Susan Canney

University of Oxford | OX · Department of Zoology

We have more data about wildlife trafficking than ever before, but it remains underutilized for decision-making. Central to effective wildlife trafficking interventions is collection, aggregation, and analysis of data across a range of source, transit, and destination geographies. Many data are geospatial, but these data cannot be effectively acces...

Two major environmental challenges of our time are responding to climate change and reversing biodiversity decline. Interventions that simultaneously tackle both challenges are highly desirable. To date, most studies aiming to find synergistic interventions for these two challenges have focused on protecting or restoring vegetation and soils but ov...

This short report shows how it has been possible to protect a small yet important, highly vulnerable, remnant population of desert‐adapted African elephants Loxodonta africana that roams through a vast, populated area of Mali, which in recent years has become lawless and subject to an aggressive jihadist insurgency. Initial studies showed how ecosy...

Increasing conflicts and social insecurity are expected to accelerate biodiversity decline and escalate illegal wildlife killing. Sahara‐Sahel megafauna has experienced recent continuous decline due to unsustainable hunting pressure. Here, we provide the best available data on distribution and population trends of threatened, large vertebrates, to...

A report synthesizing the findings of a 3-year initiative (2003-6) to better understand: • the current size, composition and status of the elephant population • the ecological requirements of the elephants • patterns of human activity and their influence on the human-elephant relationship/elephant livelihoods • the location and severity of threats,...

Among the devastating features of the recent conflict in Mali was the ease with which armed groups recruited the local young men to join their cause, and enabled them to occupy and control the north part of the country. Youth unemployment was a key contributing factor. Post-conflict, many of these young men are unable to return to their communities...

Creel et al. argue against the conservation effectiveness of fencing based on a population measure that ignores the importance of top predators to ecosystem processes. Their statistical analyses consider, first, only a subset of fenced reserves and, second, an incomplete examination of 'costs per lion.' Our original conclusions remain unaltered.

Conservationists often advocate for landscape approaches to wildlife management while others argue for physical separation between protected species and human communities, but direct empirical comparisons of these alternatives are scarce. We relate African lion population densities and population trends to contrasting management practices across 42...

The importance of conservation is growing each year, with increasing concerns over the destruction of biodiversity and the rising awareness of ecosystem services generating new debates on the human-nature relationship. This compact overview integrates the process, theory and practice of conservation for a broad readership, from non-specialists to...

The importance of conservation is growing each year, with increasing concerns over the destruction of biodiversity and the rising awareness of ecosystem services generating new debates on the human-nature relationship. This compact overview integrates the process, theory and practice of conservation for a broad readership, from non-specialists to s...

Romania, in line with other former communist countries, does not have a tradition of participation in decision making with respect to natural resources. Since the collapse of the communist regime, participation has been encouraged, especially through national legislation and to fulfil commitments under international treaties. However, little knowle...

It is hard to see, given previous analysis ([1][1]), the point of redefining “nonequilibrium” systems as “all systems that are not at equilibrium,” as L. Gillson and M. T. Hoffman do in their Perspective “Rangeland ecology in a changing world” (Perspectives, 5 Jan., p. [53][2]). This

In international nature conservation policy, value-arguments based on science and economic rationalism increasingly over-shadow the aesthetic and ethical arguments that originally inspired the conservation movement. We argue that this trend risks removing conservation from the public realm, in part because it facilitates the adoption by nongovernme...

This Tech Mem presents three scenarios for managed elephant range planning in Aceh based on a model of 'landscapes of exploitation power'. Our model is based on the identification of entities with interests in the exploitation of forest resources and explicit assumptions concerning their 'power rating' and how they can deploy their power spatially.

In complex areas of international policy, such as biodiversity conservation, there is a risk that well-promoted strategies will be received by decision makers as a cure-all. The U.S.-based Conservation International is promoting biodiversity hotspots as a 'silver bullet' strategy for conserving most species for least cost. We assess the degree to w...

Here we explore the ecological feasibility of constructing a landscape-scale fenced reserve in the Scottish Highlands, to contain a wolf Canis lupus population for the purpose of promoting ecological restoration. The prospect of constructing such a reserve raises numerous issues, and here we describe a theoretical investigation into the specific ca...