Choosing appropriate management strategies and effective conservation actions requires information about the future consequences of current conservation actions; however, this crucial information is rarely available to conservation planners. This study applies scenario planning and agent-based modelling (ABM) to assess the potential impact of alternative management strategies on future suitability and functional connectivity of Cross River gorilla (CRG) habitat in the Nigeria–Cameroon border region. The CRG population is small and fragmented, with many subpopulations and migration corridors located outside protected areas. This study used ABM to simulate human land use in the study area over a period of 15 years under different management scenarios and assessed the impact on future suitability and functional connectivity of CRG habitat. The simulations showed that a landscape approach with greater focus on interventions to change human behaviour towards conserving gorillas and sustainable forest use would result in greater improvement in habitat suitability and functional connectivity compared to focusing on improving law enforcement within existing protected areas. However, the best scenarios were when both law enforcement and behaviour change increased. The results highlight the importance of human behaviour change to conservation in human-dominated landscapes and can inform conservation planning and management of other species and in similar landscapes.

Amazonia is one of the world's leading suppliers of timber and the Amazonian timber industry is an important source of regional income, however the economic benefits of this market are associated with environmental damage, mainly when the wood is removed illegally. The Anavilhanas National Park, located in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, has been subjected to illegal logging and elaboration of control programmes requires knowledge of the distribution of timber species and the intensity of logging. This study examines the density and growth rate of the five most harvested tree species in the Park, the spatial distribution of illegal logging operations and their effects on population structure. In total, 2332 trees with diameter at breast height greater than 10 cm, as well as stumps of cut trees, were sampled, and dendrochronology was used to estimate growth rates. Some size classes of Virola surinamensis trees and species within the family Lauraceae decreased in abundance as harvesting intensity increased. Growth rates of the most abundant species of Lauraceae, Ocotea cymbarum, were high, indicating stands may recover quickly when harvesting stops. The population structure of Calophyllum brasiliense showed no negative effects due to logging, but its low growth rate and stand distribution suggest that continued exploitation may endanger these populations. Logging had no detectable negative effects on the size structure of populations of Macrolobium acaciifolium or Hevea spp., and their high growth rates suggest that they will not be threatened by current logging rates. Overall growth rates in the Anavilhanas archipelago are higher than those recorded in other black-water floodplain forest (igapó). Logging of most species (except Lauraceae spp., which have the highest market value) is concentrated in the southern region of the Park, which has more human settlements close by. There was no general relationship between harvesting intensity and geographic distance to human settlements, but there was a tendency for harvesting to be higher in sites with concentrations of trees of high market value. Potential strategies to control illegal logging activities in the Anavilhanas archipelago include encouragement of sustainable logging in Park buffer zones and stimulation of ecotourism initiatives in the southern region of the Park. Ecotourism development can provide an economic alternative to illegal logging for local communities and inhibit logging by increasing vigilance.

The ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management and, more specifically, the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive require the assessment of the state and dynamics of an ecosystem in order to determine suitable management strategies. This paper takes an analytical approach to assess the state of the Bay of Biscay ecosystem in the early 1990s, chosen as a period of reference because key monitoring data series have been collected since then. To assess the state of the ecosystem, the pressures exerted by six broad categories of human activities were examined. A literature review of the ecosystem components was made and a component tree was tailored according to data availability. Data rich components were subdivided into subcomponents for their assessment while data poor components were assessed at an aggregated level. The component tree of the ecosystem comprised six main branches, four of which further divided into sub-components. In total, assessments were carried out at the level of 19 components. For four of these (fished species, sensitive fish species, marine mammals and turtles) the overall assessments were made combining the status of individual species. Impact from human activities were categorised as (i) “widespread” over the whole Bay of Biscay or “local” and (ii) “possible” when they could be logically expected or “documented” when they were reported in the literature. Fishing appeared to be the only activity exerting widespread documented impacts on several ecosystem components. Terrestrial activities had some possible and documented widespread impacts. With the exception of marine transport impacting seabirds at the regional scale through oil pollution, other activities had only local impacts, mostly nearshore. The reference state in the early 1990s, suggests that continuation of monitoring of vertebrates as well as estuarine and coastal habitats must be central to the monitoring programme and management strategies to be set in the context of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. Additional monitoring is also required for benthos, substrate and micro-organisms.