Fruit and vegetable growers in the US face tradeoffs and synergies between on-farm conservation and pre-harvest food safety as a result of economic considerations, regulatory concerns, and external pressure from other stakeholders. However, detailed data on the frequency and extent of these tradeoffs across US regions remain sparse. We designed and implemented a national grower survey for the 2018 crop year to address this gap. Based on 209 responses, we examined usage of pre-harvest food safety and conservation practices with a particular emphasis on managing animal intrusion into growing areas and maintaining wildlife habitat. We also analyzed associations between farm characteristics and the probability that growers used different on-farm food safety and conservation practices. We did not find a simple biophysical or socio-economic explanation for why some farms adopted specific practices over others. Instead, our findings suggest that the adoption of particular food safety practices is influenced by a complex assemblage of factors that include environmental context, supply chain pressures, cost considerations, and growers' perceptions of risk. A better understanding of the diverse tradeoffs and synergies that US produce growers face between on-farm conservation and pre-harvest food safety is critical for effective policy design.

The subject of environmental science (ES) was introduced into Bhutanese schools to educate students about sustainable environmental conservation. This study aims to answer the research question: What are the impacts of studying ES on Bhutanese students for environmental sustainability? The study employed mixed methods to draw data from interviews with six principals, 14 teachers and 189 students, and surveys with 14 teachers and 563 students from six secondary schools. Participants indicated the development of students’ Gross National Happiness value of sustainable environmental and socioeconomic development. However, an anthropocentric perspective appeared to be dominant among participants, suggesting a need to develop ecocentric worldviews to support sustainability. Most students noted their changed behaviours, development of optimism, stewardship and agency towards ecological sustainability from studying ES. To prepare students to take action to address sustainability issues, teachers could leverage students’ optimism, agency and stewardship through action-oriented approaches to teaching ES.

Mud volcanoes are singular seafloor structures classified as ‘sensitive habitats’. Here we report on the sponge fauna from a field of eight mud volcanoes located in the Spanish margin of the northern Gulf of Cadiz (North-eastern Atlantic), at depths ranging from 380 to 1146 m. Thirty-eight beam-trawl samplings were conducted (covering over 61,000 m2) from 2010 to 2012, in the frame of a EC-LIFE + INDEMARES grant. A total of 1659 specimens were retrieved, belonging to 82 species, from which 79 were in the Class Demospongiae and three in Hexactinellida. Two species were new to science (Jaspis sinuoxea sp. nov.; Myrmekioderma indemaresi sp. nov.) and three others recorded for the first time in the Atlantic Ocean (Geodia anceps, Coelosphaera cryosi and Petrosia raphida). Five additional species were ‘Atlantic oddities’, since this study provides their second record in the Atlantic Ocean (Lanuginella cf. pupa, Geodia cf. spherastrella, Cladocroce spathiformis, Cladocroce fibrosa and Haliclona pedunculata). Basic numerical analyses indicated a significant linear relationship between the species richness per m2 and the number of sponge individuals per m2, meaning that in most volcanoes many species occur in equivalent, moderate abundance. Likewise, sponge species richness increased with depth, while the abundance of hard substrata resulting from carbonate precipitation and the fishing activities around the volcanoes had no detectable effect on the sponge fauna. However, in the latter case, a negative trend – lacking statistical support – underlaid the analyses, suggesting that a more extensive sampling would be necessary to derive more definitive conclusions in this regard.

This paper concerns itself with the contributions that the Humanities make to the understanding of islands and their bettered environmental conservation. Most distinctively, the Humanities comprise Literary Studies, Studies in Art and Culture (including Indigenous and Gender Studies) and Philosophy (with Aesthetics and the History of Ideas), but they also encompass Archaeology, History, Linguistics, Studies in Religion and, of late, Media and Communication Studies, even though members of this latter cluster frequently deploy methods from the social sciences. The goal here is to explore many of the implications such Human Studies and their sub-branches may have for island conservation, above all informed by the History of Ideas, in order to introduce the relevant key issues and inter-relationships and offer the most judicious illustrative materials. Variances in the reach and special attention of all these branches of knowledge are vast and intricate, while complex relativities apply both in the types of island situations and in expectations about what can or should be conserved. Since the mass of apposite discussions in the literature cannot possibly be summarized here, this article circumvents the difficulties by means of a special double-edged review. It ranges over the history of human consciousness of insular worlds, as reflected in mythic, legendary and historical materials, yet en route it uncovers how Humanities research can elucidate the human responses to islands through known time and shows how developing meaning-making has generally enhanced the appeal of sea-locked environments as worth conserving.

