Conservation NGOs Research Articles

Large-scale forest protection: the successful case of the Kayapo people in the Brazilian Amazon

Forest conservation is essential for action on climate change and biodiversity loss. Forest loss and degradation are increasing around the world, including in the Amazon. It is widely reported that Indigenous communities can be effective in forest protection, but less attention has been paid to explaining how they are able to do this in the face of severe threats. This article investigates what can be learned from the success of the Kayapo Indigenous communities and their organizations in protecting more than nine million hectares of primary forest in one of the most highly degraded and deforested areas of the Brazilian Amazon. We use geographic information system analysis to demonstrate the extent of forest protection, along with field work to examine the crucial alliances with conservation NGOs from governance and planning perspectives. Our interdisciplinary analysis is guided by the three-pillar framework for integrated landscape management and is informed by interviews conducted with Indigenous and non-Indigenous staff working for the Kayapo NGOs. Based on this data and the experience of the Kayapo people, we identify the main factors that facilitated large-scale forest conservation. Our research also reveals that the work of the Kayapo NGOs aligns with the principles of strong governance and effective planning. Lastly, we discuss key lessons and critical considerations to ensure the continued viability and ongoing success of the Kayapo NGOs in achieving their objectives.

Impacts of ecosystem service message framing and dynamic social norms on public support for tropical forest restoration.

The effectiveness of strategic psychology-based marketing techniques for increasing public support for conservation is poorly understood. We assessed how such techniques affect support for tropical rainforest restoration with a controlled online experiment with 1166 nationally representative residents of the United Kingdom. We tested whether support increased when adding ecosystem service (ES) framings to typical nongovernmental organizations' (NGOs) biodiversity-focused messages that emphasize benefits to UK residents or people living near the tropical restoration site and a dynamic social norm nudge that emphasized increasing popularity of environmental restoration. We considered how respondents' psychological traits (nature connection, self-efficacy, psychological benefits of supporting charities, awareness of environmental degradation in the Global South, and climate change skepticism) influenced responses. Outcomes included respondents' reported advertisement sufficiency, sympathetic attitudes, behavioral support, and financial support. The study population typically found advertisements sufficient and exhibited sympathetic attitudes and financial, but not behavioral, support. Younger people exhibited greater conservation support than older respondents. Messages framed solely on biodiversity conservation were as effective as those highlighting additional ES benefits received by UK residents and people near the tropical restoration site. This suggests that framing around ESs, rather than nature's intrinsic value, may not strengthen public support for conservation. The dynamic social norm nudge had perverse effects. It reduced perceived social norms and most outcome variables. Alternative dynamic norm nudges warrant testing, but our results support research suggesting dynamic norm nudges can be ineffective when associated with activism, challenging their use by conservation NGOs. Psychological benefits of supporting charities and perceived self-efficacy increased support for advertisements, highlighting the benefits of including impact statements relating respondents' support to specific outcomes. Climate change skepticism decreased support, whereas nature connection and perceived static social norms increased it, highlighting the need to increase nature connection and pro-environmental social norms to elevate public support for conservation.

A family of process-based models to simulate landscape use by multiple taxa

ContextLand-use change is a key driver of biodiversity loss. Models that accurately predict how biodiversity might be affected by land-use changes are urgently needed, to help avoid further negative impacts and inform landscape-scale restoration projects. To be effective, such models must balance model realism with computational tractability and must represent the different habitat and connectivity requirements of multiple species.ObjectivesWe explored the extent to which process-based modelling might fulfil this role, examining feasibility for different taxa and potential for informing real-world decision-making.MethodsWe developed a family of process-based models (*4pop) that simulate landscape use by birds, bats, reptiles and amphibians, derived from the well-established poll4pop model (designed to simulate bee populations). Given landcover data, the models predict spatially-explicit relative abundance by simulating optimal home-range foraging, reproduction, dispersal of offspring and mortality. The models were co-developed by researchers, conservation NGOs and volunteer surveyors, parameterised using literature data and expert opinion, and validated against observational datasets collected across Great Britain.ResultsThe models were able to simulate habitat specialists, generalists, and species requiring access to multiple habitats for different types of resources (e.g. breeding vs foraging). We identified model refinements required for some taxa and considerations for modelling further species/groups.ConclusionsWe suggest process-based models that integrate multiple forms of knowledge can assist biodiversity-inclusive decision-making by predicting habitat use throughout the year, expanding the range of species that can be modelled, and enabling decision-makers to better account for landscape context and habitat configuration effects on population persistence.

