Mitigating climate-driven animal mass mortality events with resilient native scavenger guilds.

Climate-driven animal mass mortality events (MMEs) will increase as the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather and climate events worsens due to climate change. Besides resulting in demographic catastrophes for affected species, MMEs adds further pressure to vulnerable ecosystems in several ways. We suggest the protection and restoration of resilient native scavenging guilds are key strategies to build climate-resilient ecosystems. Incorporating this nature-based solution into biodiversity conservation policies will ensure the efficient breakdown and recycling of carcasses back into the environment, and minimise risks of disease spillover to human and wildlife. Policy makers are urged to recognise scavengers as allies in mitigating the negative impacts of climate-driven MMEs on our ecosystems.

What Is the Role of the Government in Wildlife Policy? Evolutionary Governance Perspective

With the growing populations and range of large wild mammals in Europe, wildlife governance has grown in importance and provoked social conflicts, pressuring policy-makers to provide adequate policy responses. Some countries chose decentralised approaches, while others retain traditional top-down mechanisms. However, evolutionary mechanisms behind those changes and their impact on steering have attracted relatively little attention. We investigated the evolution of the governance of three wildlife species (European bison, moose, and wolf) in Poland (1945–2020) to map their existing paths and explore external and internal factors influencing steering patterns. The results suggest that despite the persistent dominance of state-centred governance and top-down hierarchical instruments characteristic for a post-socialist country, steering involved intense and often informal communication with influential actors. A growing diversity of actors and discourses in wildlife governance increased the state’s steering options and improved conservation outcomes. Concurrently, the government’s steering shifted from concrete policy results to managing tensions and interests within the field. These transformations helped to retain the effectiveness of steering in the changing context, while retaining state-dominated governance.

The Elephant Problem: Science, Bureaucracy, and Kenya’s National Parks, 1955 to 1975

This article examines debates about how to manage elephants in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park as a jumping off point for exploring the relationships among the local, national, and global constituencies that converged in the formulation of wildlife policy in Kenya during the 1950s and 1960s. Bridging the colonial and postcolonial years, the so-called Elephant Problem in Tsavo, while leveraging different international constituencies, pitted different administrative philosophies against one another and drew out different understandings of the application of ecological sciences in national parks. The result was a paralysis of policymaking which sparked an overhaul of the wildlife departments in the 1970s.