Kent Redford

Archipelago Consulting

The exponential increase in the availability of genomic data, derived from sequencing thousands of loci or whole genomes, provides exciting new insights into the diversity of life. However, it can also challenge established species concepts and existing management regimes derived from these concepts. Genomic data can help inform decisions about how...

Animals in captive and urban environments encounter evolutionarily novel conditions shaped by humans, such as altered diets, exposure to human-associated bacteria, and, potentially, medical interventions. Captive and urban environments have been demonstrated to affect gut microbial composition and diversity independently but have not yet been studi...

The draft Global Biodiversity Framework proposes to increase protected areas and OECMs to at least 30 per cent of land and ocean by 2030 (30x30). Such areas are central to conservation, but only if effectively managed and equitably governed. In practice, governments often recognise areas that do not achieve successful outcomes or respect human righ...

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...

Niniejsze Wytyczne poswiecone sa tworzeniu obszarów chronionych prywatnie (OChP) oraz zarzadzaniu nimi. Ich adresatami sa praktycy i decydenci, którzy zajmuja sie lub beda zajmowac sie takimi obszarami. OChP to według defi nicji IUCN obszar chroniony podlegajacy nadzorowi prywatnemu. Moze to byc nadzór sprawowany przez pojedyncze osoby lub grupy os...

One Health is a cross‐sectoral and transdisciplinary approach that emphasizes the fundamental ways in which the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, fungi, plants, microbes, and natural and built ecosystems are interdependent. One Health approaches recognize the links between human health and a range of environmental concerns including biod...

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 institu...

The time is ripe for the global conservation community to initiate a formal evaluation of regulatory approaches for assisted colonization, along with regulatory guidance on its implementation. Ecological and social vetting and risk assessment in potential assisted- colonization projects are already likely to slow the process. Appropriate screening...

Nature almost everywhere survives on human terms. The distinction between what is natural and what is human-made, which has informed conservation for centuries, has become blurred. When scientists can reshape genes more or less at will, what does it mean to conserve nature? The tools of synthetic biology are changing the way we answer that question...

本ガイドラインは民間保護地域（または PPA）の計画立案や管理 について言及している。IUCN が定義する民間保護地域（すなわち、 自然および関連する生態系サービス、文化的価値の長期的な保護 を成し遂げるために、法令その他有効な方法を以て認められ、特 定の目的のために用いられる、管理された明確に境界が定められ た地理的な空間である）は民間のガバナンスによって統治されて いる保護地域である。これには個人や個人の集団、NGO、事業会 社や複数の PPA の管理を目的として設立された小規模の会社など を含む企業、エコツーリズム会社などの営利目的の所有者、大学 や野外観測所などの研究機関、あるいは宗教団体などが含まれる。 全ての民間による保全の取り組みが保護地域の定義を満たしてい るわけではなく、ま...

Summary Negotiations in advance of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) (1) in October 2021 will set the course of international conservation for the next several decades, providing a critical opportunity to harmonize policy and set priorities for species conservation and climate change a...

Article impact statement: Synthetic biology is being used to edit genomes of wild species for agriculture and human health. Conservation science must get involved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

The northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is functionally extinct with only two females left alive. However, cryopreserved material from a number of individuals represents the potential to produce additional individuals using advanced reproductive and genetic rescue technologies and perhaps eventually a population to return to their na...

Les présentes lignes directrices abordent la création et la gestion des aires protégées à gouvernance privée (APP). Elles sont destinées aux professionnels et décideurs impliqués dans le domaine APP. Une APP est une aire protégée, telle que définie par l’UICN, sous gouvernance privée. Les APP peuvent être gérées pas un d’individu ou un groupe d’ind...

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a dramatic impact on the global community; on people's lives and health, livelihoods, economies, and behaviours. Most zoonotic disease pandemics, including COVID-19, arise from the unsustainable exploitation of nature. This special editorial provides a snapshot of how protected and conserved areas around the world ar...

Invasive species, both plants and animals, are a long-standing threat to the National Parks of the United States. For nearly two decades the National Park Service has implemented a service-wide invasive plant management program without a commensurate program focusing on invasive animals. While individual park units are struggling to sufficiently ad...

