Matthew Selinske

RMIT University | RMIT · ICON Science

With the rapid increase in urbanization, local governments and organizations are searching for opportunities to improve the social resilience, health, and wellbeing of urban residents by increasing their connection to nature. However, these urban communities are highly heterogenous, and tailored nature engagement and conservation programs will be n...

Globally, privately protected area (PPA) programs are increasing in size and number. Participating in a PPA program can be fiscally challenging for landholders (e.g., enrollment costs; potential reduction in land value; opportunity costs; costs of ongoing management). Government and nongovernmental organizations often offer financial incentives to...

Biodiversity loss is driven by human behavior, but there is uncertainty about the effectiveness of behavior‐change programs in delivering benefits to biodiversity. To demonstrate their value, the biodiversity benefits and cost‐effectiveness of behavior changes that directly or indirectly affect biodiversity need to be quantified. We adapted a struc...

The conservation profession is increasingly seeking effective ways to reduce societal impact on biodiversity, including through targeted behavior change interventions. Multiple conservation behavior change programs exist, but there is also great uncertainty regarding which behaviors are most strategic to target. Behavioral prioritization is a tool...

The link between global ecosystem decline, trade, and human consumption suggests that trade-based biodiversity footprints should be regarded as a critical indicator of planetary impacts. Here we integrate a global input-output economic framework that encompasses global trade between 15909 sectors, with range and impact data on 10518 terrestrial pla...

Beef production is a major driver of biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions globally, and multiple studies recommend reducing beef production and consumption. Although there have been significant efforts from the biodiversity conservation sector toward reducing beef‐production impacts, there has been comparatively much less engagement in re...

Reversing biodiversity loss is one of the great challenges that we face as a society. Human behaviour, individually and collectively, is the driver behind this loss; hence understanding and changing human behaviour is key to preventing further degradation of biodiversity. It is increasingly recognised that the social sciences have much to contribut...

If efforts to tackle biodiversity loss and its impact on human wellbeing are to be successful, conservation must learn from other fields which use predictive methods to foresee shocks and preempt their impacts in the face of uncertainty, such as military studies, public health and finance. Despite a long history of using predictive models to unders...

Changing human behavior and attitudes are key to conserving global biodiversity. Despite evidence from other disciplines that strategic messaging can influence behavior and attitudes, it remains unclear how to best design messages to benefit biodiversity. We conducted a systematic literature review to investigate the status of conservation messagin...

We present new breeding information for the Swamp Flycatcher Muscicapa aquatica based on observations made in The Gambia. We provide the first description and photograph of a Swamp Flycatcher nest not constructed in the roofed shell of an abandoned Ploceus weaver nest, along with descriptions of nest sites. The new observations indicate laying in O...

We present new breeding information for the Swamp Flycatcher Muscicapa aquatica based on observations made in The Gambia. We provide the first description and photograph of a Swamp Flycatcher nest not constructed in the roofed shell of an abandoned Ploceus weaver nest, along with descriptions of nest sites. The new observations indicate laying in O...

An integrated understanding of both social and ecological aspects of environmental issues is essential to address pressing sustainability challenges. An integrated social-ecological systems perspective is purported to provide a better understanding of the complex relationships between humans and nature. Despite a threefold increase in the amount of...

There is a growing recognition of the contribution that privately-owned land makes to conservation efforts, and governments are increasingly counting privately protected areas (PPAs) towards their international conservation commitments. The public availability of spatial data on countries' conservation estates is important for broad-scale conservat...

en Article impact statement: Continued development of conservation psychology is essential to addressing the challenges of biodiversity conservation. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Good decision making is critical to avert a wide range of ecological and human crises that can result from poor management of water resources. But water resources decisions are typically situated in highly complex social-ecological systems with profound uncertainties. Decision support and analysis tools can help reduce the uncertainty, increase the...

Globally, privately protected areas (PPAs) are an increasingly popular approach to long-term protection of biodiversity on privately owned lands. PPAs provide multiple ecological, social and economic benefits to diverse range of stakeholders in across a range of contexts. These include supporting the desire of landowners to protect conservation val...

A variety of policy instruments are used to promote the conservation of biodiversity on private land. These instruments are often employed in unison to encourage land stewardship beneficial for biodiversity across a broad range of program types, but questions remain about which instruments are the appropriate tools when seeking long-term change to...

Kareiva and Fuller (2016) consider the future prospects for biodiversity conservation in the face of the profound disruptions of the Anthropocene. They argue that more flexible and entrepreneurial approaches to conservation are needed. While some of the approaches they promote may work in particular situations, we believe their proposal risks unint...

Private land conservation is an increasingly popular approach to protect critical biodiversity. In the Western Cape Province of South Africa private land conservation is the focal strategy for CapeNature, the provincial conservation agency. Despite its importance, little is known about the drivers of landowner participation in the CapeNature progra...