Elizabeth L. Bennett

• PhD
• Vice President at Wildlife Conservation Society

The Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), signed in 2022 by Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, recognized the importance of area-based conservation, and its goals and targets specify the characteristics of protected and conserved areas (PCAs) that disproportionately contribute to biodiversity conservation. To achieve the GBF’s target...

Several hundred species are hunted for wild meat in the tropics, supporting the diets, customs, and livelihoods of millions of people. However, unsustainable hunting is one of the most urgent threats to wildlife and ecosystems worldwide and has serious ramifications for people whose subsistence and income are tied to wild meat. Over the past 18 yea...

Loss of large-bodied wildlife, typically from hunting, degrades the ecological processes in tropical forests that sequester and store carbon. Carbon-based markets that incentivize wildlife conservation can generate revenues to support necessary forest and hunting management.

The world’s biodiversity is in crisis. Synthetic biology has the potential to transform biodiversity conservation, both directly and indirectly, in ways that are negative and positive. However, applying these biotechnology tools to environmental questions is fraught with uncertainty and could harm cultures, rights, livelihoods and nature. Decisions...

In 2021, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) introduced a novel method for assessing species recovery and conservation impact: the IUCN Green Status of Species. The Green Status standardizes recovery using a metric called the Green Score, which ranges from 0% to 100%. This study focuses on one crucial step in the Green Status...

Several hundred species are hunted for wild meat in the tropics, supporting the diets, customs, and livelihoods of millions of people. However, unsustainable hunting is one of the most urgent threats to wildlife and ecosystems worldwide and has serious ramifications for people whose subsistence and income are tied to wild meat. Over the past 18 yea...

Several hundred species are hunted for wild meat in the tropics, supporting the diets, customs, and livelihoods of millions of people. However, unsustainable hunting is one of the most urgent threats to wildlife and ecosystems worldwide and has serious ramifications for people whose subsistence and income are tied to wild meat. Over the past 18 yea...

Recognizing the imperative to evaluate species recovery and conservation impact, in 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for development of a “Green List of Species” (now the IUCN Green Status of Species). A draft Green Status framework for assessing species’ progress toward recovery, published in 2018, proposed 2 s...

Recognizing the imperative to evaluate species recovery and conservation impact, in 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for development of a "Green List of Species" (now the IUCN Green Status of Species). A draft Green Status framework for assessing species' progress toward recovery, published in 2018, proposed 2 s...

Recognizing the imperative to evaluate species recovery and conservation impact, in 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for development of a "Green List of Species" (now the IUCN Green Status of Species). A draft Green Status framework for assessing species' progress toward recovery, published in 2018, proposed 2 s...

Recognizing the imperative to evaluate species recovery and conservation impact, in 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for development of a “Green List of Species” (now the IUCN Green Status of Species). A draft Green Status framework for assessing species’ progress toward recovery, published in 2018, proposed 2 s...

Recognizing the imperative to evaluate species recovery and conservation impact, in 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for development of a "Green List of Species" (now the IUCN Green Status of Species). A draft Green Status framework for assessing species' progress toward recovery, published in 2018, proposed 2 s...

The Convention on Biological Diversity’s post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will probably include a goal to stabilize and restore the status of species. Its delivery would be facilitated by making the actions required to halt and reverse species loss spatially explicit. Here, we develop a species threat abatement and restoration (STAR) metric...

Some conservation prioritization methods are based on the assumption that conservation needs overwhelm current resources and not all species can be conserved; therefore, a conservation triage scheme (i.e., when the system is overwhelmed, species should be divided into three groups based on likelihood of survival, and efforts should be focused on th...

International commercial trade in wildlife, whether legal or illegal, is one of the greatest threats to multiple species of wildlife today. Opinions on how to address it are deeply divided across the conservation community. Approaches fall into two broad categories: making the trade illegal to protect against any form of commercial trade or allowin...

Historical data are a valuable resource for addressing present-day conservation issues, for example by informing the establishment of appropriate recovery targets. However, while the recovery of threatened species is the end goal of many conservation programmes, data made available through the efforts of palaeoecologists and historical ecologists a...

A controversy at the 2016 IUCN World Conservation Congress on the topic of closing domestic ivory markets (the 007, or so-called James Bond, motion) has given rise to a debate on IUCN's value proposition. A cross-section of authors who are engaged in IUCN but not employed by the organization, and with diverse perspectives and opinions, here argue f...