Achieving nature conservation goals require grappling with ‘wicked’ problems. These intractable problems arise from the complexity and dynamism of the social–ecological systems in which they are embedded. To enhance their ability to address these problems, conservation professionals are increasingly looking to the transdisciplines of systems thinki...

Estas directrices abordan la planificación y la gestión de áreas bajo protección privada (APP). De acuerdo con la UICN, un área bajo protección privada (es decir, un espacio geográfico claramente definido, reconocido, dedicado y gestionado, mediante mecanismos legales u otros tipos de medios eficaces para conseguir la conservación a largo plazo de...

The Ethnobotany of Eden: Rethinking the Jungle Medicine Narrative by Robert A. Voeks (2018) 328 pp., University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA. ISBN: 978-0-226547718 (hbk), USD 45.00. - Volume 53 Issue 4 - Kent H. Redford

The US National Park Service (NPS), which manages over 85 million acres and over 400 units, contends with myriad external drivers of ecosystem change that threaten parks. Stressors such as invasive species, habitat fragmentation, warming climates and rising sea level, raise the potential that parks will not attain or sustain their congressionally d...

The IUCN Task Force on Synthetic Biology and Biodiversity Conservation and its accompanying Technical Subgroup were put together to accomplish the tasks laid out in Resolution WCC-2016-Res-086 from the 2016 World Conservation Congress. This Resolution (in part) called on the Director General and Commissions to undertake an assessment to: examine th...

Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire: Europe and the Transformation of the Tropical World by Corey Ross (2017) 496 pp., Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. ISBN 978-0-199590414 (hbk), GBP 45.00. - Volume 53 Issue 2 - Kent H. Redford

https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/47916 These guidelines address planning and management of privately protected areas (or PPAs) and the guidance is aimed principally at practitioners and policy makers, who are or may be involved with PPAs. Guidance is given on all aspects of PPA establishment, management and reporting, and information is prov...

A multidisciplinary examination of alternative framings of environmental problems, with using examples from forest, water, energy, and urban sectors. Does being an environmentalist mean caring about wild nature? Or is environmentalism synonymous with concern for future human well-being, or about a fair apportionment of access to the earth's resourc...

A multidisciplinary examination of alternative framings of environmental problems, with using examples from forest, water, energy, and urban sectors. Does being an environmentalist mean caring about wild nature? Or is environmentalism synonymous with concern for future human well-being, or about a fair apportionment of access to the earth's resourc...

Cane Toad Wars by Rick Shine (2018), 288 pp., University of California Press, Oakland, USA. ISBN 9780520295100 (hbk), USD 34.95, GBP 27.00. - Volume 52 Issue 4 - Kent H. Redford

Effective conservation strategies must ensure that species remain not just extant, but able to maintain key roles in species interactions and in the maintenance of communities and ecosystems. Such ecological functions, however, have not been well incorporated into management or policy. We present a framework for quantifying ecological function that...

Why should we save the wild relatives of domesticated animals? - Volume 52 Issue 3 - Kent H. Redford, Nigel Dudley

Effective Conservation Science: Data Not Dogma edited by Peter Kareiva, Michelle Marvier and Brian Silliman (2017), 208 pp., Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. ISBN 9780198808978 (hbk), GBP 70.00; ISBN 9780198808985 (ppk), GBP 34.99. - Volume 52 Issue 3 - Kent H. Redford

Sekar et al. argue that there is unequivocal evidence that ivory trade bans are necessary for conserving elephants, and that a growing consensus removes the need to consider or incorporate alternative values in this debate. In doing so, they overlook relevant literature [e.g., (1–3)] and do not account for marginalized voices from key range states...

