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Conservation biology emerged as a scientific discipline in the mid-1980s with the explicit practical goal of conserving species and habitats. The term ‘biodiversity’ was coined soon after, apparently at some time during the organization of the September 1986 National Forum on Biodiversity held by the US National Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian Institution. The science of conservation biology was quickly taken up. Journals proliferated and textbooks soon followed. Laboratories within university biology and ecology departments specialized in conservation biology. Along with a great many other young biologists and ecologists, I climbed the moral high ground and set about research to help change the future by discovering how to protect biodiversity.

Fifty years have elapsed since the first publication of Ambio. Throughout this period, fundamental changes have occurred in societal attitudes to biodiversity conservation. Ambio has published numerous papers that have aligned with these new approaches. High citations numbers suggest that Ambio papers have had a significant impact on conservation strategies. We review these publications and find that they align well with changed societal perspectives on biodiversity. Ambio papers have called for greater contributions of local and indigenous peoples and for conservation in multi-functional landscapes. The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity built on these principles. Negotiations are now underway for a post-2020 framework for biodiversity. Ambio papers have argued for a stronger scientific basis for conservation and for the need to adapt to changing conditions and to the rich diversity of societal preferences for conservation. International processes favor simple, generalizable approaches to conservation but we call for recognition of the diversity of ecological and human conditions in which conservation occurs. There is a need to build capacity to support a diversity of conservation approaches that are adapted to changing local conditions and to the priorities of diverse human societies.

The human footprint (HF) was developed to measure of the impact of human activities on the environment. The human footprint has been found to be closely related to the vulnerability of protected areas around the world. In Indonesia, as nature conservation is still seen as hindering economic development, it is especially important to assess the human footprint in order to comprehend the overall pressures resulting from the various human activities on Indonesia’s national parks. This study measured the change in the human footprint in and around 43 terrestrial national parks over 5 years, between 2012 and 2017. As many as 37 out of 43 NPs experienced an increase in the HF, ranging from 0.4 to 77.3%. Tanjung Puting in Kalimantan experienced the greatest increase (77.3%), while Ujung Kulon in Jawa Bali bioregion had the greatest decrease (10.5%). An increase in human population density and improved access to parks from roads, rivers and coastlines are the main drivers of increasing impacts on national parks.

SummaryMajor advances in biology and ecology have sharpened our understanding of what the goals of biodiversity conservation might be, but less progress has been made on how to achieve conservation in the complex, multi-sectoral world of human affairs. The failure to deliver conservation outcomes is especially severe in the rapidly changing landscapes of tropical low-income countries. We describe five techniques we have used to complement and strengthen long-term attempts to achieve conservation outcomes in the landscapes and seascapes of such regions; these are complex social-ecological systems shaped by interactions between biological, ecological and physical features mediated by the actions of people. Conservation outcomes occur as a result of human decisions and the governance arrangements that guide change. However, much conservation science in these countries is not rooted in a deep understanding of how these social-ecological systems work and what really determines the behaviour of the people whose decisions shape the future of landscapes. We describe five scientific practices that we have found to be effective in building relationships with actors in landscapes and influencing their behaviour in ways that reconcile conservation and development. We have used open-ended inductive enquiry, theories of change, simulation models, network analysis and multi-criteria analysis. These techniques are all widely known and well tested, but seldom figure in externally funded conservation projects. We have used these techniques to complement and strengthen existing interventions of international conservation agencies. These five techniques have proven effective in achieving deeper understanding of context, engagement with all stakeholders, negotiation of shared goals and continuous learning and adaptation.

Leo S, Supriatna J, Mizuno K, Margules C. 2021. Indigenous Dayak Iban customary perspective on sustainable forest management, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Biodiversitas 23: 424-435. Borneo is the third-largest island in the world, is rich in biodiversity and has diverse unique ecosystems. However, deforestation and land tenure conflicts continue to threaten the indigenous people who rely on forest resources for their livelihoods and well-being. This study aimed to identify the ecosystem services and the value of customary forest resources, identify local wildlife species, and document the traditional knowledge that the Iban indigenous community of West Kalimantan use to manage their customary forest. We collected relevant data using Toolkit for Ecosystem Service Site-based Assessment (TESSA), in-depth interviews, and wildlife surveys. The customary forest provides significant ecosystem services, mainly carbon sequestration (exceeds US$ 52 million/year), water-related services (exceeds US$ 21 million/year), and the 52 wildlife species recorded in the customary forest. Forest resources are managed successfully by the community through traditional knowledge and customary laws passed down for generations. The integration of local and expert knowledge and involvement from all related stakeholders would boost sustainable forest management and enhance the economic benefits and livelihoods of the community. Following current trends, recognizing customary forest and appropriate sustainable forest management could effectively tackle deforestation and land tenure conflicts in Borneo. Further studies should be considered to develop specific activities on managing the forest sustainably that the community can implement and evaluate.

