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The UK government is considering legislation to prohibit the importation of hunting trophies. We examine documented social, ecological, and political outcomes of two previous such bans. We find that the UK government's proposal shares the shortcomings of existing bans that have (1) failed to address, or have even amplified, key threats to hunted species, (2) imposed costs on citizens of other countries, and (3) delegitimized the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Trophy import bans are blunt policy instruments that can cause more problems than they solve.

There exists a wealth of philosophical, sociological and anthropological literature on environmental values; yet, few studies have investigated the values held by conservationists themselves, and how these shape the conservation movement. Here, we present the first global analysis of the relationships between conservationists' values and a broad range of conservationists' characteristics, categorised into their educational and professional background, geographical context and personal experiences in childhood and adulthood. We draw on survey responses from 9264 conservationists from 149 countries to conduct the broadest analysis to date of what factors are associated with the values of conservationists. Our results demonstrate that 13 characteristics of conservationists' personal and professional backgrounds are statistically related to their values regarding the place of people, science, capitalism and nonhuman entities in conservation. Of these characteristics, educational specialism and continent of nationality had the highest predictive power. We also draw on open‐text responses to uncover other factors that conservationists identify as having been important in shaping their values; travel and religion were the most commonly reported. Our findings have important implications for current debates on diversity and inclusion within the conservation community. In particular, we provide broad empirical evidence that increasing personal and professional diversity in conservation organisations is likely to also increase the range of values represented. We also discuss the implications of our results for interdisciplinarity, the management of disagreement and conflict in conservation, and the training of future generations of conservationists. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

The impacts of the COVID- pandemic extend to global biodiversity and its conservation. Although shortterm beneficial or adverse impacts on biodiversity have been widely discussed, there is less attention to the likely political and economic responses to the crisis and their implications for conservation. Here we describe four possible alternative future policy responses: () restoration of the previous economy, () removal of obstacles to economic growth, () green recovery and () transformative economic reconstruction. Each alternative offers opportunities and risks for conservation. They differ in the agents they emphasize to mobilize change (e.g. markets or states) and in the extent to which they prioritize or downplay the protection of nature. We analyse the advantages and disadvantages of these four options from a conservation perspective. We argue that the choice of post-COVID- recovery strategy has huge significance for the future of biodiversity, and that conservationists of all persuasions must not shrink from engagement in the debates to come. Biodiversity conservation, conservation futures, COVID-19, degrowth, Green New Deal, green recovery, political economy, transformative change

Conservation lacks sufficient well-trained leaders who are empowered to catalyse positive change for the natural world. Addressing this need, the University of Cambridge launched a Masters in Conservation Leadership in 2010. The degree includes several features designed to enhance its impact. Firstly, it recruits international, gender-balanced cohorts of mid-career professionals, building leadership capacity in the Global South and providing a rich environment for peer learning. Secondly, teaching includes applied leadership training in topics such as fundraising, leading people and networking, as well as interdisciplinary academic topics. Thirdly, the degree is delivered through the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, a partnership of international NGOs and networks, facilitating extensive practitioner-led and experiential learning. We present details of programme design and evaluate the impact of the Masters after 10 years, using data from course records, student and alumni perspectives, and interviews with key stakeholders. The course has broadly succeeded in its design and recruitment objectives. Self-assessed leadership capabilities, career responsibilities and the overall impact of alumni increased significantly 5 years after graduation. However, specific impacts of alumni in certain areas, such as on their professional colleagues, have been less clear. We conclude by outlining future plans for the Masters in light of growing demands on conservation leaders and the changing landscape of leadership capacity development. These include reforms to course structure and assessment, long-term support to the alumni network and developing a conservation leadership community of practice.

Wildlife conservation and research benefits enormously from automated and interconnected monitoring tools. Some of these tools, such as drones, remote cameras, and social media, can collect data on humans, either accidentally or deliberately. They can therefore be thought of as conservation surveillance technologies (CSTs). There is increasing evidence that CSTs, and the data they yield, can have both positive and negative impacts on people, raising ethical questions about how to use them responsibly. CST use may accelerate because of the COVID-19 pandemic, adding urgency to addressing these ethical challenges. We propose a provisional set of principles for the responsible use of such tools and their data: (a) recognize and acknowledge CSTs can have social impacts; (b) deploy CSTs based on necessity and proportionality relative to the conservation problem; (c) evaluate all potential impacts of CSTs on people; (d) engage with and seek consent from people who may be observed and/or affected by CSTs; (e) build transparency and accountability into CST use; (f) respect peoples' rights and vulnerabilities; and (g) protect data in order to safeguard privacy. These principles require testing and could conceivably benefit conservation efforts, especially through inclusion of people likely to be affected by CSTs.

