Balance for Better: DiversifyEEB

To celebrate the 2019 theme for International Women’s Day, #BalanceforBetter, we invited our Editorial Board to nominate and discuss the initiatives they feel support gender balance in science and academia. Kicking things off, several of our editors drew our attention to the directory, DiversifyEEB, which aims to highlight ‘ecologists and evolutionary biologists who are women and/or underrepresented minorities’. Journal Associate Editor, Cate McInnis-Ng and Senior … Continue reading Balance for Better: DiversifyEEB

Rewilding in Britain: a case study

Over the past few weeks, The Applied Ecologist’s Blog and Relational Thinking have been exploring the hot topic of rewilding from a number of different interdisciplinary and management angles.  Now Sophie Wynne-Jones and Chris Sandom turn their focus to the UK as a, perhaps unexpected, example of where rewilding has grown. If you ask someone in Britain whether or not they have heard of rewilding, … Continue reading Rewilding in Britain: a case study

On the horizon: Options for cultivating rice as climate changes and salinity increases

For the latest post in our series looking at developing issues in the world of conservation, Erica Fleishman explores food security and the production of rice in a changing climate. Rising sea levels, drought, and agricultural irrigation have increased the salinity of soils in both coastal and inland areas. Mineral deficiencies and toxicity may accompany local increases in salinity. As a result, scientists aim to … Continue reading On the horizon: Options for cultivating rice as climate changes and salinity increases

Good fences make good neighbours

For the latest post in our joint series with Relational Thinking, Stephen Carver compares passive and active approaches to rewilding and discusses his contribution to the new book in the Ecological Reviews series. The opening paragraphs of my chapter on land abandonment neatly mirror some of the online discussions I’ve been having about rewilding recently, the latest of which concerns the origins of rewilding in … Continue reading Good fences make good neighbours

Trophic rewilding: restoring top-down food web processes to promote self-managing ecosystems

Continuing our series on rewilding, Jens-Christian Svenning from the Center for Biodiversity Dynamics in a Changing World, Aarhus University, focuses in on trophic rewilding. Here he considers the foundations and open-ended nature of this approach, and explains why there is still plenty of room for more research in this area. There is rapidly increasing interest in rewilding as an alternative to more human-controlled approaches to … Continue reading Trophic rewilding: restoring top-down food web processes to promote self-managing ecosystems

On the horizon: Deforestation expansion of plantations and infrastructure threaten Indo-Malay island species

The latest post in our ‘On the horizon’ series sees Nafeesa Esmail and Alice Hughes highlight the potential effects of a developing palm oil industry on Southeast Asisa’s forests.  Southeast Asia’s forests are some of the most diverse on Earth, representing a number of global biodiversity hotspots. Yet this region is also undergoing an unparalleled rate of deforestation. Given the small ranges of many species … Continue reading On the horizon: Deforestation expansion of plantations and infrastructure threaten Indo-Malay island species

Getting everyone on board with rewilding

To celebrate the release of the latest Ecological Reviews, Rewilding, we’ve invited some of the book’s authors and editors to share their insights into this hotly debated topic from both applied and interdisciplinary perspectives. The posts will be shared here on The Applied Ecologist’s Blog and over at Relational Thinking. Kicking off the series, Nathalie Pettorelli (Zoological Society of London) explores the challenging concept of reaching … Continue reading Getting everyone on board with rewilding

On the horizon: Climate change and the capacity of Antarctic benthos to store carbon

Kicking off our On the horizon series of posts about emerging issues in conservation and applied ecology, Nathalie Pettorelli explores how climate change and melting ice in the Antarctic could affect carbon storage on a global scale. Just a few days ago, news outlets around the world were reporting on the findings from a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences … Continue reading On the horizon: Climate change and the capacity of Antarctic benthos to store carbon

Conservation issues on the horizon

Following the recent publication of Sutherland et al.’s A Horizon Scan of Emerging Issues for Global Conservation in 2019, a selection of the authors have come together to produce a series of posts on key issues emerging within conservation and applied ecology. Over the coming few weeks, we will be sharing ‘On the horizon’ commentaries on the future of conservation and management related to climate … Continue reading Conservation issues on the horizon

Early career ecologists look to plot a safe course through the Brexit minefield

In the face of continuing uncertainty over Brexit and UK environmental policy, Andy Suggitt  from the British Ecological Society’s Conservation Ecology Group argues that now is the time for early career ecologists to engage and get involved in the process. We’ve all had that feeling about Brexit. It’s top of the newsfeed on our favourite social media site, it’s the first item on the evening … Continue reading Early career ecologists look to plot a safe course through the Brexit minefield