Regular assessment of progress on the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is crucial for achieving the goals by 2030 yet such assessments often require extensive resources and data. Here, we describe a method using performance auditing as a novel approach for assessing the implementation of SDGs that would be useful for countries with limited resources and data availability but might also provide an alternative to choosing particular goals and implementing them one at a time, for all countries. We argue that, instead of monitoring all 169 targets and 242 indicators, a country could assess the effectiveness of its governance arrangement as a way of ensuring that progress on implementing SDGs is on track, and hence improve the likelihood of achieving the SDGs by 2030. Indonesia is an archipelagic upper-middle-income country facing challenges in data availability and reliability, which limits accurate assessments of SDG implementation. We applied a standardized performance audit to assess the effectiveness of current governance arrangements for the implementation of SDGs. We used the Gephi 0.9.2 software (Open sourced program by The Gephi Concortium, Compiègne, France) to illustrate the regulatory coordination among public institutions. We found that Indonesia’s governance arrangements are not yet effective. They might be improved if Indonesia: (1) synchronize its SDG regulations; (2) redesigns its governance structure to be more fit for purpose; and (3) involves audit institutions in the SDG governance arrangements. These findings would likely apply to many other countries striving to implement the SDGs.

We propose an approach to studying the effectiveness of governance arrangements to deal with complexity in forest landscapes. Using a landscape approach and standard performance audit procedures, we (1) describe the interactions among multiple sectoral actors (2) evaluate the effectiveness of governance arrangements to deal with complexity in a forest landscape, and (3) suggest recommendations for more effective multi sectoral forest landscape governance. We conducted a pilot effectiveness audit in the Sendang (Sembilang Lalan Dangku) landscape of South Sumatra, Indonesia. Conservation activities in Sembilang and Dangku need to be reconciled with developments in Lalan; a new feeder port, an established oil processing facility, and expanding oil palm plantations. We found that two sets of governance settings coexist in Sendang. By regulations, governance arrangements are highly centralised around the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. Yet, in implementation, government authorities and their influence are not as stipulated; companies bypass the regulations, informal patronage arrangements have a major influence on outcomes, and there is no effective intermediary institution to liaise with all governance actors. We suggest three possible strategies to rationalise the regulatory framework for more effective implementation. (1) Align the regulations to more closely match implementation (2) invest in additional resources, budgetary, human, technological, and law enforcement (3) a hybrid of the first two with some additional resources and some regulatory changes because major change is expensive and time-consuming. To determine the most appropriate strategy, another audit on the efficiency and economy of each option is required. This research will contribute to alternative mechanism for mitigating conflicts among multi sector governance actors as well as to the body of knowledge.

Tropical rainforests are among the most important ecosystems on earth. After Brazil, Indonesia has the second largest tropical forest area in the world. Since the 1970s, Indonesia’s forests have decreased from covering 87% to 50% of its land area. With the ever increasing pressures from economic and human development it appears likely that much of the biodiversity and ecosystem services provided by forest in Indonesia will only remain in conservation areas. National parks currently cover around 60% or 16 Mha of the total area of protected areas in Indonesia. Between 2012 and 2017, 42 terrestrial national parks in Indonesia lost 1.07% of their total forest cover. However, primary forest cover increased by 0.07%. National parks in the Jawa Bali bioregion, through their natural mountainous conditions and ecosystem services to the surrounding areas, as well as better management inputs, have contributed to the increase of primary forest covers and keeping total forest loss relatively low in Indonesia’s national parks.

Sulawesi is an important island for primates. All 17 species that are found there are endemics. The island also includes contact zones between species of macaques (genus Macaca) where hybrids may arise. Sulawesi continues to be deforested, especially in the lowlands most suitable for estate crops and other agricultural products. We carried out an island-wide review of the current extent and rates of deforestation, and the impact this is having on the habitat available to all primates and within macaque hybrid zones. The provinces of West Sulawesi and Southeast Sulawesi suffered the highest rate of deforestation. Macaca ochreata in Southeast Sulawesi and Tarsius pelengensis on Peleng island in Central Sulawesi have lost the most habitat at 14%, followed by M. hecki and M. tonkeana. Forest loss also occurred in all macaque contact zones. The greatest losses occurred at contact zones between the western population of M. tonkeana and M. ochreata. Corn, coffee, cocoa, and oil palm are commodities that are spreading throughout the island. The extent of deforestation in the hybrid zones is alarming, particularly as none of them are represented in protected areas. To help address these problems, a careful integration of conservation and development is suggested, including making trade-offs explicit, and conducting transdisciplinary research on social-ecological systems at the interface of policy and management at local scales.

