline from 42% in 2004 to 21% by 2016. Results indicate a critical threshold at 51% of forest cover in which landscape structure and connectivity changes abruptly. This suggests that the region requires greater efforts in environmental law enforcement, land-use planning and education programmes to maintain the remaining forest cover near this threshold.

Epistemology, the theory of how knowledge arises, is an issue that ecologists and environmental scientists may not often consider in their work. However, beliefs about epistemology play a direct role in how they conduct research and, consciously or not, the conclusions made through analysis reflect some form of epistemology. I argue that the Popperian epistemology by which most environmental scientists are trained is generally incompatible with research on observational data and that observation-based studies can be improved by modifying Popper's notion of falsification.

Integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) were originally defined as linking biodiversity conservation in protected areas with local socioeconomic development (Wells & Brandon 1992); they have become management and conservation approaches linking biodiversity conservation with the socioeconomic development interests of different stakeholders at local, regional and national levels (Franks & Blomley 2004). ICDPs rely upon integrated management techniques that bring together stakeholders from different sectors in the creation and implementation of management plans with the long-term objective of managing the natural resources in a rational and sustainable manner (Cicin-Sain & Knecht, 1988). The involvement of major stakeholders, including local community members, is a key element in assessing the success of ICDPs (Brown & Wyckoff-Baird, 1992). Here we demonstrate adaptive improvements that have been successfully implemented in two ICDPs in the Moulouya Estuary of north-east Morocco (35°07'N 2°20'W). The work is based on nine years of continual experience in ICDP implementation, the results from key informant interviews and an internal evaluation.

Damage to marine environments attracts increasing attention and alarm, instilling in many observers a sense of urgency in promoting preventive and restorative measures (see for example Pauly & Maclean 2003; Roberts 2003; RCEP [Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution] 2004; MEA [Millennium Ecosystem Assessment] 2005). Such concerns have had effect. As noted in a recent British policy document, ‘countries all over the world are reviewing the way they manage their marine environment’ (Defra [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] 2007, p. 1). In much that has been said and written on this subject it is a basic premise that marine ecosystems and biodiversity ought to be protected, at least to some degree. This implies a moral injunction: that it is wrong to allow these systems to be degraded or destroyed, and right to limit human activities that generate harmful impacts. The interesting and fundamental question is why. What Norton (1982, p. 319) calls an ‘intuitive ethic’ for conservation might be invoked, but in a world of conflicting priorities it will often be necessary to support intuition with evidence and argument. Answers to the question, ‘why conserve?’ are important because the reasons offered for defending marine environments have a bearing on the extent to which conservation can be justified, and on the kinds of policies that might ensue. Although different premises will sometimes point to broadly similar actions, there are circumstances in which the underlying rationales for conservation will have divergent policy implications.

Natural areas are increasingly visited by people, and urban human visitors expect to watch wildlife as close as possible, but this may have associated disturbance costs. Here, effects of number of visitors and bird density on flight initiation distance (FID) as a proxy of disturbance vulnerability were evaluated in the large ground-nesting yellow-legged gull, Larus michahellis. Mean FID decreased with increasing number of visitors and with increasing gull densities, suggesting that (1) ground-nesting gulls habituate to massive human presence, while retaining their antipredatory mechanisms, and (2) dense groups of gulls were more reluctant to fly away. This density effect may be due to the increased risk of clutch predation by conspecifics at high densities and, if so, FID is a reliable metric of disturbance vulnerability in ground-nesting gulls. In conclusion, set-back distances are specific to local populations and it is unnecessary to ban or restrict human visits to ground-nesting gull colonies; redistributing visits, taking into account both the number of visitors and gull density, is preferable.

Study of the ecological and economic effects of invasive species has paralleled their progressively pervasive influence worldwide, yet their cultural impacts remain largely unexamined and therefore unrecognized. Unlike biological systems, where the ecological consequences of biological invasions are primarily negative, from an ethnoscientific standpoint, invasive species' impacts on cultural systems span a range of effects. Biological invasions affect cultural groups in myriad, often unpredictable and at times contradictory ways. This review groups case studies into a conceptual matrix suggesting three categorically different cultural impacts of invasive species. Culturally impoverishing invasive species precipitate the loss or replacement of culturally important native species and their associated cultural practices. Culturally enriching invasive species augment cultural traditions, through their inclusion in lexicons, narratives, foods, pharmacopoeias and other tangible and intangible ends. Culturally facilitating invasive species can provide continuity and reformulation of traditional ethnobiological practices. An understanding of the processes by which invasive biota become culturally enriching, facilitating, or impoverishing can contribute to articulating interdisciplinary programmes aimed at simultaneously conserving biological and cultural diversity.

