Environmental damage during warfare is generally accepted as an unavoidable form of collateral damage. Military operations should be included in discussions of environmental conservation. The subdiscipline warfare ecology was recently proposed to integrate such discussion. However, environmental damage may also be caused by peacetime military operations, and, in such cases, relevant stakeholders may not realize that warfare ecology has relevance for peacetime environmental disaster. This comment proposes that the epithet warfare ecology does little to attract the participation of the groups affected by military operations, however the term ‘military ecology’ would also patently include peacetime military activities and may thus enhance engagement. Military ecology embraces all environmental conservation issues related to military activity during peacetime, preparation for war, warfare and post-war restoration operations. The established term warfare ecology could be subsumed within military ecology, by accurately constricting its application to ecological issues directly tied to armed conflict.

The European Union's (EU's) Habitats Directive includes annexes listing the habitats and species requiring protection. As new countries join the EU these lists need to be amended to remain pertinent. In 2004 and 2007, 12 countries, mostly in central Europe, joined the EU and were asked to propose native species or habitats that required protection; this formed an initial base for negotiations with the European Commission in consultation with the existing member states and with scientific support from the European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity. The 12 countries made 831 proposals, resulting in the addition of 191 species and 33 habitats, and geographical exemptions for eight species. Although the Directive provided definitions, these needed to be supplemented with additional criteria to permit assessments of the proposals. The process involved many actors at both European and national level. This illustrates the development of biodiversity governance and provides potential lessons for future activities, including the need for scientific guidance and the importance of involving all relevant actors.

Overcoming the ‘panacea problem’ has been a major challenge for scholars devoted to the study of social-ecological systems (SESs). Panaceas are overly simplified institutional prescriptions, which have recurrently misguided natural resource policies across the world. To address this challenge, SES-scholars have focused their efforts on identifying the right institutional fit for a particular system, and a major initiative to refine the analysis of human-environment interaction has been the development of a multi-tiered interdisciplinary framework, called the SES framework. SES studies and analytical frameworks need to go beyond their current focus on finding the right institutional fit by positing power and discourses as key components of the analysis of SESs.

Reference points are specific values related to the state of a resource to which targets and limits for harvest management can be set. Although reference points evolved within fisheries science, they are likely to be widely applicable across a range of ecosystems and environments, as the principles behind their development and implementation apply to any harvested system. This special issue of Environmental Conservation takes a critical look at the ways in which reference points have been used previously, including the political, scientific and management contexts that have hindered and enabled their implementation. Through these experiences, a range of recommendations are made, highlighting the importance of social context in which biological reference points are developed and in favour of approaches that deal explicitly with uncertainty. When implemented without qualification, reference points have proven effective at preventing fisheries collapse and rebuilding depleted stocks; where they have not, management failures have occurred. Given the social-ecological complexity of fisheries management, the papers in this special issue provide a strong argument for the application of reference points across a range of resource management problems.

The success of natural resource management depends on monitoring, assessment and enforcement. In support of these efforts, reference points (RPs) are often viewed as critical values of management-relevant indicators. This paper considers RPs from the standpoint of objective-driven decision making in dynamic resource systems, guided by principles of structured decision making (SDM) and adaptive resource management (AM). During the development of natural resource policy, RPs have been variously treated as either ‘targets’ or ‘triggers’. Under a SDM/AM paradigm, target RPs correspond approximately to value-based objectives, which may in turn be either of fundamental interest to stakeholders or intermediaries to other central objectives. By contrast, trigger RPs correspond to decision rules that are presumed to lead to desirable outcomes (such as the programme targets). Casting RPs as triggers or targets within a SDM framework is helpful towards clarifying why (or whether) a particular metric is appropriate. Further, the benefits of a SDM/AM process include elucidation of underlying untested assumptions that may reveal alternative metrics for use as RPs. Likewise, a structured decision-analytic framework may also reveal that failure to achieve management goals is not because the metrics are wrong, but because the decision-making process in which they are embedded is insufficiently robust to uncertainty, is not efficiently directed at producing a resource objective, or is incapable of adaptation to new knowledge.