Tropical forest landscapes are undergoing rapid transition. Rural development aspirations are rising, and land use change is contributing to deforestation, degradation, and biodiversity loss, which threaten the future of tropical forests. Conservation initiatives must deal with complex social, political, and ecological decisions involving trade-offs between the extent of protected areas and quality of conservation. In Cambodia, smallholders and industrial economic land concessions drive deforestation and forest degradation. Rural economic benefits have not kept pace with development aspirations and smallholders are gradually expanding agriculture into protected forests. We examine the drivers and effects of rural forest landscape transitions in Cambodia to identify trade-offs between conservation and development. Using historical trends analysis and information gathered through key informant interviews, we describe how local communities perceive social and ecological changes, and examine the implications of local development aspirations for conservation. We explore three scenarios for the future of conservation in Cambodia, each with different conservation and community development outcomes. We contend that conservation efforts should focus on strengthening governance to meet social and environmental requirements for sustainable forest landscapes. We suggest potential entry points for governance improvements, including working with local decision-makers and fostering collaboration between stakeholders. There is a need for realistic priority setting in contested tropical forest landscapes. Prosperous rural economies are a necessary but not sufficient condition for conservation.

Biological and ecological information on the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) remains limited. This study was designed to analyze the demographic parameters and build a growth model of the Tapanuli orangutans to help guide policy in developing a conservation program for them. Data were collected from tapanuli orangutans that were directly observed over four years in the Batang Toru Landscape, South Tapanuli Regency, North Sumatra. There were 32 distinct individual orangutans, 27 of which were adults or sub-adults. Only five were children or infants. The adult sex ratio, male to female, was 1: 0.83, the birthrate was 0.13, and the highest mortality rate was among sub-adults and adults. The population growth rate (r) was estimated to be 0.051 per year and predicted to reach the potential carrying capacity of the habitat they now occupy in about 60–80 years from 2020. Conservation activities that might help to increase the tapanuli orangutan population include increasing the number of food plants in production forests around nature reserves and increasing patrols to monitor the population and minimize potential damage to the animal and their habitat due to human activities.

We report on the results of a survey of the herpetofauna of West Bali National Park (Taman Nasional Bali Barat in Indonesian, hereafter TNBB) that was carried out in 2015. The survey also included other taxa and the motivation for it was to identify a species or group of species that could be used as indicators of management success for Protected Area Credits (PAC) under the Rainforest Standards (RFS™) system. Four major ecosystems, moist forest, deciduous monsoon forest, savanna and an abandoned Teak plantation, were sampled over a period of 10 days, using belt transects and pitfall traps. We measured species richness, abundance and density, herpetofaunal diversity (Simpson’s Index of Dominance and the Shannon Weiner Index) and community similarity. We also estimated the indicator value to determine which species, if any, might be suitable as indicators of environmental conditions. The survey yielded 30 species, 12 frogs and toads, 7 snakes and 11 lizards. Out of them there is an endangered gecko, Cyrtodactylus jatnai, a vulnerable frog, Microhyla orientalis, and a vulnerable tree-skink, Cryptoblepharus baliensis. Diversity was highest in the moist forest, followed closely by both the deciduous forest and the savanna. The greatest abundance was found in the savanna, followed by the moist forest and then the deciduous forest. Both diversity and abundance were extremely low in the abandoned teak plantation. Eleven species were identified as potential indicators of environmental deterioration if their numbers were to decrease. Frogs and toads were the best indicators in the moist forest, while lizards were the most suitable indicators for savanna and deciduous forest. No snakes were identified as indicators. It is concluded that herpetofauna can be useful and cost-effective indicators of environmental change.

Conflicting policies relating to the management of multi-sectoral, multi-level and multi-actor forest uses often result in ineffective policy implementation. Methods for assessing policy coherence, however, are limited and often require an extensive evidence base which is not always available. In Indonesia, this has often led to conflicts between government agencies and other forest stakeholders. Businesses, NGOs and local communities struggle to comply with all of the conflicting or overlapping regulations that relate to the use of forested landscapes. Even if they succeed, the cost of implementation can be excessive. Improved methods for assessing policy coherence could assist governments and other stakeholders to navigate policy complexity and to avoid the potentially high costs of policies that are antagonistic to one another. We propose an audit of policy coherence at the landscape scale as a way of addressing this problem. We test this idea with an experimental policy audit on the Kampar Peninsula, a peat landscape in Pelalawan district, Riau Province, Indonesia. Indonesia has participated in the UN global peat initiative since 2015 and has created a peat protection policy to control the exploitation of peat with regulation No 57/2016. This regulation and the various instruments devolved from it has been a source of confusion and conflict among stakeholders. We applied commonly accepted performance auditing standards to assess the coherence, effectiveness and efficiency of regulations from other sectors and in different jurisdictions with the new peat regulation No 57/2016 and its derivatives. To aid our audit assessment, we overlaid radar and Landsat images to depict delineations of peat protection and cultivation zones according to different legislation. Our audit revealed incoherent mapping of peat protection zones on the Kampar Peninsula, which has led to ineffective and inefficient implementation of policies. We then propose three alternative protection and cultivation scenarios to that proposed by the government. Our results show that any of these alternative scenarios would provide a policy that is not only more coherent, but that also would result in more effective and efficient policy implementation. This policy audit method should have wide potential application for auditing best practice and policy effectiveness in complex landscapes across the globe and should have immediate application in helping to resolve the current issues on the Kampar Peninsular.