Wright and Muller-Landau (2006) proposed that rural–urban migration could reduce tropical forest loss worldwide and allow secondary forest to occupy abandoned clearings, thereby reducing the expected magnitude of tropical species extinctions. However, the usefulness of this global generalization is highly dependent on its being correct for Brazilian Amazonia, which has the world's largest remaining area of tropical forest. Among the features of the deforestation process that make urbanization an unlikely mechanism for land abandonment in Brazil is the fact that most deforestation is done by ranchers rather than by shifting cultivators. A family of shifting cultivators is only capable of farming a limited area and cannot greatly expand the area it cultivates if additional land becomes available. Ranchers, by contrast, can occupy huge areas and expand their holdings when the opportunity arises. Were part of the population to leave for the cities their land would usually be bought by neighbouring ranchers who would maintain and expand the deforested landscape. As Wright and Muller-Landau (2006) predicted, their interpretations have generated considerable controversy (Brook et al. 2006; Gardner et al. 2007; Laurance 2006; Sloan 2007). Only part of this controversy will be considered here, namely the expectation that rural population in tropical areas will decline, allowing secondary forests to regrow in large areas of abandoned farmland. Specifically, the present paper will consider the applicability of the Wright/Muller-Landau hypothesis to Brazilian Amazonia.

Multi-tenure reserve networks (MTRNs) aim to connect areas managed for biodiversity conservation across public and private land (for example biosphere reserves (BRs) and conservation management networks (CMNs)). A key function of MTRNs is facilitating communication, information exchange and management activities between land managers of differing tenures not usually in contact with each other; governance arrangements are therefore crucial. Australian MTRNs vary greatly in their goals and measures of success, criteria for entry, ecosystems targeted, geographic extent and financial arrangements. The successful operation of a MTRN is likely to be influenced by a manager's confidence in the governance model/coordination arrangements (Belcher & Wellman 1991). We analysed the organizational structure of three Australian MTRNs (Fig. 1) including the objectives and role of the coordinating body, entry requirements, goals and measures of success, restrictions placed on the geographic or ecological extent of the network and financial arrangements. We highlight how substantial changes in governance arrangements have occurred for two of three networks studied, suggesting a fluid evolution of MTRN structures is likely.

Rapid growth in demand for tourist interactions with cetaceans in the wild constitutes a challenge to management. Short-term animal behaviour changes can have long-term biological consequences for individual animals and populations. This paper reviews the whale-watching management context, describing the interplay of the macro (global), meso (national/regional) and micro-level (local/site specific) policy, planning and management settings. Here, an integrated and adaptive management model based largely upon the delineation and monitoring of limits of acceptable change (LAC) parameters is proposed to address current shortcomings in the long-term sustainable management of whale-watching activities. Although no integrated management framework currently exists, a comprehensive management approach must be developed and applied in the interests of the long-term sustainable management of tourist interactions with cetaceans in the wild. The proposed management model highlights the importance of integrating multiple stakeholder perspectives in a way that is both research-informed and adaptive. Beyond tourist interactions with cetaceans, this management framework could be applied to a wide range of wildlife management contexts.

Protected areas (PAs) have long struggled to successfully enforce compliance with their regulations. Even some of the best-funded PAs in the world face shortcomings in using enforcement as an effective deterrent to PA opposition. This suggests that traditional enforcement on its own may be insufficient for effective resource protection. Research was undertaken to understand why some would-be offenders refrain from harmful actions toward neighbouring national parks while others do not. Perceptions of the trustworthiness of PA managers were the most consistent predictors of exercised restraint on behalf of those living within the immediate vicinities of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Virgin Islands National Park and Podocarpus National Park. These trust assessments were most commonly based upon respondents' perceptions of positive personal interactions between PA managers and the public, of PA managers' receptiveness to local input, of the benefits and disadvantages associated with PA presence, and of PA officials' effective performance of their duties and equitable treatment of different groups. The study reveals trust and legitimacy as key factors related to voluntary compliance in situations where general agreement with PA regulations does not necessarily exist and provides insight into how trust and legitimacy can be developed or eroded.

The dry grasslands of the Mediterranean Basin have been traditionally managed since ancient times, but have been drastically degraded by recent human activities such as cultivation. Cultivated plots in a dry grassland of Southern France were abandoned more than 20 years ago, but their vegetation and ground-active beetle community structure and composition differ considerably from neighbouring uncultivated grassland plots. Because these formerly cultivated plots are adjacent to an uncultivated grassland area, they constitute a model system for examining beetle recolonization patterns on field margins. No edge effect or ecotone was identified on the margins between two of the formerly cultivated plots and the uncultivated dry grassland; there was no significant peak of beetles species richness in this area. All the most common dry grassland beetle species (mainly saprophagous and predatory species, which are less habitat-specialist than phytophagous species) had already recolonized the formerly cultivated plots. However, although uncultivated dry grassland was adjacent to the formerly cultivated plots it was insufficient for complete regeneration of dry grassland beetle communities on formerly cultivated plots, indicating habitat quality remained lower even after 20 years. Understanding the causes of spatial variation in active-ground beetles at the species level is important before the ecological restoration of habitat quality to its prior state, using the adjacent steppe as a reference.