Accession of the Central and Eastern European countries to the European Union involved considerable institutional changes in the field of environmental governance that undermined existing policy practices. Such changes in biodiversity governance are examined through two case studies from Poland concerning road development schemes in ecologically sensitive areas. Documentary material and semi-structured interviews are analysed and interpreted in light of the policy arrangement approach and historical institutionalism. After the EU accession there was a rapid shift from a government-monopolized arrangement towards a multi-level governance arrangement with regard to conflicts between infrastructure and natural areas. Previously, the government controlled practically all aspects of environmental policymaking, despite potential routes for greater involvement of non-state actors. Only the formal rules of Natura 2000 and environmental impact assessment, guarded by a coalition of powerful supranational bodies, non-governmental organizations and scientists, changed the pattern of governmental policy-making. New policy arrangements have increased capacity and legitimacy in the implementation of the European Union rules.

A key strategy to reduce habitat loss and fragmentation involves the establishment of protected areas (PAs). Worldwide, c. 13% of land lies within PAs, but only 6% is subject to the more restrictive International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) categories I-IV. Private PAs may contribute to this figure, but require general guidance principles for their management. The Brazilian ‘Private Natural Heritage Reserves’ (RPPNs) constitute an example of good PA management, employing seven principles that should guide the creation of all private PAs. RPPNs have legal status and long-term security, allow only for indirect human uses, and provide a strategic conservation role in highly fragmented landscapes by improving connectivity. However, RPPNs are virtually absent from the World Database on Protected Areas, and given Brazil's continental size, and the considerable and increasing number of RPPNs in Brazil, this omission has the potential to skew accurate quantification of the area of land subject to strict protection. The RPPN model can make an important contribution to the discussion of the role of private PAs in conservation, especially in the tropics.

Adaptive management (AM) emerged in the literature in the mid-1970s in response both to a realization of the extent of uncertainty involved in management, and a frustration with attempts to use modelling to integrate knowledge and make predictions. The term has since become increasingly widely used in scientific articles, policy documents and management plans, but both understanding and application of the concept is mixed. This paper reviews recent literature from conservation and natural resource management journals to assess diversity in how the term is used, highlight ambiguities and consider how the concept might be further assessed. AM is currently being used to describe many different management contexts, scales and locations. Few authors define the term explicitly or describe how it offers a means to improve management outcomes in their specific management context. Many do not adhere to the idea as it was originally conceived, despite citing seminal work. Significant confusion exists over the distinction between active and passive approaches. Over half of the studies reporting to implement AM claimed to have done so successfully, yet none quantified specific benefits, or costs, in relation to possible alternatives. Similarly those studies reporting to assess the approach did so only in relation to specific models and their parameterizations; none assessed the benefits or costs of AM in the field. AM is regarded by some as an effective and well-established framework to support the management of natural resources, yet by others as a concept difficult to realize and fraught with implementation challenges; neither of these observations is wholly accurate. From a scientific and technical perspective many practical questions remain; in particular real-world assessments of the value of experimentation within a management framework, as well as of identified challenges and pathologies, are needed. Further discussion and systematic assessment of the approach is required, together with greater attention to its definition and description, enabling the assessment of new approaches to managing uncertainty, and AM itself.

The ecological network of Natura 2000, an European Union (EU) initiative to halt biodiversity loss across Europe, has dominated biodiversity governance in the new EU member states in recent years, as implementation was a condition of accession. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have generally assisted Natura 2000 implementation. In two Central and Eastern European countries (Poland and Hungary), NGOs became involved in different ways; this paper seeks to analyse and explain these national differences by researching the theoretical background of policy networks and advocacy coalitions in both countries. In Hungary, NGOs worked closely with governmental authorities and contributed significantly to site selection. In Poland, NGOs initially opposed government plans, but later moved toward close cooperation with public institutions; this resulted in a significant expansion in the area and number of designated Natura 2000 sites. In both countries, NGO influence increased during the Natura 2000 process owing to the establishment of multi-level policy networks with the European Commission and public institutions, based on resource dependencies and shared beliefs. In post-socialist countries, the progression from government-monopolized biodiversity conservation implies a growing importance and contribution of NGOs, and their ability to use resources appropriately in the new governance contexts.