There is a global shift of forest management to local levels to better reconcile local livelihoods and biodiversity conservation. We argue that achieving such outcomes will require embedding science in landscape-scale management systems. We show that science can contribute to local learning and adaptation within landscape contexts. Complexity and power relations have hampered scientists' efforts to engage with the people who use and influence the use of resources at landscape scales. Landscape approaches present an opportunity for science to help steer local management to address local contexts. We have conducted research at the interface of policy and management at landscape scales. More effort must go toward transdisciplinary approaches to co-generate knowledge and create “Communities of Commitment” for continual learning and adaptation amongst landscape-scale actors. Embedded science incorporating local knowledge and contexts and engaged in landscape scale development processes is necessary for improving decision and policy-making.

Highlights: • Indonesia’s annual area of forest degradation is equal to deforestation. • Numerous forest restoration initiatives exist but with varying levels of success. • Government control provides a disincentive to restoration initiatives. • Partnerships across multiple scales can enhance FLR learning opportunities.

Landscape approaches attempt to achieve balance amongst multiple goals over long time periods and to adapt to changing conditions. We review project reports and the literature on integrated landscape approaches, and found a lack of documented studies of their long-term effectiveness. The combination of multiple and potentially changing goals presents problems for the conventional measures of impact. We propose more critical use of theories of change and measures of process and progress to complement the conventional impact assessments. Theories of change make the links between project deliverables, outputs, outcomes, and impacts explicit, and allow a full exploration of the landscape context. Landscape approaches are long-term engagements, but short-term process metrics are needed to confirm that progress is being made in negotiation of goals, meaningful stakeholder engagement, existence of connections to policy processes, and effectiveness of governance. Long-term impact metrics are needed to assess progress on achieving landscapes that deliver multiple societal benefits, including conservation, production, and livelihood benefits. Generic criteria for process are proposed, but impact metrics will be highly situation specific and must be derived from an effective process and a credible theory of change.

Land tenure in Indonesia is regulated by a complex combination of traditional, formal and informal arrangements. Legal ambiguity over land and natural resources has resulted in tenure insecurity, impacting livelihoods and perpetuating conflict. We reviewed land and forest laws in Indonesia and their effect on livelihoods and conflict and studied the impact of land tenure uncertainty in Rempek village on the island of Lombok, Nusa Tenggara Barat. In Rempek, conflict over land tenure and forest boundaries has occurred since 1984. We built a timeline of events from discussions with various stakeholders and obtained legal documents to support our analysis. The major driver of conflict is the disagreement over the forest boundaries between the Ministry of Forestry and the National Land Agency. This disagreement has escalated and introduced uncertainty, which negatively affects livelihoods in the area. Conflict resolution in Rempek requires a multi-stakeholder approach and an agreement between the Ministry of Forestry and the National Land Agency over the forest boundary and an explicit classification of land status in the conflict area. Our case study is relevant to recurrent disputes over land tenure in contemporary Indonesia. Agrarian conflict and tenure insecurity have stimulated political and social justice movements throughout the country. Recent reforms of land and forest tenure in Indonesia are opening up new pathways for local forest tenure arrangements in situations such as Rempek. Integrated landscape approaches are emerging in Indonesia and have elements that may contribute to resolving land tenure uncertainty. As land tenure security underpins livelihoods for most Indonesians, land authorities must demonstrate stronger coordination and pay more attention to realities on the ground to achieve political and legal progress on land tenure arrangements.

A framework was developed for the construction of an objectives hierarchy for multicriteria decisions in land use planning. The process began through identification of fundamental objectives; these were iteratively decomposed into a hierarchy of subobjectives until a level was reached at which subobjectives had measurable attributes. Values were derived for attributes through a variety of methods and weights assigned to objectives through preference elicitation. The framework assumed that the objectives could be incorporated into a linear value function; this required attributes to satisfy preference and difference independence conditions. Strategies were developed to address typical features that distinguish land use decisions from many other multicriteria decisions. The methodology was illustrated with a case study of land use planning in a forestry concession in the Merauke region of Papua Province, Indonesia. The problem involved severe hard constraints; the analysis showed how these can be accommodated within the framework. Results integrated interests and preferences of a diverse set of stakeholders (resident peoples, developers, and conservation professionals) and were intended for implementation. This methodology is extendible to other land use problems.

Integrated approaches to natural resource management are often undermined by fundamental governance weaknesses. We studied governance of a forest landscape in East Lombok, Indonesia. Forest Management Units (Kesatuan Pengelolaan Hutan or KPH) are an institutional mechanism used in Indonesia for coordinating the management of competing sectors in forest landscapes, balancing the interests of government, business, and civil society. Previous reviews of KPHs indicate they are not delivering their potential benefits due to an uncertain legal mandate and inadequate resources. We utilized participatory methods with a broad range of stakeholders in East Lombok to examine how KPHs might improve institutional arrangements to better meet forest landscape goals. We find that KPHs are primarily limited by insufficient integration with other actors in the landscape. Thus, strengthened engagement with other institutions, as well as civil society, is required. Although new governance arrangements that allow for institutional collaboration and community engagement are needed in the long term, there are steps that the East Lombok KPH can take now. Coordinating institutional commitments and engaging civil society to reconcile power asymmetries and build consensus can help promote sustainable outcomes. Our study concludes that improved multi-level, polycentric governance arrangements between government, NGOs, the private sector, and civil society are required to achieve sustainable landscapes in Lombok. The lessons from Lombok can inform forest landscape governance improvements throughout Indonesia and the tropics.

