David W. Macdonald’s research while affiliated with University of Oxford and other places

Recent regional updates to the IUCN Red List reveal a discouraging tendency: the hedgehog species of Europe are either declining and/or neglected by research and monitoring programmes to such a degree that evaluation of their conservation status remains challenging. Hedgehogs are charismatic nature ambassadors, and they are appreciated widely by the public with numerous individuals and organisations willing to contribute to their conservation, yet there exists a disconnect between general interest in hedgehogs and broad-scale monitoring efforts. Here, we clarify the current conservation statuses of the five species of hedgehogs in Europe, knowledge of threats, what is being done to mitigate declines, and where the conservation and research gaps lie. There are several common risks posed to hedgehog species in Europe including roads, and habitat loss and degradation. For some species, regional-scale action is urgently needed to prevent populations from shrinking any further. For all, there remains a comprehensive lack of knowledge of populations, ecology and threats.

Southeast Asia hosts more felid species than any other region and, although smaller (< 30 kg) felids have important ecological roles, regional conservation has mainly focused on a few charismatic big cats. Information on the ecology and conservation status of small felids is often lacking or geographically limited. We used empirically derived scale-optimized models for seven species in three regions of Southeast Asia (mainland, Borneo and Sumatra) to evaluate the effectiveness of the existing protected areas network in preserving suitable habitats, and to map suitable areas lacking protection. Finally, we assessed whether small felids are good proxies of broader regional terrestrial biodiversity. On the mainland, the largest and most suitable habitats occurred in the Northern Forest Complex of Myanmar and in the region between Eastern Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. In these areas we also highlighted the most important protected areas. In Borneo, the most suitable habitats occurred in the central highlands and in the protected areas of Sabah. In Sumatra, the strongholds of habitat suitability were the Barisan Mountains, in the western extent of the island, and were highly concentrated within existing protected areas. We also found that the aggregated habitat suitability for small felids was correlated more strongly to terrestrial vertebrate biodiversity than was any single felid species individually, suggesting that areas that are suitable for multiple felid species have an association with high overall biodiversity. Overall, our assessment of the distribution of small felids in Southeast Asia highlights the fundamental importance of protected areas for biodiversity conservation, given that most species were highly associated with protected areas and regions with large extents of forest. Our results are a clarion call to expand the extent, and improve the conservation management, of protected areas in the remaining core habitat areas for multiple species in Southeast Asia, and to work to enhance and protect connectivity between them to ensure long-term demographic and genetic exchange among the region’s remaining wildlife populations.

Understanding how sympatric small felids respond to their environmental surroundings in a human matrix landscape is important to determine their habitat use, distribution and conservation. However, structured survey design and large sample size studies are often rare for cryptic small-and medium-sized felids hindering their reliable and meaningful inferences for conservation management. We employed a multi-species occupancy model on a large-scale camera trap dataset to investigate the effects of environmental and anthropogenic variables on the occupancy, as well as the mechanisms facilitating sympatry among three small felids in Bhutan: the threatened Asiatic golden cat (Catopuma temminckii), marbled cat (Pardofelis marmorata), and the least concern leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis). Through their co-occurrence patterns at local and landscape scales, we could identify their potential interactions and the factors influencing them. We found that one species pair (marbled cat: leopard cat) had low co-occurrence at higher elevations. The interactions among the other felid pairs (Asiatic golden cat: marbled cat and Asiatic golden cat: leopard cat) were not directly mediated by human disturbances and were constant across the elevational gradient. We identified important predictors of marginal occupancy for two species: forest cover, river density, and slope for the marbled cat; and housing density, forest cover, and slope for the leopard cat. However, none of the predictor variables significantly influenced Asiatic golden cat occupancy. Our findings suggest that environmental factors, like forest cover and slope, may influence individual felid occupancy and consequently shape their interactions. We recommend that small felid conservation in heterogeneous landscapes need to Global Ecology and Conservation 58 (2025) e03422 2351-9894/© 2025 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). consider the impacts of human land use; limit forest conversion and protect rugged habitats. Through this study, we provide new insights into small felid sympatry in montane landscapes, expanding our understanding of their complex coexistence patterns.

CONTEXT: The efficient and effective design of protected areas is a fundamental challenge in landscape ecology, focusing on how spatial patterns of habitat influence conservation outcomes. This has sparked debate about the relative importance of habitat area versus connectivity in maintaining populations across fragmented landscapes. OBJECTIVES: We evaluate the relative importance of habitat area and connectivity by comparing counterfactual scenarios for landscape configuration on Borneo. We examine how habitat area and connectivity influence Sunda clouded leopard population size and genetic diversity across scenarios and dispersal abilities. METHODS: We compared 28 landscape scenarios on Borneo, incorporating all plausible combinations of core areas and movement corridors. Using spatially explicit genetic simulations, we modelled clouded leopard population size and genetic diversity metrics across five dispersal thresholds to compare how area and connectivity influence conservation outcomes. RESULTS: Our analysis reveals a strong, disproportionate relationship between landscape area and population size and genetic diversity. Even when accounting for landscape area, larger areas consistently provide superior conservation outcomes. Corridors showed minimal impact, becoming effective only at the highest dispersal thresholds. Habitat area emerged as the primary driver of conservation success, challenging assumptions about the importance of connectivity and highlighting the complex interactions between landscape configuration and species mobility. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings challenge paradigms in landscape ecology by demonstrating habitat area is more critical for biodiversity conservation than connectivity, especially where corridor lengths exceed species' dispersal abilities. Conservation strategies should therefore prioritise expanding core habitat areas, with corridor investments strategically targeted to highly mobile species.

Hunting, habitat loss and fragmentation have caused a rapid decline in the distribution and abundance of the clouded leopard Neofelis nebulosa across its range, and in several areas, including Taiwan, the species is now extirpated. Taiwan, a former stronghold for the species, is a candidate for its reintroduction, based on increasing prey abundance and high forest coverage. Such future reintroduction efforts, however, are hampered by a lack of analysis of potential clouded leopard habitat on the island. To address this, we explore habitat suitability for the species in Taiwan. We used a multi-scale, multivariate habitat selection model based on clouded leopard presence–absence data from extensive camera-trap surveys across its current range to predict suitable habitat in Taiwan. Our findings indicate that 38% of Taiwanese territory is potentially suitable habitat for the clouded leopard, of which 46% is under protection. This demonstrates the high potential of Taiwan's habitat for clouded leopard reintroduction.

The lion (Panthera leo) was extirpated from the Cape region of South Africa during the mid-nineteenth century. Whilst historically classified as a distinct subspecies known as the Cape lion (P. l. melanochaita), recent molecular studies challenge the distinctiveness of this population, suggesting that it represents the southernmost population of the species' Southern Clade. The Cape lion is often cited as having a distinctive skull morphology, which has justified its subspecific classification, but only a limited number of specimens have been available for examination, so that the Cape lion’s skull morphology has not been satisfactorily understood. In this study we collected morphometric data from a greatly enlarged sample of 22 Cape lion skulls, including 12 adults, constituting the largest sample size analysed for this possible subspecies. The results suggest that (1) morphological characteristics of the skull previously thought to distinguish the Cape lion are not diagnostic, and (2) nor is the skull morphology of male and female Cape lions distinct from that of males and females of other southern African lions. Our results independently support those based on molecular investigations, which suggest that the Cape lion was not distinct from other lions within the Southern Clade.