Reference points are an approach to defining the thresholds of sustainable human use of environmental resources. The rationale for reference points can be found in a number of foundational environmental frameworks, including common property resources, carrying capacity, ecosystem management, and sustainability. However, these frameworks also suggest that reference points have both ecological and social components, and that formulation of reference points should be informed by society. Social norms, developed in sociology, offer a theoretical and empirical approach to informing reference points and have been useful in defining, measuring and managing the sustainability of parks and protected areas. Integrating sociology and ecology through the application of social norms to reference points may be a useful approach to environmental management. This paper describes social norms and their application, and illustrates the integration of sociology and ecology to more fully inform reference points.

There is increasing emphasis on the need for effective ways of sharing knowledge to enhance environmental management and sustainability. Knowledge exchange (KE) are processes that generate, share and/or use knowledge through various methods appropriate to the context, purpose, and participants involved. KE includes concepts such as sharing, generation, coproduction, comanagement, and brokerage of knowledge. This paper elicits the expert knowledge of academics involved in research and practice of KE from different disciplines and backgrounds to review research themes, identify gaps and questions, and develop a research agenda for furthering understanding about KE. Results include 80 research questions prefaced by a review of research themes. Key conclusions are: (1) there is a diverse range of questions relating to KE that require attention; (2) there is a particular need for research on understanding the process of KE and how KE can be evaluated; and (3) given the strong interdependency of research questions, an integrated approach to understanding KE is required. To improve understanding of KE, action research methodologies and embedding evaluation as a normal part of KE research and practice need to be encouraged. This will foster more adaptive approaches to learning about KE and enhance effectiveness of environmental management.

Islands of the West Indies are among the most historically impacted by agriculture, yet agricultural influences on forests there have been little studied. This research compared tree species richness and vegetation structure between farmed lands, post-agriculture secondary forests and mature remnant forests in two watersheds in Saint Lucia, and sought to understand the current distribution of these habitats in terms of land use and watershed topography. Farms devoted to annual crops had few trees and much exposed soil. By contrast, agroforests had abundant (mostly planted) trees and vegetation structure comparable to secondary forests. Secondary forests had highest overall species richness, but mature forests had the most developed vegetation structure. Variations in habitat distribution reflected different land use histories, with the more rugged west coast long dominated by tree crop farming and the east coast experiencing a recent boom-bust cycle in bananas. Mature and secondary forests were more likely found at higher altitude, further from roads and at sites more difficult to access, the combined result of government protection of key forest and watershed reserves and farmers’ preferential abandonment of marginal lands. For conservationists, this return of forests is reason for optimism and it presents strategic opportunities for public land acquisition or collaborative management to further forest and watershed protection objectives.

To evaluate the status of biodiversity and to determine how current conservation efforts can be improved, biodiversity monitoring is crucial. An important aspect of data quality lies in its spatial resolution. It is unclear how finer scale land cover and land value information might further benefit biodiversity conservation. This paper aimed to assess the impacts of scale by modelling the conservation of endangered European wetland species and their corresponding habitats. Fine-scale datasets were derived by integrating existing geographical, biophysical and economic data. A habitat allocation model, based on principles from systematic conservation planning and economic theory, was developed to estimate area requirements and opportunity costs of habitat protection in Europe. Coarse-scale and fine-scale simulations were compared by inputting both resolutions into the model. Habitat locations were restricted either only by historical species occurrence data at UTM 50 resolution or additionally by explicit wetland data at 1-km2 resolution. Coarse country-average land rents were contrasted with spatially detailed land rent estimates at a 5ʹ resolution. Costs of habitat protection and area requirements for reserves may be severely underestimated when conservation planning relies only on coarse-scale data, which may result in notable shortcomings in conservation target achievement. Improvements in conservation benefits far outweigh the additional costs of acquiring fine-scale data.