We assess the opportunities and threats posed by small and large-scale mining in Eastern Indonesia. Here, both activities coexist in one landscape: in the Bitung and North Minahasa Districts of North Sulawesi. Each is associated with different development pathways. Both scales of mining have been controversial and are criticized for their environmental and socio-economic impacts. Small-scale mining contributes more to the local economy encouraging local entrepreneurship but yields a lower total financial return. Large-scale mining provides better job security and safer working conditions for employees, but any benefits of capital transformation do not accrue locally. Policy should focus on the formalization of small-scale mining and pay closer attention to the impact of large-scale mining on local communities. The governance of both scales of mining would benefit from a ‘landscapes approach’ to negotiating conservation and development trade-offs.

A new model of small-scale mineral exploitation is being driven by Asian investors in East Cameroon and may be representative of trends elsewhere in Africa. The mines employ nationals of Asian countries and create small Asian communities in remote areas. There is evidence of widespread failure to comply with national mining regulations and few benefits are flowing either to the national government or to local communities. If existing government regulations were enforced, this form of mining could improve livelihoods and living conditions in remote areas. Without good governance it risks facilitating enclaves of uncontrolled resource exploitation.

Decentralizing natural resource management to local people, especially in tropical countries, has become a trend. We review recent evidence for the impacts of decentralization on the biodiversity values of forests and forested landscapes, which encompass most of the biodiversity of the tropics. Few studies document the impact of decentralized management on biodiversity. We conclude that there may be situations where local management is a good option for biodiversity but there are also situations where this is not the case. We advocate increased research to document the impact of local management on biodiversity. We also argue that locally managed forests should be seen as components of landscapes where governance arrangements favor the achievement of a balance between the local livelihood values and the global public goods values of forests.

Landscape approaches are widely applied in attempts to reconcile tradeoffs amongst different actors with conflicting demands on land and water resources. Key principles for landscape approaches have been endorsed by inter-governmental processes dealing with climate change mitigation and adaptation and biodiversity conservation.We review experiences from seven landscapes located in the Congo Basin, Eastern Indonesia and Northern Australia. Landscape initiatives were applied in situations where large-scale extractive industries, local peoples’ livelihoods and global biodiversity objectives were in conflict. We found that common published principles for landscape approaches are not applied systematically in the areas studied. Practitioners draw upon landscape approach principles selectively and adapt them to deal with local conditions. We consider that landscape approaches do not provide silver bullet solutions to these situations nor do they provide an operational framework for large-scale land management. Landscape approaches do, however, provide an organising framework for disentangling the complexity of the landscape and facilitating the investigation of impacts of different courses of action. They enable alternative scenarios for what future landscapes might look like to be investigated and they create the space for multi-stakeholder negotiations. Outcomes from landscape scale approaches are determined by the power differentials amongst stakeholders and the existence, or otherwise, of functional institutions to take decisions and enforce agreements. Landscape approaches cannot overcome disparities in power or entrenched interests nor can they substitute for institutions with authority to establish and legitimise property and resource rights. They can, however, provide a mechanism around which civil society can be mobilised to achieve better land use outcomes. Landscape approaches are successful when they have strong leadership, sustained long-term and facilitated processes, good governance, adequate budgets and adequate metrics for assessing progress. Private sector engagement is necessary and all parties must have sufficient shared interest in outcomes to motivate their participation.