Agriculture-driven deforestation in Ecuador's Mache-Chindul Ecological Reserve: The farmers' perspective

Tropical rainforests serve as invaluable global carbon stocks with long-term climate mitigation potential and important ecosystem functions and biodiversity. Recent scholarship has identified agriculture as the main driver of tropical rainforest deforestation worldwide, yet effective policy action needs to understand why farmers continue to clear land, beyond broad-brush attributions of blame. This study highlights the constellation of social forces that drive deforestation in a subsection of the Mache Chindul Ecological Reserve (REMACH) in northwest Ecuador. Rather than simply assuming that farmers are either indifferent to or ignorant of the effects of deforestation, we highlight the perspective of farmers themselves as they reflect on, both, their relationship with other key actors and the broader contextual factors informing their own land-use decisions. We surveyed 70 rural households using a 45-question data collection tool, conducted semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders such as local conservation practitioners and community elders, employed participant observation and reviewed government documents.We find that colonist farmers who live in and around the REMACH clear land because they view doing so as their most reliable means of securing a livelihood for themselves and their children in a context of political and economic hardship and uncertainty. A history of government incentives to clear land, a deeply ambiguous land tenure system, and a sudden influx of externally-funded conservation NGOs to the region have all contributed to exclude farmers from the decision-making process, while simultaneously exacerbating the conditions that make deforestation farmers' most practical option—despite their awareness of its environmental impact. The data underscore that locals are, in fact, highly invested in the idea of conserving a healthy environment for future generations, but are nonetheless driven to act against this interest by their own precarity. By helping governmental and non-governmental conservation practitioners better understand farmers’ land-use decisions, the study reframes the latter group not as the problem, but as vital future partners.

Turtles and tortoises losing the race: Ecology and conservation of Testudines in Indawgyi Lake, Myanmar

AbstractTestudines (turtles and tortoises) rank among the most threatened vertebrates globally, with species in Asia particularly vulnerable due to exploitation, unregulated trade, habitat loss, and degradation. This study aimed to understand the ecology and conservation status of turtles and tortoises in the Indawgyi Lake basin. We conducted surveys along 47 transects, each 1–2 km in length, across four sampling periods (total distance covered = 74.9 km). Additionally, we also deployed four traps at three different locations to capture turtles during two of these sampling periods. In addition, we analyzed 14 soil samples collected from five locations to determine the nesting conditions of soft‐shell turtles. Finally, we identified conservation concerns through semi‐structured interviews with 146 local households, including fishermen and hunters, to gather local ecological knowledge (LEK) on the abundance, habitats, and breeding ecology of turtles and tortoises, as well as local conservation perspectives. Seven turtle and tortoise species were identified within the Indawgyi Lake basin. To our knowledge, two of these species, the Myanmar brown leaf turtle (Cyclemys fusca) and Oldham's leaf turtle (Cyclemys oldhamii), have yet to be officially documented in this area. Furthermore, an Amyda sp. (collected on 10 March 2019), known by the vernacular name “Late Par Tate,” is hitherto undescribed and is likely a newly discovered species. Our results showed disturbance (SW = 1.0) and higher organic matter (SW = 0.52) as the main estimators explaining the difference in nest observation frequency. Animal grazing areas had more nests than other sites affected by greater human disturbances. The local community identified hunting (44%), fishing (28%), and deforestation (13%) as the main activities threatening turtle and tortoise populations. The majority of turtles hunted were either consumed (over 43%) or sold to middlemen, who at times sold them on to foreign traders (less than 51%). Alarmingly, 99% of those interviewed expressed a notable deficiency in protection and conservation efforts by the Nature and Wildlife Conservation Division and NGOs. We advocate for enhanced conservation efforts, mainly through stronger enforcement, increased awareness, and the establishment of protection zones with restricted human access to facilitate the recovery of these populations, especially at nesting sites.