Reducing meat and fish consumption in wealthier countries would help mitigate climate change, raising the question of the most effective ways to achieve this. Price influences the food people buy, but to our knowledge no published field study has assessed the impact on sales of experimentally altering the price of meat and vegetarian meal options. We ran an experiment across 106 mealtimes with 13,840 meal selections at a college cafeteria in the University of Cambridge (UK), introducing a small change to the price of vegetarian meals (decreased by 20p from £2.05 to £1.85) and meat meals (increased by 20p from £2.52 to £2.72). Total meal sales did not differ significantly before and after the price change. When controlling for other variables, changing price significantly increased the proportion of vegetarian sales by 3.2 percentage points (p = 0.036). However, there was no significant change in meat sales before and after the price change, although fish sales did decline by 2.8 percentage points (p = 0.010). When analysed by individual diners’ pre-experimental meal choices (N = 325), the price intervention significantly affected only the quartile of diners with the highest prior rates of vegetarian and vegan meal selection (“MostVeg” quartile), who increased their vegetarian meal selection by 13.7 percentage points (p = 0.011). Students mainly pay for meals on their university cards and rarely pay with cash, which may lessen the impact of a price intervention in this context. Our results suggest price changes may be one lever for increasing vegetarian meal consumption. Further field studies are needed to test different price changes, and in non-university populations.

If global leaders fail to resolve the root causes of biodiversity loss and climate change—such as our obsession with economic growth (Otero et al , 2020)—they will be left firefighting the manifestations of these crises for decades to come Illustrating a collective leadership approach, the University of Cambridge Conservation Leadership Alumni Network is an emerging global network of interdisciplinary conservation leaders across 75 countries working towards the delivery of high-impact initiatives (Corresponding author) E-mail cgs21@cam ac uk * Contributed equally Supplementary material containing details of the University of Cambridge Conservation Alumni Network who are signatories to this call for collective crisis leadership, and a Spanish translation of the Editorial, is available at doi org/10 1017/S0030605320000496

Biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate, making the conservation movement of critical importance for life on Earth. However, recent debates over the future of conservation have been polarized, acrimonious and dominated by an unrepresentative demographic group. The views of the wider global conservation community on fundamental questions regarding what, why and how to conserve are unknown. Here we characterize the views of 9,264 conservationists from 149 countries, identifying specific areas of consensus and disagreement, and three independent dimensions of conservation thinking. The first two dimensions (people-centred conservation and science-led ecocentrism) have widespread support, whereas conservation through capitalism is more contentious. While conservationists’ views on these three dimensions do not fall into distinct clusters, there are clear relationships between dimension scores and respondents’ gender, age, educational background, career stage and continent of nationality. Future debates and policy processes should focus on the most contentious issues, and do more to include the perspectives of under-represented groups in conservation who may not share the views of those in more powerful positions. While regional and planetary biodiversity is suffering from numerous crises, conservation movements have struggled with how to respond. At this inflection point for conservation, over 9,000 conservationists are surveyed to analyse their views and how these are predicted by their characteristics.

© 2019 The Authors. Methods in Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society The Special Feature led by Sutherland, Dicks, Everard, and Geneletti (Methods Ecology and Evolution, 9, 7–9, 2018) sought to highlight the importance of “qualitative methods” for conservation. The intention is welcome, and the collection makes many important contributions. Yet, the articles presented a limited perspective on the field, with a focus on objectivist and instrumental methods, omitting discussion of some broader philosophical and methodological considerations crucial to social science research. Consequently, the Special Feature risks narrowing the scope of social science research and, potentially, reducing its quality and usefulness. In this article, we seek to build on the strengths of the articles of the Special Feature by drawing in a discussion on social science research philosophy, methodology, and methods. We start with a brief discussion on the value of thinking about data as being qualitative (i.e., text, image, or numeric) or quantitative (i.e., numeric), not methods or research. Thinking about methods as qualitative can obscure many important aspects of research design by implying that “qualitative methods” somehow embody a particular set of assumptions or principles. Researchers can bring similar, or very different, sets of assumptions to their research design, irrespective of whether they collect qualitative or quantitative data. We clarify broad concepts, including philosophy, methodology, and methods, explaining their role in social science research design. Doing so provides us with an opportunity to examine some of the terms used across the articles of the Special Feature (e.g., bias), revealing that they are used in ways that could be interpreted as being inconsistent with their use in a number of applications of social science. We provide worked examples of how social science research can be designed to collect qualitative data that not only understands decision-making processes, but also the unique social–ecological contexts in which it takes place. These examples demonstrate the importance of coherence between philosophy, methodology, and methods in research design, and the importance of reflexivity throughout the research process. We conclude with encouragement for conservation social scientists to explore a wider range of qualitative research approaches, providing guidance for the selection and application of social science methods for ecology and conservation.

In light of continuing global biodiversity loss, one ambitious proposal has gained considerable traction amongst conservationists: the goal to protect half the Earth. Our analysis suggests that at least one billion people live in places that would be protected if the Half Earth proposal were implemented within all ecoregions. Taking into account the social and economic impacts of such proposals is central to addressing social and environmental justice concerns, and assessing their acceptability and feasibility. Recently, ecologists have begun discussing an idea for setting aside half of the Earth for conservation purposes. This study provides some of the first analysis of the impacts of doing so on society, based on assumptions about ecoregions and human footprint.