The clearing and subsequent fragmentation of terrestrial ecosystems is commonly acknowledged as a major cause of the decline of biodiversity. These and other predicted responses to habitat fragmentation are derived from theory, which ecologists have tested with empirical approaches ranging from observations to experimental manipulations. These empirical approaches have also identified areas of theory in need of additional development. For example, experimental studies of fragmentation have provided insights such as the key role played by the matrix surrounding fragments, the importance of edge effects, and the impacts of corridors linking fragments with one another. Much less clear, however, is the extent to which these theoretical and empirical studies – while advancing our conceptual understanding of ecological responses to landscape change – help guide management and conservation practice. We review lessons learned from landscape-scale fragmentation experiments and observational studies, present the results of a survey of fragmentation and conservation experts which probed for links and mismatches between fragmentation studies and conservation practice, and discuss how future studies can contribute to conservation practice. Our survey showed that respondents consider fragmentation theory and empirical studies and their findings important for guiding conservation and management practices. The survey also identified that there are disconnects between what is typically studied by fragmentation ecologists and factors that are central to the practice of biodiversity conservation, notably, community-based human dimensions (e.g., economic, social, health issues), policy and governance, ecosystem services, eco-evolutionary responses of species, and interaction of multiple threats to biodiversity and ecosystem processes. We discuss how these disconnects can present opportunities for experiments to continue to provide valuable recommendations for conservation practice in fragmented landscapes. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Initiatives to manage landscapes for both biodiversity protection and sustainable development commonly employ participatory methods to exploit the knowledge of citizens. We review five examples of citizen groups engaging with landscape scale conservation initiatives to contribute their knowledge, collect data for monitoring programs, study systems to detect patterns, and test hypotheses on aspects of landscape dynamics. Three are from landscape interventions that deliberately target biodiversity conservation and aim to have sustainable development as a collateral outcome. The other two are driven primarily by concerns for agricultural sustainability with biodiversity conservation as a collateral outcome. All five include programs in which, management agencies support data collection by citizen groups to monitor landscape changes. Situations where citizen groups self-organise to collect data and interpret data to aid in landscape scale decision making are less common and are restricted to landscapes where the inhabitants have a high level of scientific literacy. Given the complexity of landscape processes and the multiple decision makers who influence landscape outcomes we argue that citizen science broadly defined should be an essential element of landscape scale initiatives. Conservation managers should create space for citizen engagement in science and should empower citizen groups to experiment, learn, and adapt their decision-making to improve landscape scale outcomes.

The Wet Tropics World Heritage Area (WTWHA) in Far North Queensland is one of the world’s hotspots of rainforest biodiversity and is an area rich in cultural heritage, with surrounding landscapes important nationally for agriculture and tourism. Like many globally important UNESCO sites, the area is currently experiencing unprecedented rates of population growth and urbanisation hence efficient and effective management action is required to maintain the area’s ecological, cultural and economic values. One of the aims of the Commonwealth Government funded Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility, is to develop a monitoring programme for biodiversity which will include critical indicators of ecosystem health and thresholds of concern to trigger management action. However, a major scientific challenge remains to identify critical indicators and thresholds of concern for the cultural status of both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous local human communities, who inherently form a part of the ecosystem. An additional challenge lies in linking these cultural indicators to ecosystem health. This paper outlines a framework of cooperative research for the generation of a series of linked biophysical and cultural indicators to facilitate the development of effective cooperative Natural Resource Management. Once composed, it is considered that the framework and a consequent monitoring protocol will be appropriate for use within the WTWHA and will be applicable to other protected areas worldwide.

Urgent need for conservation and restoration measures to improve landscape connectivity., We conducted an analysis of global forest cover to reveal that 70% of remaining forest is within 1 km of the forest’s edge, subject to the degrading effects of fragmentation. A synthesis of fragmentation experiments spanning multiple biomes and scales, five continents, and 35 years demonstrates that habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity by 13 to 75% and impairs key ecosystem functions by decreasing biomass and altering nutrient cycles. Effects are greatest in the smallest and most isolated fragments, and they magnify with the passage of time. These findings indicate an urgent need for conservation and restoration measures to improve landscape connectivity, which will reduce extinction rates and help maintain ecosystem services.

▪ Abstract Species extinctions and the deterioration of other biodiversity features worldwide have led to the adoption of systematic conservation planning in many regions of the world. As a consequence, various software tools for conservation planning have been developed over the past twenty years. These tools implement algorithms designed to identify conservation area networks for the representation and persistence of biodiversity features. Budgetary, ethical, and other sociopolitical constraints dictate that the prioritized sites represent biodiversity with minimum impact on human interests. Planning tools are typically also used to satisfy these criteria. This chapter reviews both the concepts and technical choices that underlie the development of these tools. Conservation planning problems can be formulated as optimization problems, and we evaluate the suitability of different algorithms for their solution. Finally, we also review some key issues associated with the use of these tools, such as computational efficiency, the effectiveness of taxa and abiotic parameters at choosing surrogates for biodiversity, the process of setting explicit targets of representation for biodiversity surrogates, and dealing with multiple criteria. The review concludes by identifying areas for future research, including the scheduling of conservation action over extensive time periods and incorporating data about site vulnerability.

We summarise the contributions of empiricists, modellers, and practitioners in this issue of Biodiversity and Conservation, and highlight the most important areas for fu- ture research on species survival in fragmented landscapes. Under the theme 'uncertainty in research and management', we highlight five areas for future research. First, we know little about the effects of density dependence on the viability of metapopulations, a requirement for fragmented landscapes. Second, successful early attempts suggest that it is worth developing more rigorous calibration methods for population viability analysis with spatially explicit, individual-based models. In particular, the balance between model complexity, ease of calibra- tion, and precision, needs to be addressed. Third, we need to improve methods to discriminate between models, including alternatives to time-series approaches. Fourth, when our ability to reduce model uncertainty is weak, we need to incorporate this uncertainty in population viability analysis. Fifth, population viability analysis and decision analysis can be integrated to make uncertainty an explicit part of the decision process. An important future direction is extending the decision framework to adaptive management. Under the theme 'tools for quantifying risk and predicting species sensitivity to fragmentation', we highlight three areas for future research. First, we need to develop tools to support comparative approaches to pop- ulation viability analysis. Second, population modelling can be used to find rules of thumb to support conservation decisions when very little is known about a species. Rules of thumb need to be extended to the problem of managing for multiple species. Third, species' traits might be useful for predicting sensitivity but predictions could be further refined by considering the relative importance of population processes at different scales. Under the theme 'tools for reassembling fragmented landscapes', we consider the 'focal species' approach, and highlight aspects of the approach that require more rigorous testing. Finally, we highlight two important areas for future research not presented in the previous themes or papers in this volume. First

