Erik Meijaard

Borneo Futures, Brunei · Affiliated with the University of Queensland and Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology Univ. of Kent. IUCN Oil Crops Task Force

Much concern about tropical deforestation focuses on oil palm plantations, but their impacts remain poorly quantified. Using satellites, we estimated annual expansion of large-scale (industrial) and smallholder oil palm plantations and their overlap with forest loss from 2001 to 2019 in Indonesia, the world’s largest palm oil producer. Over ninetee...

Vegetable oil crops cover over half of global agricultural land and have varying environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Demand for coconut oil is expected to rise, but the global distribution of coconut is understudied, which hinders the discussion of its impacts. Here, we present the first 20-meter global coconut layer, produced using deep learn...

Non-human great apes – chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, and orangutans – are threatened by agricultural expansion particularly from rice, cacao, cassava, maize, and oil palm cultivation. Agriculture replaces and fragments great ape habitats, bringing them closer to humans and often resulting in conflict. Though the impact of agriculture on great ape...

Oil palm ( Elaeis guinensis ) is a controversial crop. To assess its sustainability, we analysed the contribution of different types of plantations (smallholder, industrial and unproductive) towards meeting six Sustainable Development Goals. Using spatial econometric methods and data from 25,067 villages in Sumatra, Indonesia, we revealed that unpr...

Despite decades of conservation management, many orangutan populations are on the brink of extinction. This is primarily due to habitat loss and direct killings. A study from 2008/2009 suggested that killing was impacting orangutan populations at a rate sufficient to cause local extinctions. As an illegal and taboo behavior that is difficult to mea...

Non-human great apes-chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, and orangutans-are threatened by agricultural expansion, particularly from rice, cacao, cassava, maize, and oil palm cultivation. Agriculture replaces and fragments great ape habitats, bringing them closer to humans and often resulting in conflict. Though the impact of agriculture on great apes i...

The global decline of terrestrial species is largely due to the degradation, loss and fragmentation of their habitats. The conversion of natural ecosystems for cropland, rangeland, forest products and human infrastructure are the primary causes of habitat deterioration. Due to the paucity of data on the past distribution of species and the scarcity...

The global decline of terrestrial species is largely due to the degradation, loss and fragmentation of their habitats. The conversion of natural ecosystems for cropland, rangeland, forest products and human infrastructure are the primary causes of habitat deterioration. Due to the paucity of data on the past distribution of species and the scarcity...

Forty years of deforestation and logging have degraded and fragmented much of Borneo’s lowland forest. This poses a threat to the island’s unique biodiversity, which can be exacerbated by hunting and killing. Although orangutans sometimes persist in small forest patches, it is unclear if such highly fragmented habitats can sustain viable population...

The global production and consumption of vegetable oils have sparked several discussions on sustainable development. This study analyzes over 20 million tweets related to vegetable oils to explore the key factors shaping public opinion. We found that coconut, olive, and palm oils dominate social media discourse despite their lower contribution to o...

The biodiversity of our planet is under threat, with approximately one million species expected to become extinct within decades. The reason: negative human actions, which include hunting, overfishing, pollution, and the conversion of land for urbanisation and agricultural purposes. Despite significant investment from charities and governments for...

Social media are being used increasingly by the science community to share research output with a wide audience and to seek feedback. They are also used as alternatives to the traditional citation-based assessment of the impacts of scientific products and even to inform employment decisions in academia. One of these media platforms, ResearchGate, i...

Sustainable nutrition represents a formidable challenge for providing people with healthy, nutritious and affordable food, while reducing waste and impacts on the environment. Acknowledging the complexity and multi-dimensional nature of the food system, this article addresses the main issues related to sustainability in nutrition, existing scientif...

The biodiversity of our planet is under threat, with approximately one million species expected to become extinct within decades. The reason; negative human actions, which include hunting, overfishing, pollution, and the conversion of land for urbanisation and agricultural purposes. Despite significant investment from charities and governments for...

Between April 2008 and September 2009, we interviewed 6983 respondents in 687 villages to obtain socio-economic information, assess knowledge of local wildlife in general and orangutan encounters specifically, and to query respondents about their knowledge on orangutan conflicts and killing, and relevant laws. This survey revealed estimated killing...

Translation of English article available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109744. Abstrak: Perburuan liar dan perdagangan ilegal mengancam kelangsungan hidup banyak spesies langka. Kami menilai pola spatiotemporal dalam pembunuhan ilegal, pencederaan, penangkapan, kepemilikan, dan penjualan orangutan, serta upaya penegakan hukum, dan interv...

