The Great Barrier Reef, in northern Queensland, is a national and international icon, its significance recognised by World Heritage listing. The Reef has its own dedicated agency to oversee management and avoid adverse impacts from development. The sources of these impacts are diverse, ranging from coastal development and shipping, fishing, catchment land uses, and global warming. The … Continue reading Inadequate protection of the Great Barrier Reef, and where to from here?
Assessing bycatch threats to mobile marine species and evaluating the effectiveness of marine protected areas
Fisheries bycatch can result in significant biomass removal of protected and vulnerable species, leading to population decline and increased extinction risk. A principal role of marine protected areas (MPAs) is to prevent biodiversity loss, so it is important to test the ability of MPAs to mitigate bycatch. In a new paper authored by Heather Welch … Continue reading Assessing bycatch threats to mobile marine species and evaluating the effectiveness of marine protected areas
Cumulative human impacts on Brazilian coral reefs
Rafael Magris is lead author on a new study just out in the journal Diversity reporting on a risk assessment of the coral reefs in Brazil. The study mapped out the geographic patterns of exposure of reefs to a range of stressors: fishing, land-based pollution, mining, shipping movements, coastal development, aquaculture, and global warming. By accounting … Continue reading Cumulative human impacts on Brazilian coral reefs
Governance failure limits water quality improvement for the Great Barrier Reef
Management of the Great Barrier Reef's catchments is vital to improving water quality of the Reef. Investments in management of these cathments in recent decades total hundreds of millions of dollars, but measurable improvements have been slight. One reason is that the complex governance of the Reef and its catchments has failed in a number of ways. … Continue reading Governance failure limits water quality improvement for the Great Barrier Reef
Investigating Stakeholder Perceptions of Fish Decline: Making Sense of Multiple Mental Models
Stakeholders hold different types of knowledge pertaining to resource decline, formed from different personal experiences and education. Sharing of knowledge between stakeholders is vital to effectively co-manage a resource because it can improve the ability to generate solutions that meet the needs of all stakeholders. Jeremy Horowitz is the lead author of a new paper … Continue reading Investigating Stakeholder Perceptions of Fish Decline: Making Sense of Multiple Mental Models
Conversation piece – Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef: going beyond our backyard to protect the reef
This article was originally published in The Conversation here. From place-based to problem-based campaigns, we are seeing a rise in initiatives aiming to foster collective environmental stewardship among concerned citizens across the globe. These international communities have arisen to meet new environmental challenges and seize the opportunities presented by our increasingly connected world. Traditional approaches to … Continue reading Conversation piece – Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef: going beyond our backyard to protect the reef
Environmental social science workshops in Canada
Last month I attended a couple of very interesting environmental social science workshops in Canada. The first was held on lovely Pender Island, in the Southern Gulf Islands archipelago in British Columbia, and was led by Natalie Ban – who was formally a conservation planning postdoc here in Townsville – and attended by a great group … Continue reading Environmental social science workshops in Canada
Diseño y conectividad de reservas marinas ante el calentamiento global
International collaborations are central to our research. Here we summarize the results of an ongoing collaboration with Mexican colleagues to design a network of marine reserves in the Gulf of California, reported earlier in our blog. We do so in Spanish to ensure we reach a wider readership, particularly in Mexico! El calentamiento de los … Continue reading Diseño y conectividad de reservas marinas ante el calentamiento global
Using multiple methods to understand the nature of relationships in social networks
Effective natural resource management (NRM) often depends on collaboration through formal and informal relationships. Social network analysis (SNA) provides a framework for studying social relationships and is becoming a common tool for conservation practitioners. Simply put, social network analysis is a way of mapping who collaborates and for what, so that the patterns of collaborations … Continue reading Using multiple methods to understand the nature of relationships in social networks