Theory and empirical evidence have long suggested that some species are extremely vulnerable to extinction because they have combinations of extinction promoting traits. However, ecologists have not considered whether the form of the relationship between traits is additive (not synergistic) or nonadditive (synergistic). We looked at how traits and their interactions were related to the difference in species' population growth rates between experimentally fragmented forest and continuous forest. Two traits acted synergistically; natural abundance and degree of specialization interacted so that beetle species that were rare and specialized had a greater reduction in their growth rates in fragments, compared to continuous forest, than the sum of the reductions in growth rates attributable to these traits. In other words, species that were both rare and specialized were especially vulnerable to extinction. From a conservation perspective, an implication of our findings is that making predictions about extinction risk from a single trait, like abundance or population variability, may be risky because traits may act synergistically rendering species more, or less, vulnerable than predicted by that single trait. There is currently a great deal of interest in which traits predict the sensitivity of species to a given threat, but if we are going to look at risks in this way, then we also need to consider how traits interact, because this can alter the vulnerability of species.

We present a brief introduction to current attempts to understand and mitigate the effects of fragmentation on species survival. We provide a short overview of the contributions of empiricists, modellers, and practitioners in this issue of Biodiversity and Conservation, which were initiated during a workshop held in Australia in February 2002 on the topic ‘Species Survival in Fragmented Landscapes: Where are we now?’. These contributions address the themes ‘uncertainty in research and management’, ‘tools for quantifying risk and predicting species sensitivity to fragmentation’, and ‘tools for reassembling fragmented landscapes’. A final contribution provides a synthesis across the contributions and highlights the most important areas for future research on species survival in fragmented landscapes.

Recent decades have seen a rapid movement towards decentralising forest rights and tenure to local communities and indigenous groups in both developing and developed nations. Attribution of local and community rights to forests appears to be gathering increasing momentum in many tropical developing countries. Greater local control of forest resources is a response to the failure of government agencies to exercise adequate stewardship over forests and to ensure that the values of all stakeholders are adequately protected. We reviewed evidence of the impact of decentralised forest management on the biodiversity values of forests and conclude that special measures are needed to protect these values. There are trade-offs between shorter-term local needs for forest lands and products and longer-term global needs for biodiversity and other environmental values. We present evidence of local forest management leading to declining forest integrity with negative impacts on both local forest users and the global environment. We advocate greater attention to measures to ensure protection of biodiversity in locally-managed forests.

Results are presented which prioritize areas for potential protection in Quebec on the basis of biodiversity considerations. These results are relevant to the ongoing public discussion in Quebec about designating new parks and refuges so that the province may fulfil its obligations to Canada's Endangered Spaces Campaign. The prioritization algorithm used in this analysis is based on rarity and complementarity. It attempts to sample biodiversity in as area-efficient a way as possible. The biodiversity surrogates used here comprise a subset of 743 species for which data on spatial distributions are publicly available; the analysis begins with 394 species at risk. It is shown that: (i) the existing network of protected areas in Quebec does a poor job of protecting these biodiversity surrogates; (ii) adding adjacent areas to this network will not be the optimal way of protecting these biodiversity surrogates; (iii) many of the areas that have highest priority are in southern Quebec, which has a high human population density; (iv) because of (iii), designating parks may not be economically or sociologically feasible and more adaptive alternative conservation plans will have to be devised; (v) coastal areas, riparian habitats, and other wetlands should have high priority for protection but are currently very inadequately represented in the reserve network; (vi) there is some reason for concern about the clear-cut logging of boreal forests in northern Quebec; and (vii) the islands, Ile d'Anticosti and the Iles-de-la-Madeleine, emerge as being of very significant conservation value and plans for the protection of areas on them should be an immediate goal for biodiversity conservation in Quebec.