Understanding stakeholder perceptions on the impacts of gamebird releasing on or near UK protected sites

Conservation of protected sites involves stakeholders with a variety of perspectives and values of how land should be managed. Understanding the perceptions of different stakeholders are key to considering changes to conservation practises and to inform conflict strategies. Non-native gamebird release for recreational shooting in the UK includes associated land management which can have positive and negative impacts on species and habitats. We aimed to understand land manger perceptions of the effects from non-native gamebird release and associated management on native biodiversity within or adjacent to protected sites across the UK. We designed an online questionnaire which was completed by 104 managers of protected sites, including nature reserve staff, farmers and gamekeepers. Overall, respondents reported more positive effects related to estate management, and more negative effects related to the impacts of gamebirds on species and habitats, matching the conclusions of recent ecological evidence reviews. However, there was a marked difference in how the perceptions of different stakeholders matched the available ecological evidence: respondents employed by conservation NGOs, consultancy, government, and non-departmental bodies were more likely to perceive negative impacts, whereas respondents from farming and game shooting estates were more likely to perceive positive impacts. Despite pronounced differences in perceptions between stakeholder groups, there was broad cross-group agreement on the overall positive effect of hedgerow creation and management, and the overall negative impact of increases in generalist predator abundance and predation pressure on native wildlife linked to gamebird releases. Although our findings highlight differences between stakeholders in perceptions of the impacts of gamebird release and management, we use our results to highlight possible social mechanisms surrounding the perceptions of non-native gamebird releasing, opportunities for conflict management and potential needs for collaboration to further explore perceptions and help influence conservation action.

The Politics of Misalignment: NGO Livelihood Interventions and Exclusionary Land Claims in an Indonesian Oil Palm Enclave

ABSTRACT Across Southeast Asia’s extractive frontier, Indigenous people increasingly negotiate an influx of nonstate actors pushing partnerships and projects to steer livelihoods away from extractivism and toward forest conservation. Yet, NGOs and their donors often struggle to grasp Indigenous peoples’ changing needs and expectations that may prioritize sustaining an income, often via the promises extractive industries propose, over preserving fragmented forests for posterity. This paper examines three interventions by conservation NGOs in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, which leveraged custom (adat) and “alternative” livelihoods through territorial practices to dissuade a Dayak Modang community from releasing ancestral lands for palm oil plantations and coal mines. Drawing on the state’s definition of adat to demarcate Modang territory, NGOs and some Modang engaged in counter-mapping and livelihood initiatives as hopeful expressions of indigeneity and making a living through acts of territorialization. We explore how NGO territorial practices unfolded as simplified spatial expressions that leveraged adat identity, enclosures, and livelihoods, neglecting the contemporary realities of living in a fragmented forest frontier. Although NGO-Modang strategies temporarily slowed dispossession and deforestation, their misaligned livelihood and conservation programs may have reinforced social differentiation between and across Dayak and migrant groups to ultimately facilitate extraction’s expansion.

Priority Corridor Zone for Human-Tiger Conflict Mitigation: A Landscape Connectivity Approach in West Sumatra Region, Indonesia

Excessive fragmentation of natural landscapes has led to the depletion of tiger habitats in the wild, resulting in year-round human-tiger conflict (HTC) that inflicts physical, material, and psychological losses on both humans and tigers. This research aims to provide strategies for addressing HTC through priority corridor planning as a mitigation measure, using a landscape connectivity approach widely employed to tackle ecological issues. Additionally, we and Stakeholders endeavor to determine priority corridors by initially collecting temporal conflict data, indirect evidence of tiger presence, tiger disturbance data, as well as geospatial data from government agencies involved in conservation and planning. First, we identify ecological connectivity index areas, followed by spatial modeling of HTC potential and corridor analysis using graph theory models. Our last step involves conducting a focus group discussion with stakeholders to determine priority corridors. Our analysis reveals that 65% of connectivity index areas are still connected, followed by 20% with moderate connectivity and 15% with low connectivity. Another finding is that the highest potential for conflict occurs in areas on the edge of the outer conservation zone dominated by agricultural land and plantations, and after the FGD, 12 priority tiger corridors are identified, with these locations having the highest conflict history compared to other areas that need to be connected. Finally, our Pearson correlation test results show that out of 8 potential HTC variables with landscape connectivity, 7 variables have strong connections, and 1 variable shows a weak relationship. We hope that the findings of this research will be valuable for both national and international governments and conservation NGOs as one of the mitigation solutions for HTC, contributing to sustainable development through conservation. Furthermore, our findings can serve as guidelines for local government and international conservation NGOs will formulate future policies regarding HTC mitigation and corridor implementation to ensure the sustainability of this endemic species in the wild.

