Louise Mair

• PhD Biology
• Research Fellow at Newcastle University

Ensuring the conservation of wild relatives of domesticated animals that are important food sources for humans forms part of targets for both the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). There is, however, no indicator allowing progress toward these aims to be measured. We identified 30 domesticated mamm...

Conservation planning plays an instrumental role in facilitating progress towards biodiversity targets by providing practitioners with the tools required to allocate resources and implement actions. However, the utility of a burgeoning scientific literature to on-the-ground conservation has been questioned. Given such criticisms, and the lack of pr...

There is little consensus as to why there is so much variation in the rates at which different species’ geographic ranges expand in response to climate warming. Here we show that the relative importance of species’ abundance trends and habitat availability for British butterfly species vary over time. Species with high habitat availability expanded...

Aim Climate change is expected to have major impacts on terrestrial biodiversity at all ecosystem levels, including reductions in species‐level distribution and abundance. We aim to test the extent to which land use management, such as setting‐aside forest from production, could reduce climate‐induced biodiversity impacts for specialist species ove...

Global policy aims to prevent species extinctions; to support these aims conservation planners must effectively target interventions to reduce the extinction risk of species. However, there is often a lack of knowledge on the magnitude and direction of species responses to interventions and in turn the extent to which a species extinction risk is r...

The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was adopted in December 2022 by the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The framework states outcomes for species to be achieved by 2050 in goal A and establishes a range of targets to reduce pressures on biodiversity and halt biodiversity loss by 2030. Target 4 calls for urgent reco...

To achieve the goals of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), agreed by Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, there is an urgent need to address the economic drivers of biodiversity loss. The KMGBF includes a target to encourage businesses and financial institutions to disclose their impacts and dependences on bio...

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) was adopted on 15 December 2022 by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Framework states outcomes for species to be achieved by 2050 in Goal A and establishes a range of Targets to reduce pressures on biodiversity and halt biodiversity loss by 2030. Target 4 calls for...

Threat mapping is a necessary tool for identifying and abating direct threats to species in the ongoing extinction crisis. There are known gaps in the threat mapping literature for particular threats and geographic locations, and it remains unclear if the distribution of research effort is appropriately targeted relative to conservation need. We ai...

Nations have committed to reductions in the global rate of species extinctions through the Sustainable Development Goals 14 and 15, for ocean and terrestrial species, respectively. Biodiversity loss is worsening despite rapid growth in the number and extent of protected areas, both at sea and on land. Resolving this requires targeting the locations...

The growing focus on the threat of invasive non-native species (INNS) in international biodiversity targets highlights a need for targeted research to support effective understanding, legislation, and management. However, the publishing landscape of invasion biology is complex and expanding rapidly, making consolidation of information increasingly...

The successful implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity's post‐2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will rely on effective translation of targets from global to national level and increased engagement across diverse sectors of society. Species conservation targets require policy support measures that can be applied to a diversity of t...

Averting human‐induced extinctions will require strong policy commitments that comprehensively address threats to species. A new Global Biodiversity Framework is currently being negotiated by the world’s governments through the Convention on Biological Diversity. Here we explored how the suggested targets in this framework could contribute to reduc...

Background Human activities are driving accelerating rates of species extinctions that continue to threaten nature’s contribution to people. Yet, the full scope of where and how human activities threaten wild species worldwide remains unclear. Furthermore, the large diversity of approaches and terminology surrounding threats and threat mapping pres...

The landmark 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Global Assessment cited land-use change as the primary driver of biodiversity loss. The 2016 peace agreement in Colombia has led to increasing agricultural expansion into biodiversity-rich forests. We have focused on the case of Colombia to de...

The active involvement of subnational authorities, cities and local governments has been identified as one of the enabling conditions to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and progress towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 15 (Life on Land). However, there has not been any s...

Biodiversity, essential to delivering the ecosystem services that support humanity, is under threat. Projections show that loss of biodiversity, specifically increases in species extinction, is likely to continue without significant intervention. Human activity is the principal driver of this loss, generating direct threats such as habitat loss and...

Currently, the main tools for assessing and managing ecosystem services at large scales are maps providing snapshots of their potential supply. However, many ecosystems change over short timescales; thus, such maps soon become inaccurate. Here we show high rates of short-term dynamics of three key forest ecosystem services: wood production, bilberr...

Human activity is accelerating biodiversity loss despite international commitments to prevent extinction and habitat degradation. To bend the curve, international goals must be translated into national targets and actions. Tools to do this are highly needed, but scarce. We present a first attempt to operationalize national Red Lists by using the qu...

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...

The Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Aichi Target 12 aimed to prevent species extinctions and improve the conservation status of known threatened species by 2020 but has not been met. As the post-2020 global biodiversity framework is negotiated, it is essential that we learn lessons from past failures. Here, we investigate whether a reduc...

In 2010, Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 to address the loss and degradation of nature. Subsequently, most biodiversity indicators continued to decline. Nevertheless , conservation actions can make a positive difference for biodiversity. The emerging Post-2020 Global Biod...

Stopping human-induced extinctions will require strong policy commitments that comprehensively address threats to species. In 2021, a new Global Biodiversity Framework will be agreed by the Convention on Biological Diversity. Here we investigate how the suggested targets could contribute to reducing threats to threatened vertebrates, invertebrates,...