Wildlife poaching and illegal trade threaten the survival of many rare species. We assessed spatiotemporal patterns in illegal killing, injury, capture, possession, and sale of orangutans, as well as law enforcement efforts, and conservation interventions affecting Critically Endangered orangutans in Indonesia from 2007 to 2019 using data collected...

Wallacea—the meeting point between the Asian and Australian fauna—is one of the world's largest centers of endemism. Twenty-three million years of complex geological history have given rise to a living laboratory for the study of evolution and biodiversity, highly vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures. In the present article, we review the historic...

Various global-scale proposals exist to reduce the loss of biological diversity. These include the Half-Earth and Whole-Earth visions that respectively seek to set aside half the planet for wildlife conservation or to diversify conservation practices fundamentally and change the economic systems that determine environmental harm. Here we assess the...

Deforestation exacerbates climate change through greenhouse gas emissions, but other climatic alterations linked to the local biophysical changes remain poorly understood. Here, we assess the impact of tropical deforestation on fire weather risk – that is the climate conditions conducive to wildfires – using high-resolution convection-permitting cl...

Assessing where wildlife populations are at risk from future habitat loss is particularly important for land-use planning and avoiding biodiversity declines. Combining projections of future deforestation with species density information provides an improved way to anticipate such declines. Using the critically endangered Bornean orangutan (Pongo py...

Research in the field of sustainable and healthy nutrition is calling for the application of the latest advances in seemingly unrelated domains such as complex systems and network sciences on the one hand and big data and artificial intelligence on the other. This is because the confluence of these fields, whose methodologies have experienced explo...

Dietary fats are essential ingredients of a healthy diet. Their production, however, impacts the environment and its capacity to sustain us. Growing knowledge across multiple disciplines improves our understanding of links between food, health and sustainability, but increases apparent complexity. Whereas past dietary guidelines placed limits on to...

Much concern about tropical deforestation focuses on oil palm plantations, but their impacts remain poorly quantified. Using nation-wide interpretation of satellite imagery, and sample-based error calibration, we estimated the impact of large-scale (industrial) and smallholder oil palm plantations on natural old-growth (“primary”) forests from 2001...

Conservation strategies are rarely systematically evaluated, which reduces transparency, hinders the cost-effective deployment of resources, and hides what works best in different contexts. Using data on the iconic and critically endangered orangutan (Pongo spp.), we developed a novel spatiotemporal framework for evaluating conservation investments...

Aim: Comprehensive, global information on species' occurrences is an essential biodiversity variable and central to a range of applications in ecology, evolution, biogeography and conservation. Expert range maps often represent a species' only available distributional information and play an increasing role in conservation assessments and macroeco...

A native from western Africa, oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is among the more extensively planted tropical plants. It produces more oil per unit area than any other vegetable oil crop. This oil is also cheap compared to alternatives. Widespread planting has been at the expense of other tropical vegetation, notably including species-rich tropical rai...

Critically Endangered orangutans are translocated in several situations: reintroduced into historic range where no wild populations exist, released to reinforce existing wild populations, and wild-to-wild translocated to remove individuals from potentially risky situations. Translocated orangutans exposed to human diseases, including Coronavirus Di...

Context Agricultural expansion is a leading cause of deforestation and habitat fragmentation globally. Policies that support biodiversity and facilitate species movement across farmland are therefore central to sustainability efforts and wildlife conservation in these human-modified landscapes. Objectives We investigated the conservation impact of...

The rich forests of Indonesian New Guinea are understudied and threatened. We used satellite data to examine annual forest loss, road development and plantation expansion from 2001 to 2019, then developed a model to predict future deforestation. No previous studies have attempted such a detailed assessment of past and future deforestation. In 2019,...

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...

Assessing where wildlife populations are at risk from future habitat loss is particularly important for land-use planning and avoiding biodiversity declines. Combining projections of future deforestation with species density information provides an improved way to anticipate such declines. Using the endemic and critically endangered Bornean orangut...

Article impact statement: : Conservationists, mindful of perils of procrastination, should not wait for in situ actions to fail before considering ex situ solutions.

Oil seed crops, especially oil palm, are among the most rapidly expanding agricultural land uses, and their expansion is known to cause significant environmental damage. Accordingly, these crops often feature in public and policy debates which are hampered or biased by a lack of accurate information on environmental impacts. In particular, the lack...

The rich forests of Indonesian New Guinea are threatened. We used satellite data to examine annual forest loss, road development and plantation expansion from 2001 to 2019, then developed a model to predict future deforestation in this understudied region. In 2019, 34.29 million hectares (Mha), or 83% of Indonesian New Guinea, supported old-growth...

Historically, orangutans ( Pongo spp.) lived in large contiguous areas of intact rainforest. Today, they are also found in highly modified and fragmented landscapes dominated by oil palm or industrial timber plantations; a situation that calls for new conservation approaches. Here we report signs of orangutan presence in more than 120 small forest...