Wildlife at War in Angola: The Rise and Fall of an African Eden by Brian J. Huntley (2017) 416 pp., Protea Book House, South Africa. ISBN 978-485306115 (pbk) GBP 19.12/USD 25.00/ZAR 350.00. - Volume 52 Issue 1 - Kent H. Redford

The Oxford Handbook of The Science of Science Communication edited by Kathleen Hall Jamieson , Dan Kahan and Dietram A. Scheufele (2017) 512 pp., Oxford Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. ISBN 978-0190497620 (hbk) GBP 105.00/USD 160.00, e-book GBP 99.75/USD 130.44. - Volume 52 Issue 1 - Kent H. Redford

en Conservation practice has demonstrated an increasing desire for accountability of actions, particularly with respect to effectiveness, efficiency, and impact to clearly identified objectives. This has been accompanied by increased attention to achieving adaptive management. In 2002, practitioners representing several prominent conservation nongo...

The social sciences are often seen as being in opposition to conservation and the practise of conservationists. Yet, social scientists have made important contributions to conservation and could make even more if they are willing to use perceptive, insightful tools as a means of both improving the practise of conservation and sharpening social scie...

Poaching for ivory has caused a steep decline in African elephant (Loxodonta africana, see the photo) populations over the past decade (1). This crisis has fueled a contentious global debate over which ivory policy would best protect elephants: banning all ivory trade or enabling regulated trade to incentivize and fund elephant conservation (2). Th...

Poaching for ivory has caused a steep decline in African elephant (Loxodonta africana, see the photo) populations over the past decade (1). This crisis has fueled a contentious global debate over which ivory policy would best protect elephants: banning all ivory trade or enabling regulated trade to incentivize and fund elephant conservation (2). Th...

Failure carries undeniable stigma and is difficult to confront for individuals, teams, and organizations. Disciplines such as commercial and military aviation, medicine, and business have long histories of grappling with it, beginning with the recognition that failure is inevitable in every human endeavor. While conservation may arguably be more co...

Article impact statement: Conservation values are unlikely to change through intentional efforts.

Serendipity: An Ecologist's Quest to Understand Nature by James A. Estes (2016), 275 pp., University of California Press, Oakland, USA. ISBN 978-0-520-28503-3 (hbk), USD 29.95, GBP 24.95. - Volume 51 Issue 2 - Kent Redford

Privately protected areas (PPAs) are increasingly recognized as important conservation initiatives, as evidenced by recent developments that support recognizing and documenting them alongside protected areas under other governance types. Advances in guidance on PPAs have been accompanied by increasing support within international policy arenas, and...

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...

The hope for creating widespread change in social values has endured among conservation professionals since early calls by Aldo Leopold for a “Land Ethic”. However, there has been little serious attention in conservation to the fields of investigation that address values, how they are formed, and how they change. We introduce a social-ecological sy...

No abstract is available for this article.

Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental Change. Using Palaeoecology to Manage Dynamic Landscapes in the Anthropocene by Lindsey Gillson (2015), 240 pp., Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. ISBN 978-0-198-71303-6 (hbk) GBP 52.50, 978-0-19-871304-3 (pbk) GBP 26.24. - Volume 50 Issue 2 - Kent Redford

Conservation and development in Cambodia: Exploring Frontiers of Change in Nature, State and Society edited by Sarah Milne and Sango Mahanty (2015) 292 pp., Earthscan (Routledge), Abingdon, UK. ISBN 978-0-415-70680-3 (hbk) GBP 85.00/USD 145.00. - Volume 50 Issue 1 - Kent H. Redford

How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-extinction by Beth Shapiro (2015) 240 pp., Princeton University Press, Princeton, USA. ISBN 978-0-691-15705-4 (hbk) USD 17.47. - Volume 50 Issue 1 - Kent H. Redford

Insufficient focused attention has been paid by the conservation community to conservation of biodiversity outside of protected areas. Biodiversity mainstreaming addresses this gap in global conservation practice by “embedding biodiversity considerations into policies, strategies and practices of key public and private actors that impact or rely on...

Background: Alternative livelihood projects are used by a variety of organisations as a tool for achieving biodiversity conservation. However, despite characterising many conservation approaches, very little is known about what impacts (if any) alternative livelihood projects have had on biodiversity conservation, as well as what determines the rel...

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) mechanisms leverage economic and social incentives to shape how people influence natural processes and achieve conservation and sustainability goals. Beneficiaries of nature's goods and services pay owners or stewards of ecosystems that produce those services, with payments contingent on service provision ( 1 ,...