1. Despite aspirations for conservation impact, mismatches between research and implementation have limited progress towards this goal. There is, therefore, an urgent need to identify how we can more effectively navigate the spaces between research and practice. 2. In 2014, we ran a workshop with conservation researchers and practitioners to iden...

The current global biodiversity governance system is failing to adequately protect species and halt extinctions. This raises concerns that a lack of coherence among conventions has hindered their effective implementation. We assessed the possibility for improved convention coherence by identifying overlaps among four major international biodiversit...

Background: The rate of anthropogenic biodiversity loss far exceeds the background rate of species extinctions. Global targets for biodiversity acknowledge this, nevertheless progress towards targets has been poor. There is now a reasonable understanding of what human pressures threaten the survival of species. However, information on where these t...

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...

Conserving species and achieving the Convention on Biological Diversity's international conservation targets necessitates stopping extinctions, recovering depleted populations and maintaining viable populations. The contribution of ex situ management to species conservation has long been debated, and there is limited information on ex situ manageme...

Understanding spatiotemporal population trends and their drivers is a key aim in population ecology. We further need to be able to predict how the dynamics and sizes of populations are affected in the long term by changing landscapes and climate. However, predictions of future population trends are sensitive to a range of modeling assumptions. Dead...

Aichi Target 12 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) aims to 'prevent extinctions of known threatened species'. To measure its success, we used a Delphi expert elicitation method to estimate the number of bird and mammal species whose extinctions were prevented by conservation action in 1993 - 2020 (the lifetime of the CBD) and 2010 - 20...

Understanding spatiotemporal population trends and their drivers is a key aim in population ecology. We further need to be able to predict how the dynamics and sizes of populations are affected in the long term by changing landscapes and climate. However, predictions of future population trends are sensitive to a range of modelling assumptions. Dea...

Over-exploitation is a major threat to species and reported wildlife trade has quadrupled over the last four decades. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) therefore remains an important mechanism in tackling species declines. Appropriate listing of species on CITES Appendices avoids both unwarr...

We describe the first use of fertility control to manage a free-living mammal population in Europe. An immunocontraceptive vaccine (GonaCon) was used to reduce female fertility in an invasive feral goat Capra hircus population. Adaptive management was implemented to assess the feasibility of fertility control and to allow prediction of the required...

Opportunistically collected species observations contributed by volunteer reporters are increasingly available for species and regions for which systematically collected data are not available. However, it is unclear if they are suitable to produce reliable habitat suitability models (HSMs), and hence if the species–habitat relationships found and...

Forest ecosystems have been subjected to intensive exploitation, and on top of these land use‐driven habitat alterations, there is an ongoing and rapid climate change. Understanding why environmental responses differ across species and how differences are mediated by species’ traits is crucial for predicting the complex effects of global change on...

Climate change is expected to drive the distribution retraction of northern species. However, particularly in regions with a history of intensive exploitation, changes in habitat management could facilitate distribution expansions counter to expectations under climate change. Here, we test the potential for future forest management to facilitate th...

Understanding the relative importance of different ecological processes on the metapopulation dynamics of species is the basis for accurately forecasting metapopulation size in fragmented landscapes. Successful local colonization depends on both species dispersal range and how local habitat conditions affect establishment success. Moreover, there i...

Understanding the relative importance of different ecological processes on the metapopulation dynamics of species is the basis for accurately forecasting metapopulation size in fragmented landscapes. Successful local colonization depends on both species dispersal range and how local habitat conditions affect establishment success. Moreover, there i...

The extensive spatial and temporal coverage of many citizen science datasets (CSD) makes them appealing for use in species distribution modeling and forecasting. However, a frequent limitation is the inability to validate results. Here, we aim to assess the reliability of CSD for forecasting species occurrence in response to national forest managem...

The collation of citizen science data in open-access biodiversity databases makes temporally and spatially extensive species’ observation data available to a wide range of users. Such data are an invaluable resource but contain inherent limitations, such as sampling bias in favour of recorder distribution, lack of survey effort assessment, and lack...

Additional maps, figures and tables of results. This file contains Table A (Percent deviance explained (R2) for all 13 reference taxonomic groups), Table B (Detailed model results for all 13 reference taxonomic groups), Fig A (Logged number of observation maps and ignorance score maps for all 13 reference taxonomic groups) and Fig B (The relationsh...

Open-access biodiversity databases have limitations which include: sampling bias in favour of recorder distribution, lack of survey effort assessment, and lack of coverage of the distribution of all organisms. Any technical assessment, monitoring program or scientific research should thus include an evaluation of the uncertainty of its results. The...

1. The ability of species' to undergo climate‐driven range shifts across fragmented landscapes depends on their dispersal ability as well as the structure of the landscape. For species' range shifts to occur, individuals must first leave suitable habitat to seek new habitat; this is likely to depend on the rate of movement of individuals within hab...

Many species are expanding at their leading-edge range boundaries in response to climate warming. Species are known to respond individualistically to climate change, but there has been little consideration of whether responses are consistent over time. We compared responses of 37 southerly distributed British butterflies over two study periods, fir...