Bearded pigs, predation of long-tiled macaque, Sarawak

Exploiting the Wilderness: An Analysis of Wildlife Crime by Greg L. Warchol (2017), xvi + 188 pp., Temple University Press, Philadelphia, USA. ISBN 9781439913673 (pbk), USD 28.95; ISBN 9781439913666 (hbk), USD 92.50. - Volume 52 Issue 3 - Elizabeth L. Bennett

Stopping declines in biodiversity is critically important, but it is only a first step toward achieving more ambitious conservation goals. The absence of an objective and practical definition of species recovery that is applicable across taxonomic groups leads to inconsistent targets in recovery plans and frustrates reporting and maximization of co...

In our recent perspective article, we noted that most (approximately 0 percent) terrestrial large carnivore and large herbivore species are now threatened with extinction, and we offered a 13-point declaration designed to promote and guide actions to save these iconic mammalian megafauna (Ripple et al. 2016). Some may worry that a focus on saving m...

Evidence indicates that, despite some critical successes, current conservation approaches are not slowing the overall rate of biodiversity loss. The field of synthetic biology, which is capable of altering natural genomes with extremely precise editing, might offer the potential to resolve some intractable conservation problems (e.g., invasive spec...

From the late Pleistocene to the Holocene and now the so-called Anthropocene, humans have been driving an ongoing series of species declines and extinctions (Dirzo et al. 2014). Large-bodied mammals are typically at a higher risk of extinction than smaller ones (Cardillo et al. 2005). However, in some circumstances, terrestrial megafauna population...

Illegal hunting of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) for ivory is causing rapid declines in their populations. Since 2007, illegal ivory trade has more than doubled. African elephants are facing the most serious conservation crisis since 1989, when international trade was banned. One solution proposed is establishment of a controlled legal tra...

Global species loss during the present human-caused mass-extinction far exceeds background rates and is detrimental to human existence. Across the globe, vertebrate extinction risks are highest in South-east Asia. This region has among the world’s fastest recent habitat-loss rates. More of a determinant to the conservation status of many vertebrate...

Military personnel and affiliates have significant buying power that can influence demand for wildlife products. Purchase and transport of certain wildlife products violates United States laws, military regulations, and national country laws where the items were purchased. We surveyed military bazaars (n = 4) in Kabul, Afghanistan from June 2007 to...

In spite of significant recent advances in understanding how to conserve species we are failing to conserve some of the most beloved and charismatic, with severe population losses, shrinking ranges and extinctions of subspecies. The primary reason is hunting for illegal trade of highly valuable body parts, increasingly operated by sophisticated org...

Tropical forests are among the most species-rich ecosystems on the planet. Some authors argue that predictions of a tropical forest extinction crisis based on analyses of deforestation rates are overly pessimistic since they do not take account of future agricultural abandonment as a result of rural-urban migration and subsequent secondary regrowth...

The conservation of species is one of the foundations of conservation biology. Successful species conservation has often been defined as simply the avoidance of extinction. We argue that this focus, although important, amounts to practicing conservation at the “emergency room door,” and will never be a sufficient approach to conserving species. Ins...

Definition of source sites. (0.08 MB DOC)

Estimating financial costs for effective protection and monitoring at source sites, and present expenditures. (0.06 MB DOC)

Source sites listed by country. (0.07 MB XLS)

Madhu Rao and Joshua Ginsberg explore the implementation of conservation science in this chapter. Integrating the inputs of decision-makers and local people into scientifically rigorous conservation planning is a critically important aspect of effective conservation implementation. Protected areas represent an essential component of approaches desi...

Ce document porte sur la chasse aux animaux sauvages dans les forêts tropicales à des fins d’alimentation (portant aussi le nom de «viande de brousse», «viande sauvage» et/ou «viande de gibier sauvage». Il a été préparé pour le Secrétariat de la Convention sur la diversité biologique sous la coordination du CIFOR, en collaboration avec le Groupe de...

A comparative floristic survey of lowland tropical rain forest at Kuala Lompat, Krau Game Reserve, West Malaysia and at Sepilok Virgin Jungle Reserve, Sabah, East Malaysia, revealed significant differences in the composition of canopy species, notably in the relative paucity of Dipterocarpaceae and abundance of Leguminosae at Kuala Lompat. A furthe...

IntroductionConsumption of Wildlife in AsiaEffects of Large-Scale Urban TradeImplications for ManagementConclusions Acknowledgements

Introduction Considerable research has been conducted on the causes of wildlife decline in the Malaysian State of Sarawak on the island of Borneo (e.g. Dewan Undangan Negeri 1985; Caldecott 1988; Bennett 1992; Meredith 1993; Bennett & Dahaban 1995; Dahaban 1996; Bennett et al. 2000). These studies documented the decline of many species, and the imp...

Wildlife managers require status and distribution information for informed decisions. Recognizing the tiger's globally threatened status and potential as an umbrella species for protection of forested landscapes, camera trap surveys for tigers and other large mammals have been conducted since 1997 in Peninsular Malaysia with the aim of assessing th...