We evaluated the influence of environmental integrity and the potential as bioindicator of larval stages of species of Trichoptera in 20 streams of first to fourth order in the Pindaíba river basin, Mato Grosso, Central Brazil. We measured stream integrity with the habitat integrity index (HII), establishing three levels of conservation: preserved, altered and impacted environments. We used (i) simple regression to assess the effect of habitat integrity on species abundance of Trichoptera and (ii) the indicator species analysis (IndVal) to assess the potential as bioindicator of each species. We found that 12 morphospecies showed relationship with HII: six species were bioindicators of preserved and two species of altered environments. Morphospecies that showed relationship in the two analyses (i and ii) were considered strong bioindicators, considering that the other species supported higher environmental variation, becoming evident that loss of physical structure reduces the abundance of organisms specialized in preserved environments. The results showed that the distribution and abundance of trichopterans can be an indicator of habitat integrity. Trichopteran species have bioindicator potential, corroborating the hypotheses of this work that abundance of organisms will be smaller in environments with low integrity, and that many species are specific to preserved environments, disappearing from impacted environments, and also characteristic species of altered environments.

Over thirty years ago a debate began as to whether religion in general, or the Judaeo-Christian faith in particular, were in some sense responsible for the present environmental predicament. Islam, as a major world religion which shares the same Abrahamic roots as the Judaeo-Christian tradition, has been largely absent from this debate. Most conservationists now believe that it is essential that there be comprehensive discussion not only of environmental policies, but also of the ethics underlying environmental protection. This paper looks at the importance of the environment in the main sources of Islamic instruction, namely the Koran and Prophet's Hadiths (teachings). These texts turn out to be on the side of conservation, the emphasis being on respect for creation, the protection of the natural order and avoidance of all wasteful activities which may cause injury to the environment. These positions are contrasted with views expressed by political Islam, which has become influential in a large part of the Muslim world and rejects the conservation measures advocated by Western writers.

There is general consensus that resource-use strategies of recent migrants in tropical rainforests result in extensive deforestation and other negative environmental impacts. Less agreement exists about the nature and extent of the impact of indigenous and long-standing migrant communities living in rainforests. It has often been argued that the high value these communities place on local resources results in environmental conservation in areas under their control, but this is being increasingly challenged. The aim of this study was to contribute to this debate by comparing the regional environmental impact of indigenous and non-indigenous households in North-west Ecuador, with emphasis on tropical deforestation. The basic premise was that long-term resource-use strategies and related decision-making processes should be discernible as characteristic land-use patterns. Three indigenous and non-indigenous populations coexist in the study region, and demographic, land-use and historical sources of information were used to evaluate their relationship to regional deforestation in the period 1983-93. No significant differences were found in the recent deforestation associated with each group based on their cultural or ethnic background, although differences did exist in the past. The need to differentiate between a given environmental impact and the decision-making process behind it was also evident. In North-west Ecuador, markets, factors of production, and access to and control of resources, are key for understanding the environmental impact of local communities. Low-impact resource-uses often result from low-return productive activities in forest environments with low labour opportunity costs, high discount rates for income generated through activities compromising food security, and from uncertainty about future conditions. Environmental policy-making and programme design need to recognize this relationship. Conservation will be possible only if the perceived benefit to local users is greater than that of resource transformation, both of which respond to the dominant environmental, economic and social conditions at a given time and place. Creating or fostering the appropriate conditions should be a key objective of both.

A large and varied group of insects attack crops of the tropical farmer, and carry various disease-causing organisms to him and his animals. The control of these agricultural pests, and vectors of human and animal diseases relies mostly on chemical pesticides. However, investigations show that alternative methods such as biological control and resistant crop varieties are available, which may be used in the reduction of pest infestation, resulting in an Increase in food production by the African farmer.