Local Knowledge and Environmental Education in Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras

Researchers of environmental change in island communities increasingly reimagine resilience. Critical theorists ask whether this trend is a net positive for different populations and non-human natures in these fragile spaces. Engaging these critiques in Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras, a place known for marine-based tourism, in this article, we consider whether it is possible to talk about resilience given the constraints placed on conservation NGOs by neoliberal capitalism. We draw on lessons learned from a conservation NGO/anthropology collaboration to produce environmental education programming. This aims to explicitly incorporate local experiences, memories, and knowledge to consider the possibilities offered by documenting, elevating, and celebrating local knowledge in order to offer ways of rethinking resilience conceptually and in practice.

Strong call to safeguard traditional agriculture as habitat for threatened crane species

This Scientific Impact Paper summarizes the changes in policy and practice of crane conservation that have occurred since our 2019 research in the Cheorwon Basin located in the Civilian Control Zone (CCZ) of the Republic of Korea (ROK). Changes in National Policy as well as increased engagement of conservation NGOs have led to more engagement of farmers in safeguarding crane habitat in their fields. Yet the current system of low-intensity rice farming is dependent on military land-use restrictions. The Cheorwon Basin in the Civilian Control Zone (CCZ) of the Republic of Korea (ROK) hosts the most important wintering site of two threatened crane species, the white-naped crane (Grus vipio) and the red-crowned crane (Grus japonensis). Both species predominately use harvested rice paddy fields as foraging sites (Kim et al., 2016). In 2019, we carried out a stakeholder analysis (Jin et al., 2021) revealing that local initiatives had successfully engaged farmers in conserving crane habitat on their fields, in part through the provision of direct and indirect financial incentives. Yet it proved challenging to engage stakeholders critical of crane conservation in our research (e.g., the military or firms interested in agricultural/ industrial development of the area). Here we summarize the changes in policy and practice of crane conservation that have occurred in the three years following our initial research. We report these insights based on expert interviews conducted in 2022 with a local farmer representative (I#1), and a local and international crane conservation specialist (I#2, I#3). At national level, the Biological Diversity Act (2002) was revised in 2019 allowing for the possibility of the private sector to co-finance the ROK government's system of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES). The National Nature Trust owns a legal foundation to operate PES and has expressed interest in extending the payments to crane conservation (I#3). While the system of PES was already in place in other regions of ROK, enhanced funding by the local government and the Ministry of Environment allowed for its initiation in the Cheorwon Basin. Farmers now receive government payments for specific biodiversity-friendly methods. These include the restricted use of pesticides, leaving leftover grains on the field and keeping rice fields flooded throughout winter in order to provide foraging and roosting habitat for cranes (I#2). According to a local farmer representative, the process of engaging in interviews for our initial publication and thereby expressing diverse opinions increased trust relations, and respect among members of the Crane Coordinating Committee. Yet communication with stakeholders outside the committee is still perceived as challenging. (I#1). The International Crane Foundation has started a new project centered upon Cheorwon with the major components being citizen science, outreach to stakeholders and policy-makers, strengthening networks for crane conservation and education, and awareness raising for example, by initiating a local crane festival which can attract tourists to the region (I#2). The Cheorwon Basin is the only area in the ROK, in which low-intensity rice farming is still practiced and crucial roosting and foraging habitat for cranes are secured. Plans to protect the site and the traditional farming practices by establishing a nature reserve have not yet been successful (Kim et al., 2011). This means that the current state of successful cooperation between farmers and crane conservation largely depends on military land-use restrictions that have become less strict in recent years. The size of the CCZ has decreased (Figure 1) and even within the remaining area, greenhouses and ginseng farms have rapidly expanded while the pressure for further economic development persists. Karoline Hemminger: Conceptualization (lead); Conducting Interviews, Interview Analysis (lead); Writing-original draft (lead); Writing-review and editing (lead). Hyeyeon Sarah Jin: Conducting Interviews (lead); Writing-review and editing. Spike Millington, Jongsoo Choi: Writing-review and editing. Kisup Lee: Visualization; Writing-review and editing. Claudia Sattler: Conceptualization, Visualization (lead), Writing-review and editing. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. The interview transcripts are not available because they include clear names of individuals mentioned during the interview conversations as well as sensitive information which may allow to guess the identity of the interviewees.

