An update on the conservation status of the Little Bustard Tetrax tetrax: global and local population estimates, trends, and threats

Summary The Little Bustard Tetrax tetrax is an iconic species and an indicator of healthy grassland and farmland ecosystems. It formerly ranged almost continuously from north-western Africa and Iberia to central Asia, encompassing France, Italy, southern Russia, and the Middle East, occupying natural grass steppes, pastured grasslands, and extensive cereal farmland. Today, two main distribution sub-ranges persist: a western one comprising the Iberian Peninsula, France, and Sardinia, and an eastern one encompassing mainly southern Russia and Kazakhstan but reaching north-western China and isolated spots in Turkey. We describe the changes that occurred across the species’ range and were documented during the last and current centuries and revise the status and trends of Little Bustard populations throughout that range. We provide the first global estimate of the world population, as well as those of the two sub-ranges, discussing the main threats and global conservation implications of these estimates. Historically abundant in Europe and northern Africa, the Little Bustard has strongly declined over the second half of the 20th century, becoming extinct in at least 15 countries. Such spectacular regression is mainly associated with land-use change and agricultural intensification. Other threats are legal hunting, poaching, and collision with powerlines. In the last two decades, the species has severely declined (c.6% yearly rate) in its traditional population stronghold, the Iberian Peninsula. Conversely, there is evidence of recent population growth in some areas of the Eastern range, but increases are unquantified and require further study. Many populations are probably small and scattered, with no reliable information on size and trends. Nevertheless, the Eastern range may now be considered the species’ stronghold with more than half the world’s population. The diverging dynamics and ecological differences between the two sub-ranges require a global conservation strategy that treats each as a different conservation unit to assure the species’ recovery.

Privately Protected Areas: Missing Pieces of the Global Conservation Puzzle

Protected areas are an essential component of global conservation efforts. Although extensive information is available on the location of protected areas governed by governments, data on privately protected areas remain elusive at the global level. These are areas governed by private individuals and groups—ranging from families to religious institutions to companies—that meet IUCN's definition of a protected area: a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values. As the world's governments prepare to adopt a new post-2020 global biodiversity framework to guide conservation over the next decade, we argue that, without complete data on privately protected areas, they do so without a vital piece of the puzzle.

Small NGOs and Agenda-Setting in Global Conservation Governance: The Case of Pangolin Conservation

The study of global environmental governance suggests that agenda-setting power is concentrated in a handful of high-profile, leading nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The recent rise of interest in pangolin conservation constitutes a deviant case in this theoretical tradition. In order to explain the puzzle, I introduce a new theory of small NGO influence and illustrate the mechanisms through the case study of pangolin conservation. Based on in-depth interviews with conservation NGOs, I show how small NGOs raised the salience of pangolin trafficking in global conservation governance by appealing to the shared values of the people who are highly interested in conservation. Moreover, the targeting of traditional Chinese medicine as the driver of pangolin extinction, while unintentionally, helped raise the salience of pangolin trafficking by leveraging the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment in the Global North. Finally, small NGOs were able to use their expertise to guide leading NGOs and state officials in rule-making processes. The findings offer a corrective to the hierarchical view of civil society, calling for more careful evaluations of small NGOs in global conservation governance.

A Review of Australian Tick Vaccine Research

Tick vaccine research in Australia has demonstrated leadership worldwide through the development of the first anti-tick vaccine in the 1990s. Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s (CSIRO) research led to the development of vaccines and/or precursors of vaccines (such as crude extracts) for both the cattle tick and the paralysis tick. CSIRO commercialised the Bm86 vaccine in the early 1990s for Rhipicephalus australis; however, issues with dosing and lack of global conservation led to the market closure of Tick-GARD in Australia. New research programs arose both locally and globally. The Australian paralysis tick Ixodes holocyclus has perplexed research veterinarians since the 1920s; however, not until the 2000s did biotechnology exist to elucidate the neurotoxin—holocyclotoxin family of toxins leading to a proof of concept vaccine cocktail. This review revisits these discoveries and describes tributes to deceased tick vaccine protagonists in Australia, including Sir Clunies Ross, Dr Bernard Stone and Dr David Kemp.

Functional Connectivity of the World's Protected Areas

Rapid environmental change threatens to isolate the world's wildlife populations and intensify biodiversity loss. Global policies have called for expanding and connecting the world's protected areas (PAs) to curtail the crisis, yet how well PA networks currently support wildlife movement, and where connectivity conservation or restoration is most critical, have never been mapped globally. Here, we map the functional connectivity (how animals move through landscapes) of the world's terrestrial PAs for the first time. Also, going beyond existing global connectivity indices, we quantify national PA-connectedness using an approach that meaningfully represents animal movement through anthropogenic landscapes. We find that reducing the human footprint may improve national PA-connectivity more than adding new PAs; however, both strategies are critical for improving and preserving connectivity in places where the predicted flow of animal movement is highly concentrated. We show that the majority of critical connectivity areas (CCAs) (defined as globally important areas of concentrated animal movements) remain unprotected. Of these, 72% overlap with previously-identified global conservation priority areas, while 3% of CCAs occur within moderate to heavily modified lands. Conservation and restoration of CCAs could safeguard connectivity of the world's PAs, and dovetail with previously identified global conservation priorities.