The oceans are facing more threats now than at any time in history. Yet a nascent industry is ramping up to exert yet more pressure on marine life: deep sea mining. A handful of governments and companies have been granted licences to explore for deep sea mining in ecologically sensitive waters, and the industry is positioning its development as inevitable, but deep sea mining isn’t happening anywhere in the global oceans – yet.
Meet the Indigenous rangers teaching scientists a thing or two in central WA...The Birriliburu rangers have been managing the area since 2013, continuing a tradition that stretches back 25,000 years. Click on the link below to read the full article.
This timely project will bring together perceptions from Experts in the field involved in conservation in protected and conserved areas...This project seeks to contribute to discussions towards transformative change in spatial conservation and is being carried out with the University of Cambridge
Tetepare Island is a rugged place in the western Solomon Islands that’s cloaked in rainforest and fringed with biodiverse reefs. It’s home to turtles, crocodiles and many endangered species. It’s also one of the last remaining nesting grounds for the giant leatherback turtle.
Much of Papua New Guinea remains inaccessible by road and the existing roads are often in poor condition.While lack of road access has historically helped to keep ecosystems intact, it comes with both social and environmental downsides. Click on the link below to read the full article.
A large international team of researchers reports that the amount of land designated as protected around the globe is shrinking. In their paper published in the journal Science, the researchers describe their study of protected lands over the past 200 years, and what they found.
Lands under secure indigenous tenure often have better conservation outcomes—can stronger protections around indigenous rights also protect the environment? Click on the link belowe to read the full article.
One hundred canoes by Christmas...That's the aim of one of the Pacific's most ambitious traditional boat building projects. Click on the link below to read the full article.
Our global analysis of nearly 1,800 tropical reefs reveals how the intensity of human impacts in the surrounding seascape, measured as a function of human population size and accessibility to reefs (“gravity”), diminishes the effectiveness of marine reserves at sustaining reef fish biomass and the presence of top predators, even where compliance with reserve rules is high. Critically, fish biomass in high-compliance marine reserves located where human impacts were intensive tended to be less than a quarter that of reserves where human impacts were low.
Here we undertake a cost-effective approach to protected area planning in Guyana that accounts for in-country conditions. To do this we conducted a stakeholder-led spatial conservation prioritisation based on meeting targets for 17 vegetation types and 329 vertebrate species, while minimising opportunity costs for forestry, mining, agriculture and urbanisation. Our analysis identifies 3 million ha of priority areas for conservation, helping inform government plans to double the current protected area network from 8.5 to 17%.