Missing species listing reveals undiagnosed extinction among reptiles, tropical, and island vertebrates

Missing species listing reveals undiagnosed extinction among reptiles, tropical, and island vertebrates

Sustainability of the long-term indigenous soil and water conservation practices in the UNESCO designated cultural landscapes of Konso, Ethiopia

The role of sociocultural values and indigenous institutions in the sustainability of soil and water conservation (SWC) practices has not been well addressed in previous studies. Therefore, this study explores the role of sociocultural values and indigenous institutions in the sustainability of SWC practices in Konso, Ethiopia. The study used key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observations to collect data. The data were coded and analyzed thematically. The study shows that sociocultural values, cooperative labor groups, and indigenous institutions served as the backbone for the sustainability of indigenous SWC practices for many years. However, recent trends in urbanization and the introduction of modern administration have led to a gradual weakening of Konso indigenous institutions and sociocultural values. The introduction of modern administration and urbanization significantly reduced the role of indigenous sociocultural and political institutions. The study also indicates that a persistent decline in farmland productivity due to erratic rainfall is threatening the sustainability of SWC practices as it has forced the youth to engage in off-farm activities. When crops fail due to unreliable rainfall, some family members temporarily migrate to some towns in southern Ethiopia in search of jobs. Consequently, SWC structures remain unmaintained on some farmland for a season. Weakening of indigenous political institutions and sociocultural values, erratic rainfall, and recurrent droughts lead to the deterioration of SWC practices. Therefore, to ensure the long-term sustainability of indigenous SWC practices in Konso, the government and conservation NGOs should support socio-cultural institutions to restore and promote social norms, values, and indigenous conservation measures.

Conservation regimes of exclusion: NGOs and the role of discourse in legitimising dispossession from protected areas in India

In this article, we examine the discourses of NGOs participating in and sustaining India's conservation “regime of exclusion”. We suggest that these NGOs utilise discursive technologies to produce forests and forest-dwellers in ways that legitimise racialised and caste-based exclusion from conservation spaces. We focus on two examples. First, we analyse a petition filed by conservation NGOs against India's Forest Rights Act (FRA), which recognises the customary forest rights of historically marginalised Adivasi and Other Traditional Forest-Dwelling communities. This petition was intended to delegitimise the FRA, and it prompted a court decision that could potentially displace approximately 1.19 million forest-dwelling families. Second, we analyse how conservation-induced dispossession in India is increasingly framed as “voluntary resettlement”, which we suggest normalises and depoliticises dispossession and legitimises arguments against the FRA. Through these examples, we find that discursive technologies produce forests and forest-dwellers in ways that rely on and reproduce existing social hierarchies shaping access to land, resources, and power. We unpack the characteristics and motivations of this conservation regime; particularly the discursive productions through which conservation organisations position their “expert” forest claims above the claims of forest-dwelling communities, authorising the creation of “inviolate” conservation spaces through exclusion. Understanding discourse as the articulation of knowledge and power through which material realities come into being, we problematize the dominant understandings of conservation that underlie dispossession and the discursive technologies that legitimise it.

Modeling Cultural Keystone Species for the Conservation of Biocultural Diversity in the Afroalpine

Climate warming threatens the future sustainability of mountains, and tropical mountains are particularly threatened with loss of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Conservation biologists increasingly turn to habitat suitability models to guide the establishment and assessment of protected area networks to protect the highest number of species, yet this focus often neglects the values, attitudes, and beliefs of the people living around protected areas. If we consider protected areas as dynamic social–ecological systems, habitat suitability modeling for conservation planning must pay greater attention to the role of biocultural diversity, rather than biodiversity alone. Here, we describe a conservation assessment of the Afroalpine grassland ecosystem in the northern highlands of Ethiopia. We use a cultural keystone species known as guassa grass (Festuca macrophyhlla) to focus our modeling efforts and evaluate the potential distribution of this endemic species in relation to current national and community-based protected areas. Our model performed highly according to the area under the curve (AUC = 0.96), yet nearly 80% of highly suitable guassa habitat falls outside the range of our training data and thus must be interpreted conservatively. We found that guassa grass distribution is primarily limited by low mean temperature in the warmest quarter (BIO10, 36.7%), high precipitation in the wettest quarter (BIO16, 21%), and low precipitation in the driest quarter (BIO17, 15.6%). As climate change causes rapid warming at high elevations and alters rainfall patterns in the Ethiopian highlands, we urge managers to carefully monitor the changing populations of guassa grass to evaluate whether the species is experiencing an extinction debt. We also recommend four additional areas as potential community-based conservation areas, with government and NGO support for peer-to-peer communication networks. Spatially explicit modeling may be a valuable tool to determine whether these existing and proposed protected areas can sustain future populations of guassa grass.