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil has emerged as the leading sustainability certification system to tackle socioenvironmental issues associated with the oil palm industry. However, the effectiveness of certification by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil in achieving its socioeconomic objectives remains uncertain. We evaluate the impact of...

The Tapanuli Orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) is the most threatened great ape species in the world. It is restricted to an area of about 1,000 km 2 of upland forest where fewer than 800 animals survive in three declining subpopulations. Through a historical ecology approach involving analysis of newspaper, journals, books and museum records from th...

The Tapanuli Orangutan ( Pongo tapanuliensis ) is the most threatened great ape species in the world. It is restricted to an area of about 1,000 km ² of upland forest where fewer than 800 animals survive in three declining subpopulations. Through a historical ecology approach involving analysis of newspaper, journals, books and museum records from...

Using data on the iconic orangutan (Pongo spp.), we developed a novel spatiotemporal framework for evaluating conservation investments. We show that around USD 1 billion was invested between 1999 and 2019 into orangutan conservation by governments, non-governmental organizations, companies and communities. Broken down by allocation to different con...

A native from western Africa, oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is among the more extensively planted tropical plants. It produces more oil per unit area than any other vegetable oil crop. This oil is also cheap compared to alternatives. Widespread planting has been at the expense of other tropical vegetation, notably including species-rich tropical rai...

The spread of the most recent African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreak in Asia since late 2018 poses a significant threat to endemic pig species and socioeconomic security. Within domestic pigs and free‐living Eurasian wild boars (both Sus scrofa) in Asia, ASF causes almost 100% case fatality. The ongoing ASF epidemic has so far caused the death of over...

Delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires balancing demands on land between agriculture (SDG 2) and biodiversity (SDG 15). The production of vegetable oils and, in particular, palm oil, illustrates these competing demands and trade-offs. Palm oil accounts for ~40% of the current global annual demand for vegetable oil as food, ani...

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Aichi Target 12 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) contains the aim to ‘prevent extinctions of known threatened species’. To measure the degree to which this was achieved, we used expert elicitation to estimate the number of bird and mammal species whose extinctions were prevented by conservation action in 1993–2020 (the lifetime of th...

Governance of the environment and natural resources involves interests of multiple stakeholders at different scales. In community-based forest management, organisations outside of communities play important roles in achieving multiple social and ecological objectives. How and when these organisations play a role in the community-based forest manage...

Participatory approaches to forest management have been promoted as a means of returning rights historically removed, and as a way of managing natural resources sustainably, fairly, and to improve livelihoods in communities. Top-down models of community-based forest management take the perspective that if people feel ownership over, have a voice in...

Threats to biodiversity are well documented. However, to effectively conserve species and their habitats, we need to know which conservation interventions do (or do not) work. Evidence-based conservation evaluates interventions within a scientific framework. The Conservation Evidence project has summarized thousands of studies testing conservation...

Oil seed crops, especially oil palm, are among the most rapidly expanding agricultural land uses, and their expansion is known to cause significant environmental damage. Accordingly, these crops often feature in public and policy debates, which are hampered or biased by a lack of accurate information on environmental impacts. In particular, the lac...

The Tapanuli orangutan ( Pongo tapanuliensis ) is the most threatened great ape species in the world. It is restricted to an area of about 1,000 km 2 of mostly hill forest where fewer than 800 animals survive in three declining subpopulations. Through a historical ecology approach involving analysis of colonial-era and other literature, we demonstr...

The endemic Bornean tufted ground squirrel, Rheithrosciurus macrotis , has attracted great interest among biologists and the public recently. Nevertheless, we lack information on the most basic aspects of its biology. Here we present the first empirical data on the feeding ecology of tufted ground squirrels, and use data from 81 sympatric mammalian...

Both deforestation and El Niño events influence Borneo’s climate, but their interaction is not well understood. Borneo’s native forest cover decreased by 37.1% between 1980 and 2015 with large areas being replaced by oil palm and a mosaic of plantations and regrowth vegetation. The island is also affected by El Niño events, resulting in severe drou...

The increasing extent and frequency of fires globally requires nuanced understanding of the drivers of large-scale events for improved prevention and mitigation. Yet, the drivers of fires are often poorly understood by various stakeholders in spatially expansive and temporally dynamic landscapes. Further, perceptions about the main cause of fires v...

Both deforestation and El Niño events influence Borneo's climate, but their interaction is not well understood. Borneo's native forest cover decreased by 37.1% between 1980 and 2015 with large areas being replaced by oil palm and a mosaic of plantations and regrowth vegetation. The island is also affected by El Niño events, resulting in severe drou...