Bulleri et al. (2007) describe local environmental impacts as ‘assessed by comparing the disturbed site with one or more [unaffected] reference sites . . . [which] can be thought of as a random sample from a population of sites as in design-based approaches (Underwood 1992), or as a set of covariates correlated with the disturbed site as in model-based analyses (Stewart-Oaten & Bence 2001)’ (brackets added). This is misleading. These two approaches are not alternatives. The latter paper shows that reference sites are not essential and that the former paper's use of them is invalid.

We appreciate the effort and thought that Stewart-Oaten (2008) has put into his comment on our paper in Environmental Conservation (Bulleri et al. 2007). Clearly, the philosophical and methodological approaches used in ecological impact assessments (EIAs) warrant much further attention and discussion by ecologists. We would like, however, to clarify that the goals of our comment were far from summarizing available procedures and, even more, from expressing an opinion about which among these should be retained or rejected. This is quite well reflected by the contents of our paper (Bulleri et al. 2007). Our ‘main purpose’ (to quote Stewart-Oaten 2008) was to point out that the degree of naturalness of a site is irrelevant to whether or not some proposed disturbance causes an impact and that all disturbances potentially cause negative impacts.

Tropical deforestation is one of the most important components of global change. Rates of deforestation in Brazil, the nation with the single largest concentration of tropical forest on Earth, have fluctuated widely over the last twenty years. Based on local knowledge, such fluctuations have been variously attributed to a wide range of factors such as the expansion of cattle ranching and soybean farming, infrastructural expansion and the proliferation of paved and unpaved roads, macroeconomic shocks to the Brazilian economy and international exchange rates. Many, if not all, of these arguments are plausible explanations for temporal variation in deforestation rates, but have to date not been subjected to rigorous statistical testing; this study investigates the potential impact of these variables on Brazilian tropical deforestation over the period 1990–2005. When analysed at the basin-wide scale, nearly all variables were highly inter-correlated through time and were also closely correlated with deforestation rate, but appropriate time-series analysis found no statistical evidence that any of the variables have systematically caused variation in deforestation rates. Power analysis showed that the variables may exert small or medium influences on deforestation rates, but the impacts, if present, are not strong. Future analyses of time series data at finer spatial scales that exploit spatiotemporal variation in deforestation rates and in the hypothesized predictor variables may find significant causal processes that are overlooked when analysed at the basin-wide scale.

Although they are used throughout the Neotropics, the impact of dogs on the composition of wildlife harvests has received little systematic attention. In the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve of Nicaragua, indigenous hunters rely heavily on dogs to locate prey. Hunting harvest data over a year-long period in two indigenous Mayangna and Miskito communities indicate that the use of hunting dogs is significantly associated with the harvests of several terrestrial mammalian species. The use of dogs is also a significant predictor of the extent to which the species composition of harvests deviates from Neotropical averages. Although dogs appear to have little effect on the sex profiles of harvested game species, the use of dogs is significantly associated with hunting in agricultural landscapes. From a conservation perspective, the disadvantages of dogs include their indiscriminate pursuit of prey species, including species that hunters would not otherwise pursue. Advantages of dogs include their relative ineffectiveness in pursuits of species that are particularly vulnerable to overhunting, such as primates and white-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari). Hunting dogs may be an economical option for many Neotropical societies, and their role in wildlife management plans merits increased attention from conservationists.

In Kenya, lands surrounding wildlife protected areas (PAs), referred to as dispersal areas, have undergone widespread land use changes, but these have been little studied. This study investigated impacts of different land use types on wildlife distribution and composition. Transect data from stratified random sampling based on land use and vegetation type were analysed using correlation and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA). Household density and cultivation intensity were negatively correlated with grass cover and were greatest on small-scale farms and lowest in a dedicated PA. Three patterns of wildlife distribution were identified. Wildlife density in communal grazing and the PA was significantly higher than on other land use types. While most wildlife used pastoral ranches in the wet season, larger herbivores moved to the PA during the dry season. Wildlife density along the grass cover gradient, which was a disturbance gradient, was dome shaped, indicating that wildlife tolerated moderate levels of disturbance. The primary factors influencing wildlife distribution were vegetation type and proximity to water sources in the dry and wet seasons, respectively. The apparent anomaly in the wet season is attributed to wildlife moving from Chyulu, which lacked seasonal ponds, to the lowland Masaai ranches, which had plenty of ponds. In both seasons, cattle density was the most important secondary factor. To mitigate declining wildlife trends, management should ensure a heterogeneity of vegetation types is maintained and wildlife retain access to seasonal water sources.