The challenges of primate research and conservation in Paraguay


 
 
 The primate fauna of Paraguay consists of just five species (Sapajus cay, Alouatta caraya, Aotus azarae, Plecturocebus pallescens and Mico melanurus) and has been largely overlooked by the international primatological community. Not-withstanding, Paraguay currently has the second highest deforestation rate in Latin America and the threats facing Paraguayan primates are as severe as anywhere else on the continent. Primate conservation in Paraguay is complicated by the complete absence of a homegrown primatological research community and the country lacks the solid biological research foundation required for the development of robust management strategies. Only one university degree in biology is available in the country (with the Universidad Nacional de Asunción), and opportunities for postgraduate education in biological sciences require studying abroad, whilst the limited number of career opportunities upon graduation mean that those receiving such training frequently prefer to pursue their career elsewhere rather than return to the country to practice. No higher education courses in primatology are currently available in Paraguay. Fundación Para La Tierra (PLT) is a Paraguayan conservation and education NGO (80086144-2), founded in 2010. PLT focuses on conservation of Paraguay’s natural habitats through scientific research, community engagement and education, and implements Paraguay’s only long-term primatology research projects: the “Hooded Capuchin Project” conserving Sapajus cay in what little remains of the Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest and the “Urban Howler Monkey Project” researching the behavioural ecology of Alouatta caraya inhabiting the city of Pilar. The PLT primate projects adopt a multi-faceted approach: long-term scientific research, training and supporting local people with an interest in primates, supervision of international students and environmental education in schools. In this article we will discuss the challenges of develop- ing such a project, and a vision for the future of primatology in Paraguay.
 
 

Factors affecting the availability of data on East African wildlife: the monitoring needs of conservationists are not being met

Understanding the status and abundance of species is essential for effective conservation decision-making. However, the availability of species data varies across space, taxonomic groups and data types. A case study was therefore conducted in a high biodiversity region—East Africa—to evaluate data biases, the factors influencing data availability, and the consequences for conservation. In each of the eleven target countries, priority animal species were identified as threatened species that are protected by national governments, international conventions or conservation NGOs. We assessed data gaps and biases in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and the Living Planet Index. A survey of practitioners and decision makers was conducted to confirm and assess consequences of these biases on biodiversity conservation efforts. Our results showed data on species occurrence and population trends were available for a significantly higher proportion of vertebrates than invertebrates. We observed a geographical bias, with higher tourism income countries having more priority species and more species with data than lower tourism income countries. Conservationists surveyed felt that, of the 40 types of data investigated, those data that are most important to conservation projects are the most difficult to access. The main challenges to data accessibility are excessive expense, technological challenges, and a lack of resources to process and analyse data. With this information, practitioners and decision makers can prioritise how and where to fill gaps to improve data availability and use, and ensure biodiversity monitoring is improved and conservation impacts enhanced.

The business of saving cheetahs: Cheetah ecology and the diverse politics at work in human wildlife conflict (HWC) interventions in Namibia

