In an unprecedented step, 114 Australian experts from the world’s leading protected area organisation, the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA), have written an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Abbot urging the Australian government to take a path of leadership on nature conservation. They stress that national parks and other protected areas are … Continue reading WCPA appeals to Prime Minister to reverse conservation retreat
Estuarine & Marine Classification workshop for coastal Queensland
Alana and Melanie attended an Estuarine & Marine Classification workshop for coastal Queensland this week (download the factsheet here for more information). The workshop, held in Townsville and facilitated by Queensland Wetlands Program, was part of a whole series which aims at developing a generic classification for estuarine and marine habitats in coastal Queensland, Australia. The … Continue reading Estuarine & Marine Classification workshop for coastal Queensland
NEW PAPER: Projected Distributions and Diversity of Flightless Ground Beetles within the Australian Wet Tropics and Their Environmental Correlates
A new paper is out in Plos One! Species distribution modelling is often used to predict how species will cope with and respond to climate change. This approach has been done extensively for many of the vertebrates throughout the rainforests for north-eastern Australia, and for the rest of the continent. However, it is rarely applied … Continue reading NEW PAPER: Projected Distributions and Diversity of Flightless Ground Beetles within the Australian Wet Tropics and Their Environmental Correlates
NEW PAPER: Tropical islands quick data gap analysis guided by coral reef geomorphological maps
Dr. Serge Andréfouët and Mélanie Hamel just published a new paper in Marine Pollution Bulletin on a straightforward method to perform a rapid data gap analysis at the regional scale in tropical coral reef countries with limited resources. The rapid assessment allows to quickly identify areas of high natural value where more knowledge is needed, … Continue reading NEW PAPER: Tropical islands quick data gap analysis guided by coral reef geomorphological maps
NEW PAPER: Understanding recreational fishers’ compliance with no-take zones in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park
Adrian's new paper, Understanding recreational fishers' compliance with no-take zones in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, has just been published online in Ecology and Society. Conservation is mostly about managing people. And ensuring rule compliance is an underpinning factor for effective conservation. However, understanding compliance is no easy task. Few people are willing to … Continue reading NEW PAPER: Understanding recreational fishers’ compliance with no-take zones in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park
SEMINAR: Kartik Shanker – Hunting for herpetofauna in the Western Ghats: a Wallacean approach to discovering diversity
UPDATE: Kartik's seminar is now online. Describing diversity and its causes is a long-standing pursuit in ecology and evolutionary biology. Recent models have combined the effects of environment and species ranges to create null models of distribution, which can be compared with empirical patterns of diversity at large spatial scales, but these fail to take … Continue reading SEMINAR: Kartik Shanker – Hunting for herpetofauna in the Western Ghats: a Wallacean approach to discovering diversity
SEMINAR: Vera Horigue – Scaling up to form marine protected area networks: the role of coordination of initiatives and institutional collaborations in the Philippines
UPDATE: Vera’s seminar is now available online. Networks of marine protected areas (MPA) are believed, and to some extent have been proven, to provide higher ecological, social and economic benefits than small, isolated MPAs. However, MPA networks are more complex compared to single MPAs and this complexity includes spatial, ecological, socioeconomic and institutional considerations. Hence, … Continue reading SEMINAR: Vera Horigue – Scaling up to form marine protected area networks: the role of coordination of initiatives and institutional collaborations in the Philippines
SEMINAR: Jon Day – Planning and managing the Great Barrier Reef: lessons learnt for the future planning of the Reef and implications for MPAs elsewhere
UPDATE: Jon's seminar is now available online. Jon's PhD aims to utilise experience from the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), in order to 1) assess the significant lessons learnt over 30+ years of conservation planning and management in the GBR, and in particular reflect on the lessons from the Representative Areas Program (RAP) and the consequent … Continue reading SEMINAR: Jon Day – Planning and managing the Great Barrier Reef: lessons learnt for the future planning of the Reef and implications for MPAs elsewhere
SEMINAR: Adriana Chacon – The contribution of the environment to wellbeing: a case study in Australia and Costa Rica.
Adriana Chacon will be presenting her MPhil confirmation seminar: “The contribution of the environment to wellbeing: a case study in Australia and Costa Rica.” The aim of this project is to investigate the contribution of the environment to wellbeing. To accomplish this she will be testing the extent to which subjective measures of wellbeing (specifically, … Continue reading SEMINAR: Adriana Chacon – The contribution of the environment to wellbeing: a case study in Australia and Costa Rica.