Biological reference points (BRPs) in fisheries policy are typically sensitive to stock assessment model assumptions, thus increasing uncertainty in harvest decision-making and potentially blocking adoption of precautionary harvest policies. A collaborative management strategy evaluation approach and closed-loop simulation modelling was used to evaluate expected fishery economic and conservation performance of the sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) fishery in British Columbia (Canada), in the presence of uncertainty about BRPs. Comparison of models derived using two precautionary harvest control rules, which each complied with biological conservation objectives and short-term economic objectives given by industry, suggested that both rules were likely to avert biomass decline below limit BRPs, even when stock biomass and production were persistently overestimated by stock assessment models. The slightly less conservative, industry-preferred harvest control rule also avoided short-term economic losses of c. CAN$ 2.7–10 million annually, or 10–50% of current landed value. Distinguishing between the role of BRPs in setting fishery conservation objectives and operational control points that define harvest control rules improved the flexibility of the sablefish management system, and has led to adoption of precautionary management procedures.

Conservation easements (or conservation covenants) are commonly conceptualized as acquisitions of sticks in a ‘bundle of rights’ and are increasingly implemented for wildlife conservation on private lands. This research asks: (1) What are the possibilities and limitations of the conservation easement approach to wildlife conservation in contrasting rural and periurban regions? and (2) How does analysis of conservation easements differ when examining property as a bundle of rights or alternative metaphors? These questions were addressed through document analysis, interviews and GIS mapping in two regions where The Nature Conservancy deployed conservation easements for wildlife habitat: rural Lassen Foothills and periurban Tenaja Corridor, USA. Splitting the bundle allowed for site and region-specific easements with differences in permitted housing densities, land management and hunting. Easements focused on restricted rights rather than affirmative duties. The challenges of habitat connectivity in the fragmented Tenaja Corridor revealed the limits of parcel-based acquisition. Analysts and conservation practitioners should rethink the bundle of rights concept of property, considering a bundle of duties, powers and owners within a broader web of social and ecological interests, to understand the role of conservation acquisitions in contrasting landscape contexts.

Unlike most parts of the European Union (EU), Southern Transylvania (Central Romania) is characterized by an exceptionally high level of farmland biodiversity. This results from traditional small-scale farming methods that have maintained extensive areas of high nature value farmland. Following the post-socialist transition, Southern Transylvania faces serious challenges such as under-employment and rural population decline, which put traditional farming at risk. With Romania's accession to the EU in 2007, Southern Transylvania became part of a complex multi-level governance system that in principle provides mechanisms to balance biodiversity conservation and rural development. To this end, the most important instruments are the ‘Natura 2000’ network of protected areas and EU rural development policy. Structured questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with town hall representatives from 30 villages in Southern Transylvania and local EU experts revealed that EU policies are often poorly aligned with local conditions. To date, the implementation of EU rural development policy is strongly focused on economic development, with biodiversity conservation being of little concern. Moreover, relevant EU funding opportunities are poorly communicated. Bridging organizations should be strengthened to foster the implementation of a rural development strategy that integrates local needs and biodiversity conservation.

Fisheries bycatch threatens populations of marine megafauna such as marine mammals, turtles, seabirds, sharks and rays, but fisheries impacts on non-target populations are often difficult to assess due to factors such as data limitation, poorly defined management objectives and lack of quantitative bycatch reduction targets. Limit reference points can be used to address these issues and thereby facilitate adoption and implementation of mitigation efforts. Reference points based on catch data and life history analysis can identify sustainability limits for bycatch with respect to defined population goals even when data are quite limited. This can expedite assessments for large numbers of species and enable prioritization of management actions based on mitigation urgency and efficacy. This paper reviews limit reference point estimators for marine megafauna bycatch, with the aim of highlighting their utility in fisheries management and promoting best practices for use. Different estimators share a common basic structure that can be flexibly applied to different contexts depending on species life history and available data types. Information on demographic vital rates and abundance is required; of these, abundance is the most data-dependent and thus most limiting factor for application. There are different approaches for handling management risk stemming from uncertainty in reference point and bycatch estimates. Risk tolerance can be incorporated explicitly into the reference point estimator itself, or probability distributions may be used to describe uncertainties in bycatch and reference point estimates, and risk tolerance may guide how those are factored into the management process. Either approach requires simulation-based performance testing such as management strategy evaluation to ensure that management objectives can be achieved. Factoring potential sources of bias into such evaluations is critical. This paper reviews the technical, operational, and political challenges to widespread application of reference points for management of marine megafauna bycatch, while emphasizing the importance of developing assessment frameworks that can facilitate sustainable fishing practices.