Unregulated hunting for the bushmeat market is posing excessive pressures on wildlife. Taxation of the bushmeat trade has been proposed as one of the effective regulatory means. This paper reviews the conservation risks and the economic and administrative feasibility of legalizing the commercial trade in bushmeat, using empirical data on bushmeat c...

The global trade in wildlife provides disease transmission mechanisms that not only cause human disease outbreaks but also threaten livestock, international trade, rural livelihoods, native wildlife populations, and the health of ecosystems. Outbreaks resulting from wildlife trade have caused hundreds of billions of dollars of economic damage globa...

Unsustainable hunting of wildlife or bushmeat for human consumption across the tropics threatens both wildlife populations and the livelihoods of people who depend on these resources. The probability that hunting can be sustainable depends in part on ecological conditions that affect the ‘supply’ of and ‘demand’ for wildlife resources. In this stud...

Massive overhunting of wildlife for meat across the humid tropics is now causing local extinctions of numerous species. Rural people often rely heavily on wild meat, but, in many areas, this important source of food and income is either already lost or is being rapidly depleted. The problem can only be tackled by looking at the wider economic and i...

Editor's note: This Conservation Forum begins with a reprinted editorial by Elizabeth Bennett from the August 2000 issue of Conservation Biology. Several papers were submitted in repsonse to that piece, and it is reprinted here to start this forum.

Commercial logging, by opening up remote tropical forest areas, stimulating a commercial trade, and bringing in people from other areas, has hugely increased the harvest of wildlife. This loss of wildlife threatens the ability of forest-dwelling people to feed themselves, the survival of harvested species, and the sustainability of tropical forestr...

Helmeted Buceros vigil and rhinoceros B. rhinoceros hornbills are large, conspicuous birds in the forests of northern Borneo. Both are of enormous importance in local culture, being the subject of legends, ceremonies and beliefs. Tail feathers of both species are used in traditional costumes and dancing. Both are also hunted for their meat. Changes...

The effects of selective timber extraction on wildlife communities were studied in detail in a mixed hill dipterocarp forest of the Kapit Division, Sarawak. The main study area was systematically surveyed for one year before it was logged and for another year immediately after logging. This paper highlights the changes in diversity and density of m...

Many arguments have been presented to justify the conservation of tropical forests. In the case of mangrove forests, their preservation can be argued using economic and employment grounds alone. A case study of the Sarawak Mangroves Forest Reserve, Malaysia is presented. Here, the mangroves support marine fisheries worth US21.1 million p.a. and up...

The occurrence of twins in arboreal Old World monkeys and apes is extremely rare. A wild adult femalePresbytis melalophos, however, gave birth to female twins. This stimulated many patterns of behaviour which were rare or absent when single infants were born. Allomothering increased greatly and maltreatment of twins by allomothers was common, even...

Data are presented from a 16-month study of proboscis monkeys in an area of mixed coastal forest in Sarawak. The population density, social organization, and feeding and ranging behavior are described in detail. Results are compared with those from other primates in an attempt to understand why females of certain species (including proboscis monkey...

The diets of the banded leaf monkey (Presbytis melalophos) at Kuala Lompat in the Krau Game Reserve of West Malaysia and the red leaf monkey (Presbytis rubicunda) in Sepilok Virgin Jungle Reserve, Sabah, East Malaysia have been examined in relation to plant chemistry. Both monkeys spent about half their time eating foliage, and about half their tim...

Proboscis monkeys, endemic to the island of Borneo, are declining in Sarawak. Their mangrove and peat swamp forest habitats are being degraded or destroyed and people continue to hunt them despite their protected status. Surveys between 1984 and 1986 established the status of this monkey and its habitats in this Malaysian state. The author who part...

Data are presented from a long-term study of banded langurs in three contrasting rain forest habitats in Peninsular Malaysia. Results from different sites and months are used to correlate ranging patterns with food availability and other environmental variables. Day range lengths are correlated with availability of preferred foods; the degree of te...

1. The acute resting oxygen consumption rates of 27C-acclimated juvenileNatrix natrix helvetica (cool temperate) and juvenileN. maura (warm temperate) were measured at 5, 10, 15, 20 and 27C. The rate-temperature (R-T) curves derived from these measurements differ markedly with respect to both form and position. Differences are also apparent between...

The reality of metabolic cold adaptation in ectotherms is disputed. Reptiles differ in many important aspects of their thermal ecology from aquatic ectotherms, and their thermophysiology is therefore difficult to analyze in conventional terms. Evidence is presented in support of the view that both phenotypic metabolic cold acclimation and genotypic...