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) mechanisms leverage economic and social incentives to shape how people influence natural processes and achieve conservation and sustainability goals. Beneficiaries of nature's goods and services pay owners or stewards of ecosystems that produce those services, with payments contingent on service provision. Inte...

Extinctions beget further extinctions when species lose obligate mutualists, predators, prey, or hosts. Here, we develop a conceptual model of species and community attributes affecting secondary extinction likelihood, incorporating mechanisms that buffer organisms against partner loss. Specialized interactors, including ‘cryptic specialists’ with...

In this editorial essay, members of the Editorial Board of PARKS review the status of conservation literature. Three problems are identified: 1) the growing gap between the formal conservation literature and the so-called ‘grey literature’ of project reports, studies and working papers;; 2) the effectiveness of the majority of conservation literatu...

Protected areas are regarded as the most important tool in the conservation toolbox. They cover > 12% of the Earth's terrestrial area, with over half of this designated since 1970, and are thus a unique example of governments and other stakeholders consciously changing management of land and water at a significant scale. The Convention on Biologica...

Synthetic biology is a broad and fast-moving field of innovation involving the design and construction of new biological parts, and the redesign of existing, natural biological systems to address real world problems. It has many potential applications that may change human relations to the natural world. Synthetic biology is virtually unknown to th...

A divergence of values has become apparent in recent debates between conservationists who focus on ecosystem services that can improve human well‐being and those who focus on avoiding the extinction of species. These divergent points of view fall along a continuum from anthropocentric to biocentric values, but most conservationists are relatively c...

Background Alternative livelihood projects are used by a variety of organisations as a tool for achieving biodiversity conservation. However, despite characterising many conservation approaches, very little is known about what impacts (if any) alternative livelihood projects have had on biodiversity conservation, as well as what determines the rela...

Seeking to foretell the future has long been a passion of humans. We have invented countless forms of augury – looking for signs of what the future will bring – many of which involve turning to the natural world for omens. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Public agencies sometimes seek outside guidance when capacity to achieve their mission is limited. Through a cooperative agreement and collaborations with the U.S. National Park Service (NPS), we developed recommendations for a conservation program for migratory species. Although NPS manages ∼36 million hectares of land and water in 401 units, ther...

Human activity is rapidly transforming most of Earth's natural systems. How this transformation is impacting human health, whose health is at greatest risk, and the magnitude of the associated disease burden are relatively new subjects within the field of environmental health. We discuss what is known about the human health implications of changes...

Conservationists often must take action in the face of uncertainty about the costs and benefits of different options. Although this uncertainty can be paralyzing when the stakes are high, there is obviously a cost to inaction as well as action, and decision makers need to be encouraged to act when appropriate. Many other fields of human endeavor su...

So far, conservation scientists have paid little attention to synthetic biology; this is unfortunate as the technology is likely to transform the operating space within which conservation functions, and therefore the prospects for maintaining biodiversity into the future.

Theoretical and practical approaches associated with conservation biogeography, including ecological niche modeling, have been applied to the difficult task of determining how to incorporate climate change into conservation prioritization methodologies. Most studies have focused on identifying species that are most at risk from climate change, but...

Modern conservation management increasingly integrates approaches developed in zoos with those from the wild to actively manage populations.

Ecosystem services as a concept and framework for understanding the way in which nature benefits people has led to a suite of approaches that are increasingly being used to support sustainable management of biodiversity and ecosystems. However, the utility of the ecosystem services framework and associated tools for supporting biodiversity conserva...

The Convention on Biological Diversity Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 was adopted at the 10th Conference of the Parties in Nagoya, Japan. The plan outlines 20 Aichi Targets to achieve global biodiversity conservation. A fundamental global approach to biodiversity conservation is the use of protected areas. Arguably all 20 Aichi Targets h...

The huge conservation interest that mammals attract and the large datasets that have been collected on them have propelled a diversity of global mammal prioritization schemes, but no comprehensive global mammal conservation strategy. We highlight some of the potential discrepancies between the schemes presented in this theme issue, including: conse...