Predictive models are frequently used to define the most suitable areas for species protection or reintroduction. Land-cover variables can be used in different ways for distribution modelling. The surface area of a set of land-cover classes is often used, each land-cover presence/absence or the distance to them from any point of the study area can be preferred; multiple types of land-cover variables may be combined to produce a single model. This paper assesses whether different approaches to using land-cover variables may lead to different ecological conclusions when interpreted for conservation by focusing on the distribution of the salamader Salamandra salamandra longirostris, an endangered amphibian subspecies in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. Twenty-eight land-cover classes and another 42 environmental variables were used to construct four different models. Three models used a unique type of land-cover variable: either the presence of each class, the surface area of each class or the distance to each class, with all three variable types jointly entered in a fourth model. All models attained acceptable scores according to some criteria (discrimination, descriptive and predictive capacities, classification accuracy and parsimony); however most of the assessment parameters computed indicated a better performance of the models using either the surface area of land classes or the distance to them from every sampled square, compared to the model using class presences. The best scores were obtained with the fourth model, which combined different types of land-cover variables. This model suggested that oak forest fragmentation in favour of herbaceous crops and pastures may have negative effects on the distribution of S. s. longirostris. This was only partially suggested by the first three models, which considered a single type of land-cover variable, demonstrating the importance of considering a multi-variable analysis for conservation planning.

The Integrated Coastal Zone Management protocol of the Barcelona Convention sets governance objectives for countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. This protocol emphasizes collaborative approaches to acknowledge the role of local people in coastal management. Evaluating the quality of governance processes is critical if coastal zone values are to be effectively managed in times of global climate change. This study examined the structure and attributes of collaborative governance networks in two Mediterranean deltas, the Camargue (France) and Gediz Delta (Turkey). A deliberative social catchment sampling was used to target actors with physical, cultural, social or economic ties. Forty-five different organizations/professions were interviewed using a standardized questionnaire to identify the frequency and quality of contacts, information flows, and subject matter relevant to natural resource management. There were higher levels of degree centrality and reciprocal ties in the Camargue, while the Gediz Delta had a greater homogeneity of actors, with one centralized influential actor. Civil society played a greater role in the Camargue network, and government organizations were more central in the Gediz Delta. The differences between the two sites call into question the use of the same integrated management strategies and suggest the need to acknowledge the importance of existing governance models and relationships within local contexts.

Since the collapse of Central and Eastern Europe's communist regimes in the early 1990s, the ensuing environmental, social and economic changes have permitted development of new forms of multi-level governance. However, a coherent participatory approach to environmental conservation is yet to emerge. This review examines the changing approaches in environmental conservation and protected area governance in Romania during the country's pre-communist, communist, transition and current European Union eras. Three case examples are examined in depth to assess how changing environmental governance is playing out in practice in Natura 2000 sites, in a national park, and on privately owned (unprotected) forest land. Similar to other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Romania's environmental governance practices still face substantial challenges in consolidating an inclusive and integrated approach to environmental governance and conservation. A lack of historical involvement of communities in decision making, reluctance within government to drive forward more inclusive environmental governance approaches, and a lack of non-governmental organizations focusing on environmental conservation, have resulted in slow progress towards more inclusive environmental governance. Civil society and solutions for institutionalizing participation across all levels of governance are needed to reorient environmental governance towards a more inclusive and multi-stakeholder approach that better links economic, social and environmental objectives.