This paper is concerned with the intersection of cheetah ecology, human wildlife conflict (HWC), settler colonialism, and private land ownership in Namibia. Cheetahs’ ecological adaptation(s) in Namibia point to the need for a fuller picture of the permutations of conservation and conservation NGOs in Africa. In the case of Namibia, cheetahs’ ecological adaptations to interspecies threats have shaped their territory to be primarily on private commercial farms where they cause HWC. While cheetahs cause HWC on commercial farms and farming communities in Namibia writ large, HWC itself is not the conflict discussed in this research. Rather, HWC is the catalyst for what this paper will analyze to be a conflict between two private sector industries—commercial farming and cheetah conservation. After thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Namibia, this case study suggested diverse politics are at work within the NGOs conservation intervention policies at global, national, and local scales. This research identified a theoretical and conceptual fissure which led to an anomaly in the field of political ecology. This paper will argue HWC is an organizing structure in the business of saving cheetahs. The NGOs studied in Namibia are a service-based industry. They invest in both tangible and intangible conservation services rather than market-based participatory approaches, ecosystem services, and/or economic development. This is illustrative of a shift from market-based conservation to a service-based approach and calls for widening the political ecology lens to account for other cases of NGOs’ on-the-ground conservation business practices in Africa.

Instrumentalizing pastoralism? Understanding hybrid tenure and governance in Ilkisongo Maasai land of southern Kenya

Throughout Kenya, new governance regimes that are designed to sustain habitat connectivity for wildlife populations outside of national parks have gained increasing prominence. Though these new regimes often center a discursive emphasis on the synergies between wildlife conservation and pastoralist land use, it often remains unclear how they have interacted with colonial and post-colonial legacies that influenced pastoralists' relationships with land. As an effort to gain an improved understanding of the practices that conservation governance regimes deploy, and their underlying rationales, I present an empirically-driven account drawn from ethnographic field work in Kenyan Ilkisongo Maasai land surrounding Amboseli National Park. I argue that to understand recent configurations of land, it is essential to consider the multiple types of interlocking practices deployed by international wildlife conservation NGOs and the Kenyan state. Under a range of pressures to subdivide collectively titled land, a new territorial and governance configuration is emerging where land tenure will retain characteristics of being both private and collective. I argue that a discursive emphasis that frames conservation interventions as producing welfare for populations of wildlife and pastoralists alike has created new potentials to center the concerns of politically marginalized pastoralists, but has also raised risks of an ‘anti-politics’ that can reproduce and reinforce multiple dimensions of power asymmetries.

Global insect decline is the result of wilful political failure: Abattle plan for entomology.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment assessed ecosystem change, human wellbeing and scientific evidence for sustainable use of biological systems. Despite intergovernmental acknowledgement of the problem, global ecological decline has continued, including declines in insect biodiversity, which has received much media attention in recent years. Several roadmaps to averting biological declines have failed due to various economic and political factors, and so biodiversity loss continues, driven by several interacting human pressures. Humans are innately linked with nature but tend to take it for granted. The benefits we gain from the insect world are broad, yet aversion or phobias of invertebrates are common, and stand firmly in the path of their successful conservation. Providing an integrated synthesis for policy teams, conservation NGOs, academic researchers and those interested in public engagement, this article considers: (1) The lack of progress to preserve and protect insects. (2) Examples relating to insect decline and contributions insects make to people worldwide, and consequently what we stand to lose. (3) How to engage the public, governmental organizations and researchers through “insect contributions to people” to better address insect declines. International political will has consistently acknowledged the existence of biodiversity decline, but apart from a few narrow cases of charismatic megafauna, little meaningful change has been achieved. Public values are reflected in political willpower, the progress being made across the world, changing views on insects in the public should initiate a much‐needed political sea‐change. Taking both existing activity and required future actions, we outline an entomologist's “battle plan” to enormously expand our efforts and become the champions of insect conservation that the natural world needs.

Running on debt: Financing land protection with loans

AbstractNew land protection is expensive, and many conservation NGOs rely on loans to help fund land acquisition in the short term. Conservation loans are offered by a range of philanthropic organizations that often allow much more flexible terms than traditional loans. Thus, conservation loans may behave differently from other types of loan. There are costs and benefits to relying on loan financing to fund land protection that organizations need to consider, but few data are available to inform such evaluations. Here, we focus on estimating the financial cost of these loans, by analyzing loans used to support land protection projects that were provided through an internal revolving fund at a large U.S. conservation NGO. We estimate loan financing cost through accrued interest and test deal‐level characteristics for their ability to explain or predict loan interest. We find that loan performance can be highly uncertain and costs can be substantial in relation to the total purchase price. An improved ability to estimate the overall cost of conservation loans upfront may determine just which conservation projects are prioritized for investment and avoid costly misallocations of conservation resources.