Excessive grazing by livestock is claimed to displace wild ungulates in the Trans-Himalaya. This study compares the seasonal diets and habitat use of sympatric wild naur Pseudois nayaur and domestic goat Capra hircus, sheep Ovis aries and free-ranging yak Bos grunniens in north Nepal and analyses their overlap both within and across seasons. Alpine meadow and the legumes Oxytropis and Chesneya were critical resources for all animal groups. High overlap occurred cross-seasonally when smallstock (sheep and goats) in summer used the spring and autumn ranges of naur. Relatively high total ungulate biomass (3028 kg km−2) and low recruitment of naur (56 young per 100 adult females in autumn) suggested interspecific competition. The spatio-temporal heterogeneity in composition and phenology of food plants across the steep gradient of altitude, together with rotational grazing, appears to indirectly facilitate coexistence of naur and smallstock. However, owing to high cross-seasonal (inter-seasonal) overlaps, competition is likely to occur between these two groups at high stocking densities. Within seasons, naur overlapped more with free-ranging yak than with smallstock. As their habitat use and diets were most similar in winter, when both fed extensively on the same species of shrubs, naur was most likely to compete with yak during that season.

The sustainability of multispecies coral reef fisheries is a key conservation concern given their economic and ecological importance. Empirical estimation and numerical model analyses were conducted to evaluate exploitation status via resource reference points (or sustainability benchmarks) for coral reef fishes of the snapper-grouper complex in Puerto Rico. Mean size (L, in length) of animals in the exploited part of the population was estimated from fishery-dependent and fishery-independent size composition data and used as an indicator variable of exploitation rates. In application, fishing mortality rates estimated from L of various data sources were comparable. Of the 25 reef fish species assessed, 16 were below 30% spawning potential ratio (SPR), six were above 30% SPR, and three could not be reliably determined owing to low sample sizes. These findings indicate that a majority of snapper-grouper species in Puerto Rico are currently fished at unsustainable levels.

Ecotourism can capture biodiversity values and provide incentives for conservation, and many integrated conservation and development projects include an ecotourism component. One key assumption behind this strategy is that ecotourism businesses can achieve financial viability. This paper presents a financial case study of the well-known community-based ecotourism lodge ‘Casa Matsiguenka’, owned by an indigenous Matsigenka population in Manu National Park (Peru), only the second such project to be thoroughly analysed in the literature. Built and financed from 1997 to 2003 with German official aid, the lodge's revenues have only just exceeded operating costs and have not covered the costs of infrastructure replacement, thereby failing to secure long-term business sustainability. Wages and income from handicraft sales have covered about a third of individual cash needs in the two participating communities, but communal income from lodge operating profits (for example to pay for community infrastructure, health care or education) has been minimal. The lodge's difficulties are attributed largely to a flawed business plan in which the lodge has sold its services to its own competitors, a group of ecotourism agencies that have used their lobbying power to create a cartel in Manu. In a narrow analysis, the return on investment for this project has been approximately one-third of what could have been achieved to date by merely investing the start-up grant monies in a bank account and paying the interest directly to the Matsigenka communities in exchange for conservation actions. Broader analysis indicates the modest income and slow pace of business so far has permitted gradual social and economic adaptation on the part of culturally conservative indigenous communities. Moreover, the lodge project has generated processes of social and political organization, and sustained positive contact with Peruvian national society, which can be counted among its successes. The lodge has helped produce dialogue between the Park administration and the Matsigenka communities, a process that could ultimately result in co-management agreements that help to resolve people-park conflicts in the Park.

Tropical dry forests may be among the world's most threatened ecosystems, but few studies have objectively quantified their status and threats. This study analysed Venezuelan dry forests at multiple scales, assessing status, present threats and the policy context shaping their future. Historical and current dry forest cover at both national and local scales were contrasted, and a set of quantitative risk assessment criteria applied. While dry forests were vulnerable nationally, in northern-central locations they were endangered. Clearing for cattle ranching and for intensive and subsistence agriculture were the principal factors driving dry forest loss at the national scale, while at a local level, urbanization and fire seemed to be the primary threats. The analysis emphasized the separation of risk assessment from the very different task of establishing conservation priorities; high risk areas may not necessarily be the highest priority for investment, and policy makers may become explicitly aware of the spatial scale at which their policies are implemented, as well as how these policies may affect or be affected by the status of ecosystems beyond their area of influence. The main challenge to future dry forest conservation is a paucity of explicit policies for management and use. However, scientifically-based management can support positive dry forest policies in many ways, including identifying locations and protocols for ecological restoration, maintaining seed banks, quantifying baseline conditions, and monitoring genetic diversity and other indicators.