The conservation of biological diversity has become one of the important goals of managing for- ests in an ecologically sustainable way. Ecologists and forest resource managers need measures to judge the success or failure of management regimes designed to sustain biological diversity. The relationships between potential indicator species and total biodiversity are not well established. Carefully designed studies are re- quired to test relationships between the presence and abundance of potential indicator species and other taxa and the maintenance of critical ecosystem processes in forests. Other indicators of biological diversity in forests, in addition or as alternatives to indicator species, include what we call structure-based indicators. These are stand-level and landscape-level (spatial) features of forests such as stand structural complexity and plant species composition, connectivity, and heterogeneity. Although the adoption of practices to sustain (or recreate) key characteristics of forest ecosystems appear intuitively sensible and broadly consistent with cur- rent knowledge, information is lacking to determine whether such stand- and landscape-level features of for- ests will serve as successful indices of (and help conserve) biodiversity. Given our limited knowledge of both indicator species and structure-based indicators, we advocate the following four approaches to enhance biodiversity conservation in forests: (1) establish biodiversity priority areas (e.g., reserves) managed prima- rily for the conservation of biological diversity; (2) within production forests, apply structure-based indica- tors including structural complexity, connectivity, and heterogeneity; (3) using multiple conservation strate- gies at multiple spatial scales, spread out risk in wood production forests; and (4) adopt an adaptive management approach to test the validity of structure-based indices of biological diversity by treating man- agement practices as experiments. These approaches would aim to provide new knowledge to managers and improve the effectiveness of current management strategies.

Theory suggests that species with particular traits are at greater risk of extinction than others. We assumed that a decline in abundance in forest fragments, com- pared to continuous forest, equated to an increase in extinction risk. We then tested the relationships between five traits of species and decline in abundance for 69 beetle species in an experimentally fragmented forest landscape at Mt. Wog Wog in southeastern Australia. The experiment was controlled and replicated. Monitoring ran for two years before forest fragmentation; in this paper, we examine data for five years postfragmentation. We tested five hypotheses: (1) Species that occur naturally at low abundance are more likely to decline as a result of fragmentation than are abundant species. (2) Isolated species are more likely to decline than species that are not isolated. (3) Large species are more likely to decline than small species. (4) Species in trophic groups at the top end of food chains are more likely to decline than species in trophic groups lower in the food chain. (5) Because traits are often shared by related species, populations of more closely related species will respond in the same way. We found that: (1) rare species were more likely to decline than abundant species; (2) isolated species were more likely to decline than species that were not isolated; (3) body size was not correlated with response to fragmentation; (4) among species that declined, predators declined most; and (5) taxonomically related species did not respond in the same way to fragmentation. Thus, our results confirm theories predicting that isolated, rare, or predaceous species will be lost first from fragmented landscapes.

Biodiversity conservation requires efficient methods for choosing priority areas for in situ conservation management. We compared three quantitative methods for choosing 5% (an arbitrary figure) of all the 10 × 10 km grid cells in Britain to represent the diversity of breeding birds: (1) hotspots of richness, which selects the areas richest in species; (2) hotspots of range-size rarity (narrow endemism), which selects areas richest in those species with the most restricted ranges; and (3) sets of complementary areas, which selects areas with the greatest combined species richness. Our results show that richness hotspots contained the highest number of species-in-grid-cell records (with many representations of the more widespread species), whereas the method of complementary areas obtained the lowest number. However, whereas richness hotspots included representation of 89% of British species of breeding birds, and rarity hotspots included 98%, the areas chosen using complementarity represented all the species, where possible, at least six times over. The method of complementary areas was also well suited to supplementing the existing conservation network. For example, starting with grid cells with over 50% area cover by existing “Sites of Special Scientific Interest,” we searched for a set of areas that could complete the representation of all the most threatened birds in Britain, the Red Data species. The method of complementary areas distinguishes between irreplaceable and flexible areas, which helps planners by providing alternatives for negotiation. This method can also show which particular species justify the choice of each area. Yet the complementary areas method will not be fully able to select the best areas for conservation management until we achieve integration of some of the more important factors affecting viability, threat, and cost.

We present systematic arguments for the necessity of field survey in conservation biology. Preservation of biological diversity has become a major challenge in conservation biology, but to comprehend diversity, ecologists have to obtain information on what units the ‘diversity’ of different parts of the world consists of, where these units are, and how they respond to natural and human-induced environmental change. To reach this end, systematic survey procedures need to be developed that incorporate data collecting, data analysis and conclusions about distributional patterns as well as management recommendations into an iterative process that is corrected as experience accumulates. The appropriate survey design depends on the task and needs to be fixed separately in each case; developing long-term observational systems is no less challenging a task than developing experimental systems in laboratory research, or modeling systems in theoretical research. We conclude the paper with five principles of ecological survey. A common denominator of these principles is the need to make explicit decisions at each step so that errors and insufficiency can be corrected later.

This paper responds to recent criticisms in Biological Conservation of heuristic reserve selection algorithms. These criticisms primarily concern the fact that heuristic algorithms cannot guarantee an optimal solution to the problem of representing a group of targeted natural features in a subset of the sites in a region. We discuss optimality in the context of a range of needs for conservation planning. We point out that classical integer linear programming methods that guarantee an optimal solution, like branch and bound algorithms, are currently intractable for many realistic problems. We also show that heuristics have practical advantages over classical methods and that suboptimality is not necessarily a disadvantage for many real-world applications. Further work on alternative reserve selection algorithms is certainly needed, but the necessary criteria for assessing their utility must be broader than mathematical optimality.